344

Specially-made
Posted on June 23, 2021 by David M Willis

344 thoughts on “Specially-made”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Joe: “JOYCE, I HAVE PUT THEE HERE ON THIS EARTH TO FINISH THIS FUCKING ASSIGNMENT ALREADY, GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY THY WORD COUNT”

    1. Nono

      Since they haven’t actually started it yet, wouldn’t multiplying still give them 0?

      1. Wagstaff

        Don’t even get me started on how many times the Bible contradicts basic mathematics.

        1. Jon Rich

          Please tell me, I really want to know.

        2. eh, whatever

          Somewhere it gives the diameter and the circumference of a circular basin. Turns out π = 3.

        3. BarerMender

          I don’t know how many times, but the Bible sets pi at 3.

        4. Reltzik

          *WARNING! BOILERPLATE ATHEIST JOKE INCOMING!*

          Also, it thinks that 3 = 1.

        5. Wagstaff

          Ah, the Holy Trinity: the extrabiblical doctrine central to the majority of Christian sects.

          At its core, it is a mathematics-defying equation, where 1 + 1 + 1 = 1

          To be specific, it is where one Heavenly Father, one Heavenly Son, and one Holy Spirit altogether count as one God.

        6. Needfuldoer

          There haven’t been any miracles for thousands of years because they only act with a 2/3 majority. Two disagree with each other but the third refuses to take sides so they just filibuster until the point is moot.

        7. Wagstaff

          The best part is, the Trinity was never mentioned in the New Testament. Any notion of incorporation is really due to one or more textual variants and embellishments on behalf of Christian scribes.

        8. George W Harris

          My favorite explanation of the Holy Trinity is the Peter Sellers allegory. In the movie “Dr Strangelove:…”, Peter Sellers is Group Captain Lionel Madrake, Peter Sellers is President Merkin Muffley, and Peter Sellers is Doctor Strangelove. However, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake is not President Merkin Muffley, President Merkin Muffley is not Doctor Strangelove, and Doctor Strangelove is not Group Captain Lionel Mandrake.

        9. Victor

          Difficulty: Dr Strangelove is a good story. The christian bible is some seriously awful writing.

        10. Wagstaff

          Tell me about it. There’s no plot, tons of filler, and the characters are horribly one-dimensional.

        11. Kgy121

          God=1=3=pi
          God is therefore delicious.

        12. Demoted Oblivious

          > pi = 3

          I mean, if you want to be precise about it. For back of the napkin stuff though an approximation to either one or ten will let you know what ballpark you’re in for a decent estimate.

    2. Schpoonman

      Joyce just hears “go forth and multiply” while Joe is stretching and she catches a glimpse of Joe’s abs.

      Oops.

  2. Spencer

    Headpats are equivalent to marriage proposals.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      …oh shit i may have just stumbled into one of those wacky accidental proposal sitcom plots then

    2. RacingTurtle

      *squee*

      1. NotThatDrew

        *additional squee*

    3. StClair

      So let it be written;
      So let it be done.

    4. Deanatay

      Shippers: OMG HE TOUCHED HER IN A MANNER THAT COULD BE INTERPRETED AS AFFECTIONATE OMG SQUEEEEEEEEEE

      Myself: …Same

  3. King Daniel

    Dumbing of Age Book XI: I Grant You Meaning

    1. He Who Abides

      Dammit, I was going to post that!

    2. Moonie

      Dumbing of Age Book XI: You’re Actually Just Some Random Fart of Proteins

      1. Clif

        The alt text agrees. But as a purist I must insist that the entire sentence be used.

  4. Cheshrin

    That last panel is so precious oh gosh

    1. Samantha

      It is im actually really liking Joe and Joyce’s relationship. They seem very good for eachother she actually led him to bettering himself significantly and he’s giving her space and helping her get over her anxiety and trauma and actually not making fun of her growth in the ways I expected

      1. Rachel

        teasing a little bit, but not nonconsensually, I would say! yeah I agree, I’m loving watching this dynamic…. but ftr I 100% DO ship it already heheheheh

        1. Samantha

          Right ge is poking at her flaws but not maliciously and it is in recognition to her change and growth and yeah I ship it. I think Joyce is going to have sex with Joe and I’m OK with that

        2. BorkBorkBork

          She’s the first woman he’s honestly seen as a human being and not a piece of meat. And he’s the first person she’s really been able to actually open up to, 100%.

          Plus, they hate each other, so by sitcom law they have to get together at the end of the second-to-last season.

    2. Needfuldoer

      D’aaawwww

  5. Kitschensyngk

    You could be a FUNKY monkey.

    1. Deanatay

      I’d prefer a chunky one.

  6. Josh Spicer

    Headpats are censored in certain circles of the internet. Not as bad as handholding but usually people just censor them to be safe.

    Also, this was adorable.

    1. Wagstaff

      Not that I’m not against censorship, but I can see why some communities would choose to do that.

