Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

infinite-power

2018-06-18 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
infinite-power
Votey panel for infinite-power
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic features a father and son discussing the philosophical implications of the multiverse. The dad finds the idea of a multiverse terrifying because if there are nearly infinite copies of him, nothing he does carries any weight -- nothing carries meaning if it's all just variations on a theme.

His son initially seems to understand the existential dread, saying "I don't care about that" -- but then reveals he's only interested in the practical implication: with nearly infinite power across all his copies, he could essentially do whatever he wants, including slapping his dad whenever he feels like it. He demonstrates this by slapping his father and running away. The final panel has the dad asking whether you could create a "crotch-slam proof" multiverse, and the answer is that it's "a matter for philosophers." The comic takes a genuinely interesting philosophical question about identity and meaning in a multiverse and deflects it into juvenile physical comedy.

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