simulation-4
Explanation
This comic features a scientist or tech entrepreneur who announces he is creating a machine that perfectly simulates the most embarrassing moment of his life.
Someone points out that the simulation would use more energy than half of Europe, and that it runs billions of times per second. Each instantiation recreates the exact moment: the night he was drunk, his rude behavior, the Walker brothers being there, a crush on Rob, needing to pee, and not making it in time. The implication is that by running so many instances of the simulation, there are now billions of conscious versions of him perpetually reliving this humiliating experience.
Another character observes: "The more instantiations of the verisimilitude there are, the more likely it is that we ourselves are living in a simulation and not reality."
Someone asks "How so?" and the reply is: "I'm sure you're not questioning this. I'm wondering if this is why God made the universe." The final panel delivers a stunned "Holy shit."
The comic is a riff on the simulation argument (popularized by philosopher Nick Bostrom), which suggests that if civilizations can run realistic simulations, then statistically we are more likely to be inside a simulation than in base reality. But the comic gives this a hilarious twist: instead of simulations being created for scientific research or entertainment, the entire universe might exist because some higher being built a simulation to endlessly relive their most embarrassing moment. It reframes the grand philosophical question of "why does the universe exist?" as "because God did something cringeworthy at a party and can't stop thinking about it."