Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weinersmith for May 28, 2015
Transcript:
Every time a child says I don't believe in fairies, there's a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead. Wait, really? You say it and instantaneously millions of miles away, a fairy dies? Horrible, isn't it? This is huge. Soon... Newznet________ 12-year-old overturns Einstein's physics Proposes fairy- killing as method of superluminal communication
Brass Orchid Premium Member over 9 years ago
Couldn’t we express limited doubts just enough to make them ill, then express faith to cure them, and use the Morse system to transmit data?
emptc12 over 9 years ago
I could just see fairy clones manufactured expressly for that purpose. The technicians all along the way, and the people using this form of communication would have to hold a kind of double-think to have this work.If just once they verbally express real belief, would whole communication systems be shut down? Sounds like tricky business to me, and subject to sabotage by fairy-rights groups. Would pixies, elves, and other so-called fantasy creatures also be subject to enslavement and abuse..Yes, it’s a slow day so far. And I’m not serious..But I’ve often wondered: Say an enormously strong string could be stretched tautly a light year in length one end fasted here, the other to somewhere out there. Would a tug on this end instantly register as a pull on the other end? It’s a thought experiment, so temporarily disregard the tensile strength of the string and obvious sag of the accumulated weight and so on. .This might be laughable idea long disproven, so forgive my ignorance. But would some force, quantum in nature, be analogic to the above string and overcome the limit of lightspeed?
richard over 9 years ago
Reminds me of the Terry Pratchett comment about Kingons and Queenons that were responsible for the instantaneous transfer of the throne after one died to the next in line. IIRC it was theoretically possible to enable FTL communications by carefully torturing a small monarch.
Stephen Gilberg over 9 years ago
Millions of miles? I always thought of Neverland as some remote part of Earth, or else in another dimension. The direction of “second star to the right and straight on ’til morning” doesn’t mean they fly all the way to another star system. They didn’t appear to move that fast.
Coyoty Premium Member over 9 years ago
The paradox is that in order for there to be fairies to kill through unbelief, you have to believe in them. But that can be resolved by clapping to save them and not clapping to kill them. Clap on, clap off. To be practical, you need clapping devices to communicate at digital speeds. But then again the machines would have to be able to believe, which will require AIs.
wellis1947 Premium Member over 9 years ago
Just got off the Editorial Cartoon comment pages- your logic and reasoning is absolutely refreshing!
Brass Orchid Premium Member over 9 years ago
“Fairies don’t function like that.”-I see… no Nobel Prize in physics for me, then.
Ida No over 9 years ago
Can we use an agnostic? Then put a fairy in a box and test Schrodinger’s cat this way?The fairy can exist and not exist at the same time.
emptc12 over 9 years ago
Arthur Conan Doyle did, and wrote many foolish articles about the topic. See SCIENCE: GOOD, BAD, AND BOGUS, Martin Gardner.