      One of the first things done to people who are targeted for abuse or discrimination is that their human status is effevtively stripped from them; they may be described and treated ad though they were animals or insects. Head pats (namely non-consensual ones) are very much associated with how we tend to treat pets, so….

      1. Josh Spicer

        I mean I was 100% joking off the idea that “handholding” is lewd, but I appreciate you getting real about it.

        1. Wagstaff

          You know what would be very useful? A web feature that lets us turn selective censorship of images and text on an off based on the most common traumatic triggers.

        2. WanderingLynx

          There’s a script that lets you do that in Tumblr! And also some proprietary filters. I wish other social networks/media had them too TwT

        3. Wagstaff

          No seriously, I think the world would change profoundly once people have the knowledge and the means to realize that censorship need not be an all-or-nothing game.

          After all, centuries ago, people living in monarchies could not imagine being any more free. Look where we are now. Imagine where we could be, if we could just take the time to think.

        4. Needfuldoer

          Nuance in political discourse? Inconceivable!

          Though sometimes I wonder if the pendulum has swung too far the other way with “this content may be disturbing – show anyway” buttons. It seems like they mostly hide screenshots of news articles or something innocuous like a photo of a jar of mayonnaise, but they don’t catch the legitimately disturbing garbage reposted in screenshots whose original sources have been chased off the big platforms. Maybe the early 2000s Internet just left me jaded…

        5. thejeff

          That’s mostly just the automation in social media not working that well. Not a problem with the concept.

        6. Demoted Oblivious

          Maybe it need not be all or nothing, but social media, stovepiped news aggregators and politicized professional news outlets have given people the ability to choose to sensor their own input for roughly a decade now (or nearing it). The result has not been more reasonable discourse. Quite the opposite. Politics is more polarized, people challenge simple facts as lies and accept preposturous lies as facts.
          Maybe there is a solution that will ballance things well if we massage this system for long enough, but at present it really isn’t looking that way.

        7. WanderingLynx

          Oh! One of the best webcomics I’ve started following in the last weeks actually has this premise! It’s a sci-fi setting for a romance, and its name is Love Not Found 😀 I really recommend it!

      2. not someone else

        While true, headpats as lewd is very much a meme thing.

  7. Wagstaff

    Manipulative groups all promote this same basic message: that meaning and self-worth are only valid when supplied by an external source, and that when we try to cultivate these things for ourselves, they are always corrupt, inferior products.

    1. Needfuldoer

      And conveniently, only they can offer true purpose and meaning!

      (For a fee, of course. You can pay with money, time, or by alienating everyone who cares about you but isn’t part of the ‘in’ group.)

    2. temperaryobsessor

      Not just any external source they need a monopoly.
      Imagine if people started listening to those mercinaries we hired to keep thieves away from our grain when they tell them that the meaning of their life is to supply food, shelter, warmth, and grooming to those mercinaries?

      1. Jhon

        More people should listen to their cats.

      2. Wagstaff

        Mercenaries….

        This is actually not unrelated to the fact that the Abrahamic god Yahweh was originally the Canaanite god of metallurgy, weapon smiths and war. So it really doesn’t surprise me that he would became a nationalist god and then the supreme god of the cosmos through the same basic mindset and blind enthusiasm common to war and fascism.

        1. Demoted Oblivious

          Metalurgy huh. So *that’s* why he was so pissed about the golden calf.

        2. thejeff

          I don’t know of any evidence Yahweh was associated with metallurgy or weapons. My understanding is that he’s usually considered to have started as a storm god, like Zeus and many others.

        3. Wagstaff

          It’s well supported, and here is the article that overviews the evidence for Yahweh’s origins as a proto-Edomite copper god.

          Also, the article doesn’t mention this, but the chief god of the tribe of Israel, El, was worshipped in the form of a bronze bull. Considering that copper was basically the grand power and life-blood of the Bronze Age, it would only make sense that this would expedite the development of the El Yahweh syncretism.

  8. Sirksome

    I mean we weren’t created by god but it’s still pretty impressive humans exist. We’re like a blink compared to Earth’s lifespan and yet we’ve evolved into advanced intelligence. The odds of that happening are insanely low.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      Frankly, given the nature of physics, the biological element of life and consciousness is really the least interesting part of it.

      1. Wagstaff

        I personally think that life really isn’t all that impressive from a physical perspective, either. All that’s really needed to make something qualify as a “living thing” is that it needs to acquire energy, contain itself, remove its waste, sustain itself and reproduce.

        1. C.T. Phipps

          A puppy’s proteins is less important than its happiness as you cuddle it. 🙂

        2. Reltzik

          Given that you’d have a hard time happily cuddling a puppy that had no proteins, I’m not sure that statement holds.

        3. C.T. Phipps

          If I had the proteins and not the hugs, I wouldn’t care. 🙂

        4. Wagstaff

          This all begs the question though. What actually counts as a “protein”? Does a living thing necessarily need to be made of the same kind of protein we do?

