TOM THE DANCING BUG: The Outer Reaches of Plot Twists - Brain in a Beaker!

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• [Andy Simmons]

  Yes, Mr. Bolling, I saw _The 13th Floor_ too.

• [peggy_Boston]

  The President’s middle and last names don’t the least bit resemble “George Walker Bush” or “Richard Bruce Cheney”.

  • [Mister44]

     They probably do in Mr. Bollings reality.

  • [Paul Renault]

     Maybe the fact that they don’t IS the programming flaw.

• [Christopher]

  At least I can be assured that no one would intentionally program a life as boring as mine. 

  • [Jer_00]

    You’ve never heard of programmers takings short-cuts?  Cut-and-paste is the lazy programmer’s friend.

    • [MrEricSir]

      We call that “refactoring.”

• [Paul Weimer]

  Also, see Ken Macleod’s The Restoration Game

• [Svenn Diagram]

  We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my
  reaction to such solipsism?
  Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7
  Activity Recorded M.Y. 2302.22467
  TERMINATION OF SPECIMEN ADVISED(from Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri)

• [Philalethes]

  He looks like a grown-up Louis. Hmmm.

• [Brainspore]

  Better to be a brain in a beaker than a dick in a box.

• [bardfinn]

  “some resulting anomaly in the reality”

  like Goedel’s Incompleteness Theorem?

• [chris jimson]

   ”What Fox [News] did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.”  — Charles Krauthammer

  “We are entitled to our own opinions; we are not entitled to our own facts,” — Al Franken

  • [Mitchell Glaser]

    For some people reality is what they see on TV, and so Fox News does paint their world view. Me? I read the Internets.

  • [millie fink]

    Krauthammer said that?!

  • [irksome]

    “Perception is reality.” –Karl Rove; oddly enough, on Fox…

  • [Peter Austin]

    Charles Krauthammer – http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/item_4liVlMvo3s1jxt8lql75fK
    Al Franken – http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/we-are-not-entitled-our-own-facts-sena

• [libelle]

  Where does one get the Brain-in-a-Vat-to-iMac connector cable, though? I couldn’t find one at the Apple Store. Does that prove that I’m in the simulation rather than in the outer reality?

  • [Saltine]

    They have them at the Monster Cable website.

  • [Maneki Nico]

    I think you can hack one together from a Thunderbolt cable, clear vinyl tubing, and some sugru.

• [spejic]

  The pronouncements of Matrix: Reloaded have created an inexorable systemic consequence: the use of elaborate verbiage when describing alternate realities.

  Ergo the use of “resulting anomaly” in this comic.

• [MattAtDoyle]

  The Brain-In-A-Beaker appears to be connected to the iMac’s power cable, which would mean… it’s powering the very same computer that’s supplying it’s simulation. Plot twist?

• [Cowicide]

  Somebody pass the bong….

• [Stuart Smith]

  Surely the real giveaway of being a brain in a jar would be reflected in the computational limitations of such – for example, there would be minimum possible units of things like mass and distance, rather than true continua. Also, you would expect to see imprecise figures when dealing with events that are common but not obvious to the sense, such as an inability to determine accurately both the location and velocity of subatomic particles.

  • [Idran]

     I like SMBC too :P

• [cub]

  hahahahaha– i don’t get it.