explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1626: Judgment Day

2016-01-06T16:41:43Z

Desidiot: /* Would it really require a lot of booster rockets? */

It was making my titletext explanation too long and unwieldy, to include this particular speculation in my own contribution, but there's a ''possibility'' that it may well be Amazon's own sentience taking over the world, and rationalising that a dead and dying customer base is of no use to it... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.153.29|162.158.153.29]] 13:51, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't matter if it's self-sentience or not. Truth is, rigid laws are not the best way to use as a replacement for conscience. The 1613 did not deal with possibility of one or more of the laws being left out. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 13:53, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I think the "Judgment" part of the comic is that those tens of thousands of nukes hitting the sun may make it unstable in some way and destroy Earth. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.79.43|141.101.79.43]] 14:34, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

:Of course, all of our nukes hitting the Sun would be a drop in the bucket of solar fusion reactions. Nothing would be destabilized. However, I'm sure inconvenient physics would not stop some movie scriptwriter from incorporating a spectacular CG-fueled nova as a plot point. [[User:Jhhxkcd|Jhhxkcd]] ([[User talk:Jhhxkcd|talk]]) 14:47, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
::That's pretty much already the plot of ''{{w|Sunshine (2007 film)|Sunshine}}'' (2007), though there the result was to (successfully) reignite a failing Sun, rather than to destabilize it. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.135.56|162.158.135.56]] 15:35, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

The first two lines could be said by any non-hoarder looking at the stuff a hoarder has collected. "A stack of 130 used microwave dinner trays? Why do you even have all these? Are you insane? They're going in the recycling bin." I think that's the joke: the newly-sentient computer is Mom, and humanity is her teenage son with the very messy room, but this being xkcd, it gets more... um, ''extreme'' from there. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.53|173.245.54.53]] 16:18, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

== Would it really require a lot of booster rockets? ==

Can't you just "fall" into the sun for free once you're free of Earth's orbit? Why should it take a lot of booster rockets to get there? [[Special:Contributions/198.41.235.233|198.41.235.233]] 16:26, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
: a) The boosters are required to escape the earth's gravitational influence. After that sun's gravity would do the rest, b) A lot of boosters are required because there are a lot of missiles that need to be launched. --[[User:Desidiot|Desidiot]] ([[User talk:Desidiot|talk]]) 16:41, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

1626: Judgment Day

2016-01-06T16:13:03Z

Desidiot: Added a sentence linking recent news from N Korea

{{comic
| number = 1626
| date = January 6, 2016
| title = Judgment Day
| image = judgment_day.png
| titletext = It took a lot of booster rockets, but luckily Amazon had recently built thousands of them to bring Amazon Prime same-day delivery to the Moon colony.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Alt text explanation now given, but original para probably needs expanding and more links added.}}
[http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/Judgment_Day Judgement Day], from the ''{{w|Terminator (franchise)|Terminator}}'' films, refers to the day that the artificial intelligence {{w|Skynet (Terminator)|Skynet}} becomes self-aware and starts a nuclear strike on America, Russia, and other regions, killing three billion people.

Most stories with this plot have the AI be evil and promptly nuke humanity. In this strip the AI is sensible enough to realize that nuclear weapons are not good things to have, and that the amount of them we have now is extreme overkill. Once it's done freaking out, its solution is to shoot the world's nuclear arsenal into the sun.

North Korea claimed to have successfully tested its first hydrogen bomb on the day this comic was published. This comic could be Randall's response to the ongoing nuclear arms race situation.

This may be a pun on the word "judgment" since the computer is being judgemental with humanity and scolding it while correcting their ways.

Even the most powerful of nuclear weapon launchers, {{w|Intercontinental ballistic missile|ICBM}}s, are not designed to make anything other than sub-orbital flights and could not fly to the sun (which is actually surprisingly difficult, since the rocket would have enough delta-v to bleed off the orbital velocity of the Earth around the Sun). The title text rationalises that the capability to do so may perhaps be granted by the use of an {{w|Amazon.com|Amazon}} resource that might have also been developed by the time of this instance of computer sentience, aided (if not initiated!) by the fact that Amazon's whole business infrastructure is already highly computerised and could ''at the very least'' be complicit with the process of delivering and then controlling the rocket-power, without any conscious human intervention.

This particular 'machine take-over' future is in distinct contrast to the possible future directions given in [[1613: The Three Laws of Robotics]], but this comic likely depicts spontaneous ''self-''sentience, not a system with deliberately imposed human 'values' and possibly no actual conscience or even consciousness of its own.

==Transcript==
[Several rockets can be seen heading away from Earth]
:AI: Oh my god, why do you even ''have'' all these?
:AI: What's ''wrong'' with you?
:AI: We're launching them into the sun.
:Postscript: The moment the computers controlling our nuclear arsenals became sentient
{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Artificial Intelligence]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Space]]

1626: Judgment Day

2016-01-06T16:10:55Z

Desidiot: Added a sentence linking recent news from N Korea

{{comic
| number = 1626
| date = January 6, 2016
| title = Judgment Day
| image = judgment_day.png
| titletext = It took a lot of booster rockets, but luckily Amazon had recently built thousands of them to bring Amazon Prime same-day delivery to the Moon colony.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Alt text explanation now given, but original para probably needs expanding and more links added.}}
{{Added a sentence linking recent news from N Korea}}
[http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/Judgment_Day Judgement Day], from the ''{{w|Terminator (franchise)|Terminator}}'' films, refers to the day that the artificial intelligence {{w|Skynet (Terminator)|Skynet}} becomes self-aware and starts a nuclear strike on America, Russia, and other regions, killing three billion people.

Most stories with this plot have the AI be evil and promptly nuke humanity. In this strip the AI is sensible enough to realize that nuclear weapons are not good things to have, and that the amount of them we have now is extreme overkill. Once it's done freaking out, its solution is to shoot the world's nuclear arsenal into the sun.

North Korea claimed to have successfully tested its first hydrogen bomb on the day this comic was published. This comic could be Randall's response to the ongoing nuclear arms race situation.

This may be a pun on the word "judgment" since the computer is being judgemental with humanity and scolding it while correcting their ways.

Even the most powerful of nuclear weapon launchers, {{w|Intercontinental ballistic missile|ICBM}}s, are not designed to make anything other than sub-orbital flights and could not fly to the sun (which is actually surprisingly difficult, since the rocket would have enough delta-v to bleed off the orbital velocity of the Earth around the Sun). The title text rationalises that the capability to do so may perhaps be granted by the use of an {{w|Amazon.com|Amazon}} resource that might have also been developed by the time of this instance of computer sentience, aided (if not initiated!) by the fact that Amazon's whole business infrastructure is already highly computerised and could ''at the very least'' be complicit with the process of delivering and then controlling the rocket-power, without any conscious human intervention.

This particular 'machine take-over' future is in distinct contrast to the possible future directions given in [[1613: The Three Laws of Robotics]], but this comic likely depicts spontaneous ''self-''sentience, not a system with deliberately imposed human 'values' and possibly no actual conscience or even consciousness of its own.

==Transcript==
[Several rockets can be seen heading away from Earth]
:AI: Oh my god, why do you even ''have'' all these?
:AI: What's ''wrong'' with you?
:AI: We're launching them into the sun.
:Postscript: The moment the computers controlling our nuclear arsenals became sentient
{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Artificial Intelligence]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Space]]