          For instance, some hypotheses regarding the origin of life posit that RNA and DNA actually use to fill in the same jobs that proteins do today.

        5. AbacusWizard

          Whoa, so like RNA and DNA are building blocks that figured out how to boss around other molecules to be the building blocks for them?

        6. Wagstaff

          It was actually for the best (specifically, the best for life’s sake) that amino acids took over, because they are much more versatile building blocks for composing enzymes, the mini-factories that make the chemicals essential for all life.

          The American Chemical Society has an excellent article on this and other pivotal stages in Chemical Evolution. All in all, very fascinating stuff!!!

          The process by which they did so,

        7. milu

          oh no!!! they got Wagstaff!!!

        8. Wagstaff

          Oh, I am very well aware that you DON’T need to pay for the articles, or any scientific paper access for that matter. Here is the same article available for free.

        9. milu

          haha no i was joking about how your comment seemed to end in the middle of a sentence, like a “castle of aaaargh” sort of joke.

          sidenote, proteins are also amino acids though? can it really be said that the amino acids took over if the choice was between RNA/DNA and proteins, am i missing something?

          anyway, Alexandra Elbakyan rules.

        10. Wagstaff

          Well, proteins are chains of amino acids, but I kind of don’t understand your question. Maybe I’m slightly loopy from lack of sleep or something?

          I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give me another hint for the riddle, would you?

        11. milu

          re amino acids: yeah forget it, i guess i just misunderstood. it’s all good ^^

          riddle… riddle… there’s a quetzalcoatlus where i live.

          sleep is very important, i hope you take care of yourself <3

        12. Wagstaff

          *plays “Westminster Bridge” on Voxola PR-76 whilst riding a robot quetzalcoatlus across the pond*

        13. milu

          ooh, that does sound like a very good song for this activity. (based purely on how it sounds, ive never watched Dr Who)

        14. Jhon

          re ‘riddle’: You live near Pterosaur Beach?

        15. milu

          hey, that wasn’t what i was referring to but yeah! i’m not very far actually! =D
          and i’d never heard about it, whaaaaa

        16. RowenMorland

          What about all those people who still cherish the memory of cuddling their dogs long after said dog has died?

        17. Lumino

          Necromancers need love too!

        18. StClair

          “Sometimes when I say that I’m going to the bathroom, I’m really recoding her DNA. This little lady’s protein bonds totally accepted the Cas9 snipping without any cellular degradation. Who has malleable protein bonds? You dooo! Yes you dooo!”

    2. Reltzik

      I’m definitely taking this too literally, but….

      If advanced intelligence had evolved out of corvids, would that count, or are you talking about humans specifically?

      If it were humans, but one inert gene sequence common to all humanity were changed to a different inert gene sequence common to all of an alternative humanity, would that still count as us?

      If humans had evolved on a different planet of similar characteristics elsewhere in the universe, rather than Earth, would that still count?

      1. Sirksome

        I’m not sure honestly. My point was that the fact that humans exist at all is incredible considering the exact and very specific set of circumstances needed for us to evolve to where we are. Hell mammals weren’t even Earth’s first try at life, dinosaurs, insects, sharks, have all had more time to evolve than we have. And if corvids, cephelapods or dolphins or elephants, evolve advanced intelligence and society that will be incredible too. Mainly because even though the universe is infinite as we understand it and thus potential for life also such the fact we’re here is still so unlikely it gives meaning to your life in and of itself.

        1. milu

          Seriously! “How freaking unlikely is it that I’m here, now, living this??!!” Is basically my version of a prayer. It might send me into a fit of laughter or sobbing, it’s just so ridiculous. It inspires awe. I think that’s exactly the word

        2. Jhon

          Makes me think of Vonnegut and the mud that got to stand up and look around. (Slaughterhouse-Five)

        3. Deanatay

          Personally, I don’t think we should wait for evolution. Uplift the Corvids! Uplift the Ceffys! Before it’s too late! May they outlive us!

    3. Devin

      Sure, but given the scope of the universe it becomes essentially a given.

      It’s also essentially a given that we’re not the only ones, but current understandings of physics suggest wherever they might be is further away than we’ll ever be able to find them, much less meet them.

      1. Jason

        My idea on alien life has been more or less unchanged since it was formed- which was that alien life may well be too alien for us to recognise as life. There are theories that forests are potentially an intelligent life form, that there’s a forest that is literally a single interconnected life form, that certain plants develop interconnected root systems through which they can communicate. A type of oak tree all, at the same time, don’t drop acorns one year to reduce the amount of creatures that will feed off them the next, to collectively increase the odds of acorns surviving.
        That’s here, on earth, examples I personally have heard of.

        I have never been able to grasp the idea that people definitively agree that we can’t find life because it doesn’t look like we expect life to, when it’s in an entirely different environment. Life can’t survive on other planets in our solar system? No- EARTH life couldn’t. But we don’t even fully understand the life forms here! How can we hope to understand the life forms elsewhere?!

