2012-11-07
Explanation
This comic explores a real mathematical concept in an accessible and humorous way. A red-haired girl explains to her friend that because distance is infinitely divisible, you can assign number pairs to each letter of the alphabet, and therefore specify any string of letters just by pointing to a very specific place on a centimeter and getting its decimal output. She demonstrates with a simple mapping (00=a, 01=b, 02=c). She then makes the mind-bending observation that the sentence she just said is itself at a particular point on the centimeter, as is everything anyone will ever say in the future.
She escalates the implications dramatically: the centimeter has "read every book there will ever be," knows every scientific fact, knows the future of their friendship, knows how they will die, and knows how the universe ends and began. However, she then points out that the centimeter also "knows" a bunch of crazy stuff -- like "2+2=3," "up is down, rotated 90 degrees," and "ponies aren't awesome" -- since the encoding contains every possible string, including nonsensical and false ones. Her friend concludes that she knows infinitely less than the centimeter but has infinitely better discretion. The girl agrees: "That's basically your life. You know relatively no information, but you're relatively great at using it."
This is a clever illustration of the concept that containing all possible information is not the same as being useful or intelligent -- you also need the ability to distinguish true information from false. It echoes ideas from information theory and the Library of Babel concept by Borges. The votey panel shows a sign reading "FREE LIBRARY OF EVERYTHING!" with a sticky note, reinforcing the joke that a physical object containing all information is technically a universal library, even if completely impractical.