real-3
Explanation
The comic presents a rapid survey of different philosophical positions on what is "really real." In the first panel, someone argues for physical realism: "Reality is really real -- in physics, things are actual things, and they obey laws that work the same regardless of your frame of reference."
The second panel presents the quantum mechanics perspective: "Quantum mechanics might be incomplete because you can have superposition -- a cat that is both alive and dead at the same time" (a reference to Schrodinger's cat).
A later panel introduces mathematical realism (Platonism): "Mathematical reality is the realest, proven by Noether and Godel" -- referencing Emmy Noether's theorem connecting symmetries to conservation laws, and Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorems, which some interpret as showing mathematics transcends formal systems.
The final panel delivers the punchline with a postmodernist or subjectivist character smugly declaring that "everything is subjective."
The joke satirizes the escalating philosophical debates about the nature of reality. Each position claims to have discovered what is truly "real" -- physical objects, quantum states, mathematical structures -- with increasing levels of abstraction. The comic lampoons how these debates can seem like an arms race of metaphysical one-upmanship, with each school dismissing the previous one as naive. The humor likely lies in the final panel's deflating punchline, where after all this sophisticated philosophical argumentation, someone just shrugs and says everything is subjective anyway, undercutting the entire discussion with the most intellectually lazy position possible.