        1. thejeff

          It should be pretty easy to recognize – even if we don’t understand it at first. Look for anything that isn’t just following basic physics and simple chemistry. Any kind of life is going to have to have some kind of parallel to organic chemistry – unless we’re going really science fictiony and thinking of energy life forms or something.

        2. Jason

          (Don’t know if you’ll see this now.)
          But yes, I think that’s the level of unlike us that we need to consider when considering alien life. Not that I think anything is likely to be alive- but when we’re considering alien life forms, I think it’s important to consider that, well… if we assume it can’t be alive, research will automatically be coloured by that perception. And if alien life is truly alien, and we assume it can’t be there, we could well miss it.

          Or it might not exist anywhere we’ll realistically be able to examine in our lifetimes. Who knows!

  9. DailyBrad

    Not bad advice, even if Joe’s also trying to get her on task here.

    1. Kitschensyngk

      The best piece of advice anyone could possibly receive…

      You are not special. And that’s okay.

      1. DailyBrad

        More like “you aren’t *inherently* special”, in my opinion, which, I guess that’s splitting hairs.

        1. Demoted Oblivious

          Grain of salt, I’m a depressed romantic unconvinced of the merits of existence, but here it goes:

          Mr Rogers deserves retreading here, “you are loved, just for being you.”

          Just because we aren’t special in our composition does not mean that we are not special to those around us in the time we share. Just because this moment is not particularly distinguishable from the rest of your life does not mean it is without merit.

          The tragedy of existence, of conciousness, is that people create systems to make each other believe they are less than. One can know the above intellectually, but be fully convinced emotionally, from childhood onwards, that it is not true.

          The later someone hears the counterpoint, “you are not special,” the more resilient they seem to be, and some are resilient regardless of when they’re shown they’re worthless. But others can’t recover from that messsging, and they suffer because of it.

          As an atheist I am aware of the dangers of the anthropcentric view of the universe. And yet, there is something different between the message, “this was not made for us,” versus, “you are not special.” One positions us as children of inert matter, with the ability to grow into stewards, the other as children, being abused by an uncaring parent. And it’s worth noting, that after a few short centuries of proving that man is not the center of the universe, what astrophysics ultimately showed is that *every* person is, every animal, each speck of matter and all the energy of everything, is the center of a universe which is expanding in all directions, from every point.

          What I am left with, is that in an arbitrary and absurd universe, our brief moments are special, and when we are snuffed out by disease, age, or accident, it hurts. However, there is a comfort in knowing it is not malicious. So when we actively work to cause each other pain, when a hurting child is raised into a psychopath, when we neglect the development of the young to perpetuate a system which leaves more of us broken, afraid, sad, lonely or hating ourselves, when we kill each other out of anything beyond compassion, THAT is a tragedy.

          In closing, no we aren’t special because god made us that way, we aren’t special because we are a unique snowflake, we aren’t special because of the composition of our “crude matter.” We ARE special because we are ephemeral, we can bring a smile or comfort to those around us. We can create love and appreciate beauty, the animate and the inanimate. We can’t always do that, and that is ok. We get hurt, we get busy. We are animals, with limitations on our capabities. Be kind to yourself, and it will help you be kind to others when you can.

        2. OBBWG

          Wonderfully said.

        3. milu

          aw, thanks man. good to read. good to write? <3

        4. milu

          …yeah i’m taking it personally XD

        5. Demoted Oblivious

          Good. It’s meant for each of us.

        6. Doongus

          What if you’re Bill Cosby or Jeffrey Epstein?

  10. Carla's #2 Fan

    There’s just so much chemistry here between them! Too bad it isn’t biology, then they could get their assignment done.

    1. Reltzik

      Joyce just needs to believe in abiogenesis next, and then the chemistry can turn into biology.

    2. Needfuldoer

      I think they’d both be too distracted to get the assignment done if they were focused on biology.

  11. Stephen Bierce

    Everything you do matters–more than you know

    1. Demoted Oblivious

      Beautifully put, and far more succinct.

      1. Stephen Bierce

        I was calling back to a previous storyline, when Joyce said that to Joe.

  12. Yotomoe

    I dunno I’ve always found everything being random and meaningless so much preferable to thinking all of my actions are being monitored by a sky daddy.

    1. NotThatDrew

      Yeah, there’s a certain sense of relief in the knowledge there isn’t some celestial creeper spying on you at all times

      1. Needfuldoer

        What about an Arctic creeper who pays you off every December? Is a new toy train worth letting him see you when you’re sleeping the rest of the year?

        1. Demoted Oblivious

          Shelf elf is the worst product available for parents and children. Indoctrinating a child into thinking they are being monitored 24×7 is unhealthy.

