encryption
Explanation
The Joke
A scientist excitedly tells his colleague about a new form of encryption he calls "encryption by destruction." The method works by taking a piece of information, encoding it in a random place in the universe, and then -- because knowing the entire state of the universe and having infinite computing power would be required to decrypt it -- the information is effectively unbreakable. The colleague's child overhears and asks, "What an amazing thought, Daddy!" But the child then suggests that by the same logic, they should just let the cat destroy the information, since that would also make it unrecoverable. The father dismisses the child.
The Humor
The comic satirizes a tendency in certain academic or technical fields to dress up simple or even trivial ideas in complex, impressive-sounding language. The scientist's "encryption by destruction" scheme is, as the child points out, functionally identical to just destroying information. If the security of your encryption relies on the fact that no one can ever recover the data, you have not invented encryption -- you have invented a shredder. The child's innocent observation cuts through the jargon to expose this, and the father's dismissal of the child highlights how experts sometimes resist having their elaborate frameworks reduced to their obvious essentials.
References
The comic plays on concepts from information theory and cryptography. True encryption allows authorized parties to recover the original information using a key, whereas this scheme provides no recovery mechanism at all -- making it technically closer to a one-way hash or, as the child suggests, simple destruction.