Revision as of 23:21, 19 February 2013

Comic #505 (November 17, 2008) Next >

A Bunch of Rocks

Title text: I call Rule 34 on Wolfram's Rule 34.

Explanation

Cueball awakens to find himself trapped for eternity in an endless expanse of sand and rocks. At first, he uses this time to derive all of mathematics and physics, including quantum mechanics and general relativity. The Swiss patent office line refers to Albert Einstein, who supposedly came up with the idea for general relativity while bored at work as a Swiss patent clerk.

Next, armed with infinite time and space (and rocks), Cueball uses the rocks to build a cellular automaton, a computational model based on simple rules to advance from one state to the next. Certain cellular automata are Turing-complete, which means that they can be used to represent any computer program (given finite-but-possibly-extremely-large time and space). He specifically seems to be running Wolfram's Rule 110, which is indeed capable of universal computation. Cueball then uses his enormous, hand-powered computer to simulate a universe.

The time needed to run this computer through a single step of computation is trillions of years, so it goes without saying that he's been at this for a very long time.

Specific references made in the artwork:

• Panel 8 - From left to right: A Gaussian function (probably the Normal distribution); what seems to be a reproduction of the Epitaph of Stevinus; a weird diagram with lines in it (something to do with relativity?).
• Panel 13 - The triangular shapes depict what a cyclic tag system looks like in Rule 110. In layman's terms: "Yep, that's computation alright."

Rule 34 is a humorous rule of the Internet which states "If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions." Wolfram's Rule 34 is a cellular automaton. Randall is suggesting that someone should make pornography featuring the cellular automaton in question. This might prove to be quite challenging as Rule 34 quickly devolves into a bunch of diagonal lines given almost any input.

Transcript

[Cueball is walking, alone in desert, narrating his own situation]

Narrator: So I'm stuck in this desert for eternity.

Narrator: I don't know why. I just woke up here one day.

Narrator: I never feel hungry or thirsty.

Narrator: I just walk.

Narrator: Sand and rocks...

Narrator: ...stretch to infinity.

Narrator: As best as I can tell.

[Cueball is sitting in the desert, in a contemplative position]

Narrator: There's plenty of time for thinking out here.

Narrator: An eternity really.

[Cueball is sketching stuff in the sand]

Narrator: I've rederived modern math in the sand

Narrator: and then some.

[Different graph types are depicted]

Narrator: Physics too. I worked out the kinks in quantum mechanics and relativity.

Narrator: Took a lot of thinking, but this place has fewer distractions than a Swiss patent office.

[Cueball is walking along the desert, laying out rocks]

Narrator: One day I started laying down rows of rocks.

[Cueball continues to deploy rocks]]

Narrator: Each new row followed from the last in a simple pattern.

[Image continues to zoom out showing laid out rocks]

Narrator: With the right set of rules and enough space,

Narrator: I was able to build a computer.

Narrator: Each new row of stones is the next iteration of the computation.

Narrator: Sure it's rocks instead of electricity, but it's the same* thing.

Narrator: Just slower.

Notation: *Turing-complete

[Cueball in contemplative pose]

Narrator: After a while, I programmed it to be a physics simulator.

[Image of binary encoding depicted in rocks]

Narrator: Every piece of information about a particle was encoded as a string of bits written in the stones.

[Representations of two particles interacting]

Narrator: With enough time and space, I could fully simulate two particles interacting.

[Cueball standing before the vastness of the desert]

Narrator: But I have infinite time and space.

[Depiction of a universe]

Narrator: So I decided to simulate a universe.

[Cueball is walking about his rocks, changing placement]

Narrator: The eons blur past as I walk down a single row.

[Zoom out of the rows of rocks]

Narrator: The rows blur past to compute a single step.

[Shows placement of two rocks]

Narrator: And in the simulation...

[The two rocks have moved; an after-image of their previous placement is present]

Narrator: ...another instant ticks by.

[A person observes a mote of dust vanish]

Narrator: So if you see a mote of dust vanish from your vision in a little flash or something

[Cueball is rearranging rocks]

Narrator: I'm sorry. I must have misplaced a rock...

Narrator: ...sometime in the last few billions and billions of millennia.

[Cueball in front of the vastness of his infinite desert]

Narrator: Oh and...

[Cueball is in a classroom setting, girl and professor are present]

Narrator: if you think the minutes in your morning lecture are taking a long time for _YOU_...

 add a comment!

Discussion