        2. Needfuldoer

          But they are monitored 24/7. It used to just be helicopter parenting and after-school activities, but now parents are putting Internet-connected cameras in their kids’ bedrooms, classes are streaming online with minimal security, and parents are posting every birthday, soccer game, drawing, and fart on their social media. That’s not even including security systems in public spaces, doorbell cameras, dash cameras, “smart assistants” and other IoT devices, other peoples’ phone cameras, or the wider toxicity of the whole “influencer” ecosystem. I’m not saying they should be paranoid to the point of reclusion, but everyone should be aware of the dangers of our modern interconnected life, and that includes children (in age-appropriate terms, of course).

          It’s the indoctrination that this is okay that deserves the pushback.

        3. Demoted Oblivious

          Yes thank you. I was rage posting and didn’t proof. Teaching that this is happening is fine, cuz that’s our reality. Normalising it as being ok is not.

    2. C.T. Phipps

      Well speaking as a theist, it is kind of pointless to talk about meaninglessness. All of time and space exist as permanent moments in a stream of block time according to Einstein so every moment of meaning you take is permanently a part of the eternal nature of the universe.

      So everything is incredibly important.

      1. Yotomoe

        True but that importance is relative. There’s no…greater purpose, no godgiven ruleset, no predetermined laws that we all must follow. Except y’know…the law of gravity. That’s comforting.

        1. Wagstaff

          Even alleged physical “laws” like gravity and F = ma are really only useful descriptors of the universe, not controllers.

          In fact, we physicists are more kin to calling them “principles” as opposed to “laws”, due to the connotations of utter permanence and officialness of the latter.

        2. Knuf Wons

          That being said, much of physics is built upon assuming that these principles are equally valid in all inertial reference frames at every point in the universe. In that way, they are used as “laws”, at least until a more accurate set is discovered.

    3. Wagstaff

      Indeed, boundaries seem to be so alien to narcissistic gods that they even have the nerve to invade the privacy of our minds.

      1. Clif

        Give us time and we’ll do it too.

        1. WanderingLynx

          Because of narcissistic people with a god complex >>;; Which, I’d argue, is even worse.

        2. Wagstaff

          I not so sure about that. After all, narcissistic gods have a lot more influence over millions of people, and many people become narcissists by learning from their bad examples. On top of all of that, these beings are even tax-exempt.

        3. WanderingLynx

          Narcissitic humans can directly impact the course of history in a way we can personally experience (with our senses), instead of being felt by faith only. It’s rawer, more literal. I can think of a billionaire going-on-trillionaire or two who’re pretty invested in surveillance and therefore control of other human beings through technology; and they’re tax-exempt as well. Governments equally interested on this will be happy to apply whatever they bring to the table, while not a minor portion of regular people idolize these technocrats.

          I love technology, and I love humanity; but pairing the worst impulses of particular specimens with the ability to carry them out can get pretty dark. I want to think we’ll be able to get our shit together before The Singularity, but y’know. That’s faith. We’ll see.

        4. Wagstaff

          Is suspect by that, you mean “confidence in our abilities as a species”, right?

          If I can help it, I’ll see to it that we DO get our shit together.

        5. milu

          I’ll let WanderingLynx reply for themself but i absolutely think faith is the right word here. not to be a bummer or anything °3°

        6. Wagstaff

          Seriously, if I took a shot every time people conflated the faith of believing that which cannot be proven with the faith that just means “confidence”, especially in a state like Ohio or Tennessee, I’d get blackout drunk in no time flat.

          …not that I’d ever do that, but you get the point.

        7. milu

          lol do you have that like on hand for copy-pasting at all times?? ^^

          the context was “i have faith that humans will get their technological shit together before we destroy ourselves” if i may paraphrase.

          i want to believe that, but i don’t think it’s necessarily the rational thing to believe, hence “faith”.

        8. Wagstaff

          Well, if we work under the premise that we CAN will avert said crisis, we’ll have maximum chances of averting it. To choose that route sounds “rational”, but what do you think? How exactly are you using that word?

        9. milu

          that’s a very good point.
          i probably wrote “rational” meaning “realistic-sounding” or something. i was about to back it up with doom-mongering discourse, but really, it’s just a glass half-what situation. cautious optimism does sound like the most rational attitude =)

        10. Wagstaff

          To quote world-renowned psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman, “the benefits of optimism are really only available to those who can accentuate the positive without losing track of reality”.

          Summarizing one of his most important lessons very concisely, fear and optimism are really two sides of the same coin, in that both can be used to generate predictions as to the risks and benefits of any technology, phenomena, or venture. But, and this part’s important, ALL predictions must still stand up to the test of the scientific method, as well as statistical reasoning, whether they are optimistic or fearful.

          By the way, in regard to the riddle, do you live in the UK?

          And what happened to your avatar? I actually really liked Lucy! Why did you originally choose her? And why did you have to change it? I really must know!!!

        11. milu

          not UK either!
          all your questions re my avatar are answered below, buried in a lot of stuff you will probably have much stronger feelings about, muahaha

          hm, i like what that Kahneman fellow says.

