2010-08-14
Explanation
This comic imagines a scenario where a scientist named Dr. Demaine creates an algorithm that solves all mathematical theorems. The comic then follows the cascading consequences as the algorithm works its way through every field of human inquiry. First it solves all math, then all physics questions (revealing that inside strings is "God telling you to fuck off"), then engineering, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, and psychiatry. It moves on to philosophical and literary questions, confirming that reality is indeed "but a dream within a dream." It then dispatches uninteresting rhetorical questions and finally handles senseless questions from stoned philosophy undergrads.
Having answered every question in existence, Dr. Demaine suffers an existential crisis, quoting Goethe's Faust: "And here, poor fool, with all my lore I stand no wiser than before." The comic suggests that even total knowledge might not provide meaning or satisfaction -- echoing the Faustian dilemma that pure intellectual achievement is ultimately unfulfilling.
The final panel offers a humorous coda: someone notes that Demaine "didn't correct for longevity or touchable holograms," suggesting that if he had, the existential despair might have been avoidable -- a callback to the idea that the real point of knowledge is practical application, not abstract truth. The votey panel offers an "alternate version" of the Faust quote, replacing "lore" with "whores" in an absurd, juvenile twist on the classic literary reference.