Talk:3008: Proterozoic Rocks

So the last panel refers to the unseen birth of a rock? How are rocks even born?:

Farther - does is mean father back, or further ahead in time? If ahead it could mean Randall do not think there will be any eyes left to see in 500 million years time. Which is not unlikely. Earth will not stay inhabitable much longer than that (probably 800 million years, then the seas will have evaporated). --Kynde (talk) 08:30, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

A few ways. Fusion likely formed many elements, and neutron star death possibly the rest of the naturally occurring ones. When those started sticking together they would form rocks. The type likely being referred to here is probably sediment being compressed and former a cohesive stone, magma crystalizing, or compression of the latter two types of rocks into different types of rocks. 172.71.124.222 06:52, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I think in this context it was by up welling magma and they are only rare because plate tectonics and erosion has recycled 99.9X% of them. RIIW - Ponder it (talk) 07:58, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

First the mommy rock and the daddy rock fall in love... 172.71.175.16 15:19, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Makes me think of the manga Houseki No Kuni (Land of the Lustrous) and how effortlessly it depicts thousands and millions of years passing in a blink. 162.158.159.228 08:00, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Guess Randall didn't want to acknowledge the results. Can't say I blame him. Caliban (talk) 08:16, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Well it did end in an all black panel... Like his mood. --Kynde (talk) 08:30, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Maybe he thinks she can still win? 172.71.31.39 13:05, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I think everything in this comic speaks that Randall is acutely aware of the results. Meditating on eon-old stones is a mental health exercise. I feel him. - and gave the explanation a try. Transgalactic (talk) 13:49, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I like that title text. It has a poetic quality. (It refers to when various part of animal anatomy first evolved, but does so in a really nice way.) --162.158.74.24 08:47, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I'd suggest that the explanation should at least include the other interpretation of "farther", namely "farther back in time". I think that's the more obvious one, personally: he's saying these rocks are a billion years old, eyes evolved 500 million years ago and that vast abyss of time "stretches back as far as the eye can see ... and then 500 million years farther" [back]. As in, these rocks existed for 500 million years in a world where there were no eyes. Right? I don't know how the future got involved, it seems to be pretty clearly about the past.ModelD (talk) 14:25, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that description of 'farther back in time' really seems to make more sense here, since the comic talks about how the rocks were there for roughly that long before eyes existed, and it keeps with the poetic, reflective nature of the rest of the comic, while the future interpretation feels like a bit of a jump from one theme to another. UnbiasedBrigade (talk) 15:03, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I concur. This is the interpretation I had before coming to explainxkcd. I think that efforts to make the cartoon be about current events impose a meaning on it that the cartoonist is not yet ready to express. The cartoon appeared very late, and (speaking of imposing a meaning on a cartoon) I imagine Randall struggled mightily to come up with an idea that was not some variation on a fireball of wrath consuming the USA and everything in it. I would also remove the climate-change reference as an overreaching interpretation. For what it's worth, Randall's living depends on computer use by his audience, and computer use is a massive contributor to anthropogenic climate change. I have read repeatedly that, in order to persuade someone to adopt a desired behavior, the proponent has to model it. In this case, by massive reductions in personal energy usage ... which will simultaneously make your life miserable and put you out of the public eye, where no one can see the correct behavior you're modeling. How I learned to stop worrying and love carbon dioxide. 162.158.42.96 15:13, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Possibly that was my own doomsday mindset. I see it's been edited to correct this. :-D (N.B.: Fwiw, Randall depending on computers does not mean he can't be worried about and active against climate change.) Transgalactic (talk) 17:21, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

There's really no good reason for imaginging the "further" is "further forward" if you've just been talking of looking back. Imagine being given directions to go back towards where you noted a prior landmark and then go further, that wouldn't mean return to here and then go onward again. As such, I've reworded the "future extinction" bit entirely in the other direction (it might mean a different treatment of the "mood explanation" now in the Trivia, but meshes with the comic itself). I pondered adding that, even before 'eyes', there were different phases of light/illumination (and/or shadow) sensitivity that would have meant that day/night (or at least hot vs. cold rocks) and things such as looming predators or overhanging shelter would still have been 'sensed', so being "dark-blind" would have been not necessarily a thing, but instead I just alluded to the Sun still shining (or glowing lava still illuminating, as with the Moon and its pre-fragments whenever they were up above) to aid an actual visit to that era by a time-tourist, and that it's just a selective regression (or a limited degree of retro-posession of any contemporary entity) that leads to "having nothing to see with/by". But to properly expand these extended philosophies in the Explanation would probably clutter up the existing text too much. 172.70.160.219 16:53, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Um. Pretty sure this comic has nothing to do with the 2024 election. 162.158.174.23 15:14, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

It seems at least mildly relevant. It's a huge, recent event; of a sort that Randall is known to care a lot about; and the meditative mood being evoked seems appropriate. I wouldn't call it an "election comic" or anything, but the trivial is certainly relevant. 172.69.58.132 16:18, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I would not be surprised to see this sort of thing unrelated to the current events (it shares a viewpoint given in such as 1198: Geologist, which is almost worth an in-article back reference), but I also think that it's not unlikely that the "mood" of the piece (looking back into "the black", perhaps) is prompted by what we can assume Randall is feeling about current events. Not quite the old "Sad Comics" category, but reflective, and different from what we might have seen under more jubilant (for Randall, at least, but also for many others) times down the different trouser-leg of time. 172.70.160.219 16:53, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Oops, I read the 16:14 version https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=3008:_Proterozoic_Rocks&oldid=356138 , decided to edit the article and didn't notice that it had already been changed. I don't know if I should remove my edit or merge the 2 edits? Rps (talk) 16:40, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

If this was my edit (regarding the "Further back"), I might remerge (to my satisfaction) if you haven't already.

I've noticed, recently, that there's occasionally an inadvertent way past Edit Conflicts without a warning (though I got one just here and just now, because of your edit just above!), which I'm sure used to be better handled. But could just be one of those things. 172.70.160.219 16:53, 7 November 2024 (UTC)