        12. Wagstaff

          I really like Kahneman’s advice as well. In fact, the book by him that I almost memorized, Thinking, Fast and Slow, was the book my Critical Thinking professor prescribed for my class; by the looks of it, that was a VERY good choice of book, considering that his main job was actually as a psychotherapist, having decades of experience with how human thinking tends to go wrong.

          I miss the Lucy avatar so much! And not to be overly blaming, but your rationale behind such a choice actually contributes to the discriminatory attitudes you evidently despise. The research of well renowned Social Psychologist Henri Tajfel has proven that all it takes to create discrimination is the very act of dividing people into groups.

          Also, if it’s not France, then I’m lost. Did I even get the timezone right? Does your country observe daylighr savings? I’m at least mildly embarrassed to the point at which I am reluctant to ask for any more hints.

        13. milu

          wait, did i ever say i didn’t live in france?? oh no i must’ve been joking or something. i’m so sorry. i totally live in france lol

        14. milu

          i don’t think i want to dig too deep necessarily about why i switched avatar, but let’s say it’s not about fighting discrimination per se it’s about avoiding appropriation. i don’t claim that’s a good reason, but i’d just been feeling uncomfortable, and now seemed a good time. i might change my mind eventually, idk. or find a better one =) I am sorry it upsets you though!

          i’ll make a note to check out that book by Daniel Kahneman, thanks =)

        15. Clif

          I’m pretty sure that you didn’t say you didn’t live in France and that you hinted that you did several times. The reason that I’m pretty sure is that I was thinking, how could you be French when you don’t sound French in my mind.

          Which sounds a little strange I’m sure, but I Internet-correspond with several people in France on the subject of music software and they are more polite than Americans but additionally there is something slightly different in the way they phrase things that I can’t put my finger on exactly, but can recognize.

        16. milu

          i’m pretty sure i’ve said outright that i live in france more than once, but not necessarily to Wagstaff or since they and i started regularly interacting here =)

          i’m also not completely french, (btw Wagstaff i’m not sure “ethnically french” is a thing, it feels weird to me for sure) in that my grandma is English and my dad spoke english to me as a kid, so that i grew up pretty much bilingual, though i did grow up in france.

          also @Clif music software?? what kind of music software?? are you a musician?? you’ve got my attention =D

        17. Wagstaff

          Cultural appropriation is kind of a fuzzy thing, and like “religion”, all sides generally resist attempts to rigidly define it and essentially turn the whole thing into a political football that has no real meaning except “something undesirable”.

          But looking at history, some of the greatest societies in the world got very great precisely BECAUSE among other things they borrowed the best of what they could find from other cultures. Some of the best examples I can think of are Ancient Persia, the Ottoman empire, and of course the cultural mosaic called the United States of America. I know that the latter isn’t perfect, but people here are constantly working to make this and the world as a whole a better, more accepting place for all.

          I’m not sure if it’s in a grey zone to make this comparison, but I myself have a kind of similar reprobation against using the image of characters who have the Doctor title, or even those who are I think are much smarter than me. Some examples that come to mind are Dr. Who, Ishigami Senku, Child Emperor, and Dina Saruyama. These characters and their incredible intellectual powers are a huge inspiration for me to increase my own cognitive abilities for all that I do, and at least for now, I just don’t feel like I’m worthy of using their images to represent myself. Considering that I also intensely criticize those who call themselves doctors without earning the title for the sake of their own gain, I think that for me to use such a title, even in a “stage name” kind of sense would be a severe lack of integrity at the very least. In fact, my resolve to actually earn that title is so strong that I’m gonna refrain from using it at all until I get my PHD; I’m even gonna refrain from wearing a white lab coat until then!

          This is a pivotal but small part of my life’s resolve to increase my cognitive abilities exponentially throughout my wake, to push my brain power further and further to its very limits, and then break those limits!

          Also, I don’t know why I didn’t realize you lived in France! I thought you meant you were ethnically French; English really is confusing in this way.

          Also, if you’re not gonna change it back to Lucy, maybe you could change it to some other character here?

        18. milu

          fuzzy concepts are not necessarily bad, in fact if i may, (almost) all concepts are fuzzy. also, come on. i didn’t, like, make some sort of claim about cultural appropriation, definitely not on the scale of nations and cultures.

          i just said i felt uncomfortable having a black woman avatar, especially considering i keep getting into *this* sort of arguments, and surely that’s up to me and doesn’t amount to a grand political statement? yeah i might pick another character, i’ll see =)

          good luck on your PhD and on becoming very very smart then ^^

    4. Keulen

      Likewise. I’ve long found the idea that some all-powerful being in the sky is watching everything you do and think and judging you for it incredibly creepy and not at all comforting. I’m glad I don’t actually believe in any gods.

  13. jupiterror

    Joe is a good friend. To Joyce, anyway.

