p
Explanation
The Joke
The comic retells the story of the Garden of Eden with a mathematical twist. In the first panel, God confronts Adam and Eve: "God, forgive me!" / "Well, ok" / "She ate the fruit." God responds angrily: "You're disgusting! The structure of mathematics itself because it is immoral for a lady to eat fruit." The punchline comes in the final panel with a dramatic lightning bolt, as God declares: "And ever after, Pi will be really hard to plan a long delivery route!" -- a mangled reference to both the number pi and the Travelling Salesman Problem.
The comic is playing with the idea that God's punishment for Original Sin was not just expelling humanity from Eden, but making certain mathematical constants and computational problems intractable. The title "p" likely refers to the famous P vs NP problem in computer science.
The Humor
The humor lies in the absurd premise that difficult math problems are not inherent features of the universe but rather divine punishment for eating forbidden fruit. It reframes the theological concept of "the Fall" as the reason humans struggle with computational complexity. The joke also pokes fun at how arbitrary and disproportionate divine punishments in religious stories can seem -- cursing all of humanity with hard math problems because someone ate an apple is both ridiculous and oddly fitting for an SMBC comic that loves to blend theology with science.
References
The P vs NP problem is one of the most important unsolved problems in computer science and mathematics. It asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly verified can also be quickly solved. The Travelling Salesman Problem (finding the shortest route visiting all cities) is a classic example of an NP-hard problem. The number pi (approximately 3.14159...) is famously irrational and transcendental, meaning its digits never terminate or repeat.