917: Hofstadter
explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
| Hofstadter |
 Title text: "This is the reference implementation of the self-referential joke." |
[edit] Explanation
The second panel reads "I'm So Meta, Even This Acronym." Going back and reading the first letters of these words yields "IS META."
Douglas Hofstadter is an American author who has written several books about philosophy, mathematics, and science. He is perhaps most famous for his book Gödel, Escher, Bach which explores "strange loops," or self-referential systems. "Meta-" is a Greek prefix meaning "outside" or "beyond." As an adjective, "meta" informally refers to anything self-referential, like this sentence.
In the title text, reference implementation is a reference to the standard implementation during a software development process.
[edit] Transcript
- [Cueball sits at a desk, working on a laptop. Megan approaches the desk and picks up a tiny book.]
- Megan: What's this?
- Cueball: Douglas Hofstadter's six-word autobiography. After all those 700-page tomes, I guess he wanted to try for brevity.
- Megan: Huh. Let's see...
- [Close up of Megan, reading the tiny book.]
- Book: I'm So Meta, Even This Acronym
- [Full shot of Cueball and Megan again. Megan looks down at the tiny book in her hand.]
- Megan: ...whoa.
- Cueball: I think he nailed it.
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