  14. C.T. Phipps

    It is kind of interesting that Joyce has absolutely no interest in the philosophy of Christianity or its histories, just the literal magical elements. The fundamentalist science denial is basically the only part she maintained because it was the only part they cared about as a way of enforcing obedience.

    Which means the Brown Church was an empty box as Castlevania the anime said.

    1. Rose by Any Other Name

      I know right.
      I’m not Christian, but I love the idea of Christian mythology and philosophy. So much good stuff that is ignored by most churches.

      An empty box indeed. Also I haven’t watched Season 4 yet – is it good?

      1. AGV

        It is!
        Although, I don’t know where will they take the show after it.

        1. Spencer

          Sequel about Richter, apparently.

        2. Yotomoe

          Really? We’re not gonna do Simon?

        3. Spencer

          Yeah here it is.

          https://twitter.com/NetflixGeeked/status/1403385425109061633?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1403385425109061633%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=

          Apparently Richter being referred as Trevor’s son was a mistake.

    2. Wagstaff

      If the Bible were treated as any other ancient literature, it would just stop there. We would read the stories, get some at least a little bit entertained, analyze the choices of the characters (accounting for what they knew, as well their hindsights and foresights), integrate any useful insights, and then move on to the next book. We would have no fear of getting eaten alive by a Hannibal Lektor, or cursed by El Mago. As with all other ancient literature, we would acknowledge that any accounts of fantastical transformations or characters with supernatural powers (namely, gods and demigods) only reflected the primitive, magical thinking of the time.

      We have that crucial context ripped away by indoctrinators, who manipulate and compel children to accept these ancient stories as fact. You could just imagine the detrimental effects this could have on children. What if we warned little girls against making themselves look too pretty, lest they be turned into trees, like Daphne of the Greek mythos? What if we warned children against saying of even thinking the names of fairies, lest they be turned into skunks?

      Violating the distinction between reality and fiction turns mythical monsters and diabolical deities into terrifying threats that children are in no way psychologically prepared to handle. But millions of children all over the world are still expected to confront them with smiles plastered on their faces.

      1. milu

        we would acknowledge that any accounts of fantastical transformations or characters with supernatural powers (namely, gods and demigods) only reflected the primitive, magical thinking of the time.

        i’m not sure nonscientific people believe(d) all the apeshit stories they told. let’s give them a little credit and at least account for the possibility that a lot of the time, they saw them just as we do: as myths, metaphors, projections of dreams and desires and not as literal accounts of reality. because myths don’t serve the same purpose as natural science. (this is a very very simplified account, as surely yours was, but i land on the side of benefit of the doubt and also of using the word “primitive” with the utmost caution.)

        now, do some people believe all of their myths and force their children and community to accept them as fact? yeah, nowadays they do, in a society where modern science exists and therefore religion has had to take a stand on science. and while most religious people were content to stay off of science’s turf, insteady redefining the truth-value of religious discourse as strictly poetic and moral and ritualistic, some, like fundamentalist christians, have made the bold move of trying to claim the truth-value of science for their myths which is ridiculous and evil, but imo probably doesn’t reflect so-called “primitive” thinking so much as a very modern battle for the competing authority of various kinds of discourse.

        1. Wagstaff

          Wait, I actually saw you mention somewhere that “primitive” is a “charged word”. Sorry for yet again leaving our essential context. All “primitive” means here is that these ancient literatures were made before the need for organized, rigorous investigation of natural phenomena was recognized (hence, the Age of Reason more or less beginning with Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum Scientiarum).

        2. milu

          i still don’t think “primitive” is fine in this context. i can’t hear it without immediately hearing colonialist undertones. which i’m sure you don’t intend, but words have a history independent of the speaker’s intentions.

        3. Jhon

          “primitive christianity”

        4. Demoted Oblivious

          tl;dr A word shouldn’t be cancelled if it has multiple uses, just the pejorative uses. A word with only pejorative uses reasonably should not be used except if needed by those hurt by it or maybe in cases of extremely sensitive accademic analysis.

          Words do have a history of hurt, and yet language being what it is, we as listeners must also be careful to not ascribe a darker or more malicious meaning to a word than a speaker intended. Primitive is definitely such a word, and it’s received imparted bad connotations for sure. We also recently discussed monkeys and their uncles. Should the existence of the pejorative that involves them being on a raised wooden platform adjacent to a residential entrance imply that we cannot use the word monkey?
          That our colonialists ancestors misunderstood their moral rights in comparisson to first peoples means we must be careful and sensitive, but there are still appropriate places for words. A bit of irony here being that in Canada the common term for indigenous people is “First Nations, Inuit and Métis”. Primitive literally means first. It has picked up the connotation of “less than” or “ignorant” thanks to some of our ignorant forebears and their behaviour regarding concurrent societies, but I don’t think that their misuse of the term removes it from practical use. There are many cases of people ‘being offended on behalf of’ others (not accusing you of this here milu), and it leaves those of us trying to be better sometimes overly sensitive to the use of a word in a particular context. primitive also has uses in other contexts, for example: in programming a primitive is a category of variable(data) which has no simpler components.

