Editing Talk:1203: Time Machines
Please sign your posts with ~~~~ |
Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
The edit can be undone.
Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision | Your text | ||
Line 87: | Line 87: | ||
As pointed out above, the outlet changed (but we and Cueball are observers outside the system). It appears to be a hint that the time traveler went back to "correct" [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/567:_Urgent_Mission Benjamin Franklin (567: Urgent Mission)], hence the power change. It's a "nominal" thing to do because the system should continue operating "normally" even if the details aren't "exact". But at least 3 other physical things changed, if we assume the switch travel was around 1 second and allow sound to change as if there's a small switch for windup/down when it begins travel: First, there's Cueball's hand positions. He actually appears to be "pulling" the lever down from the "bottom", explaining his puzzled response. Gravity's "work" is now in the opposite +/- direction. Also the outlet's cuts look like a "+" to me (instead of parallel slots as they are in the United States). Next, when NASA exceeds "0 seconds" countdowns revert to a countup ("T+1 second and counting"). Except here the comic starts at T-10s and then go up, which implies (assuming Cueball is approximately 6 feet tall - or 1 meter) that the equation for acceleration due to gravity has been flipped (instead of 9.82m/s^2 ... travel of one meter equates to approximately 10s; maybe magnitude^2 plays a part here). I think there's an additional joke in "E" (Energy/natural log, or maybe just that its volume curve inverts) but the main message in this comic is that a "nominal" change to a labeling system has had physical effects; like a universal force flipping around because we decided to flip our butterfly's measurements. The question you have to ask then is: from the perspective of anyone who stayed in-system, did anything change? The problem (or even horror) may simply be that by fixing the system for everyone except you, the problem stays the same for them while lots of little things have changed for you; and non-trivially: Cueball is the only one who knows. [[User:Elvenivle|Elvenivle]] ([[User talk:Elvenivle|talk]]) 15:42, 13 March 2016 (UTC) | As pointed out above, the outlet changed (but we and Cueball are observers outside the system). It appears to be a hint that the time traveler went back to "correct" [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/567:_Urgent_Mission Benjamin Franklin (567: Urgent Mission)], hence the power change. It's a "nominal" thing to do because the system should continue operating "normally" even if the details aren't "exact". But at least 3 other physical things changed, if we assume the switch travel was around 1 second and allow sound to change as if there's a small switch for windup/down when it begins travel: First, there's Cueball's hand positions. He actually appears to be "pulling" the lever down from the "bottom", explaining his puzzled response. Gravity's "work" is now in the opposite +/- direction. Also the outlet's cuts look like a "+" to me (instead of parallel slots as they are in the United States). Next, when NASA exceeds "0 seconds" countdowns revert to a countup ("T+1 second and counting"). Except here the comic starts at T-10s and then go up, which implies (assuming Cueball is approximately 6 feet tall - or 1 meter) that the equation for acceleration due to gravity has been flipped (instead of 9.82m/s^2 ... travel of one meter equates to approximately 10s; maybe magnitude^2 plays a part here). I think there's an additional joke in "E" (Energy/natural log, or maybe just that its volume curve inverts) but the main message in this comic is that a "nominal" change to a labeling system has had physical effects; like a universal force flipping around because we decided to flip our butterfly's measurements. The question you have to ask then is: from the perspective of anyone who stayed in-system, did anything change? The problem (or even horror) may simply be that by fixing the system for everyone except you, the problem stays the same for them while lots of little things have changed for you; and non-trivially: Cueball is the only one who knows. [[User:Elvenivle|Elvenivle]] ([[User talk:Elvenivle|talk]]) 15:42, 13 March 2016 (UTC) | ||
− | |||
− |