          In the case of Wagstaff’s use, I can understand how it could be read as a pejorative, if the reader so choses, but Wagstaff is also correct (and not denigrating) in describing the earliest methods that we know of our thinking as primitive. All of our earlists records show us treating our world as religiously and spiritually magical. I can’t find the source right now, but I recall a recent paper that hypothesized that this was a side effect of some aspect of how our brain works and also our ability for pattern recognition. (much like pareidolia.) Seeing causes and effects leads us to look for causes and ascribe them, even where they don’t exist. (at least not in the manmer we could yet perceive ) So we apparently (partly) created religion out of a natural ability to try and see the pattern of our environment. And I mean, oh man did we ever get it wrong doing that. so. many. times. but it is somewhat documented and preserved as our first way of thinking.

          A solid test for the offensiveness of the term could come from the ability of those being described as being around to be offended. First nations are still here (and suffering) because of the pejoritive attitudes and views. African Americans are here and suffering under the attitude and pejorative words that were associated with them. That word while having other potential uses, was used for nothing positive, at _all_, of which I am aware. Also, I don’t hear indigenous peoples complain about the word itself in principle, just the specific use of it when it is applied to them. The really interesting example is ‘gay’. People who are homosexual describe themselves as gay. It’s ok for others to use the word gay to describe people who are homosexual. It is not ok to yell at another gamer that they’re so gay because they killed you with a headshot, or that something is gay because you don’t like it.

          An example of being overly particular about language came from (I think) Nova Scotia when a member of the legislative assembly spoke out against the word Chief and wanted it removed because it was being appropriated. (i.e. Chief of Police needed a new title) Indigenous people in Canada spoke out against that because they knew it was not pejorative, nor was it indigenous (it derives from the french ‘chef’), and in fact was a word denoting respect.

          Going back to the thinking that Wagstaff described, the last facet that occurs to me however, is that while the people that developed this primitive (first) magical way of thinking are gone, their works still exist, and many people alive today still subscribe to them. And here my philosophy falls down. We should be kind to them. And frankly I would be surprised if any of them would call their thinking primitive. I see inside myself the ability (and remember behaving) as if that thinking was primitive (pejorative). But because of their faith, and also because those faiths were/are dominant after colonialism began and drove colonial thinking, I find it hard to be sympathetic to one form of thinking that primitively (pejorative) led to the the harm and continued suffering of so many first or indigenous peoples (who should rightly be able to be called primitive out of respect for it being their home and them being first, but can’t due to our colonial abuse of them with the pejorative understanding of the term). So yeah, it’s messy. I’m not in a position to need to fight back against any modern users of a primitive(first) way of magical thinking to be kind to myself (self-defense) so I should endeavor to not use the word to describe people who follow it today. But it remains accurate to describe magical thinking as primitive since it was one of our first ways of doing so. So maybe like the use and misuse of gay, we can say that faith based thinking is primitive(first) but we can not call people who practice faith primitive(pejorative). “magical thinking” is arguably problematic too. But I’ve written too much already.

        5. Yotomoe

          I concur.

        6. Devin

          And yet one who wants precision of language should perhaps be more specific instead of using such a word. In Wagstaff’s case perhaps “predating rigorous investigation” and variants would serve them better than “primitive”.

          Especially given that Wagstaff has a tendency to criticize religion in a very vigorous manner, perhaps erring on the side of caution is warranted? Unless one is specifically looking for a fight?

        7. Demoted Oblivious

          #1: Hey you, let’s fight.
          #2: Them’s fightin’ words.

        8. Wagstaff

          Don’t even get me started on “fighting words” and the like. Even something like “Tuesday” could very well be a fighting word for some groups of people, so provided that any speech would be fit for ALL audiences, there would be literally nothing that WOULDN’T fit into that category.

          Even without “fighting words”, people can only guarantee ongoing human conflict when they render mistaken ideas untouchable, because there will always be critical thinkers who will keep pointing out the mistakes with those ideas, generation after generation. As a very illustrative example, the Gag Rule on slavery in southern congresses only expedited the filling of the powder keg that would eventually explode into the American Civil War.

          ALL ideas that enter the public space need to be open to criticism. If we take any idea as untouchably valid, we are forced to reject valid information that conflicts with it. The need for criticism becomes more urgent the greater their dehumanizing effect, and the more fervently they discourage criticism through use of punishment, persecution, punches or pistols.

          Some people make the mistake of investing their core identity in a false or fallacious idea, so that when it gets criticized, THEY get criticized. It’s up to them to learn from that mistake, not the rest of the world to pay for it. I know full well that may trigger alot of people and cause them to get all knee-jerky, but for the sake of the prosperity of our future generations, we really need to accept this moving forward.

        9. Clif

          Wagstaff said “Tuesday.” Get the torches and pitchforks.

        10. milu

          Wow Demoted, thank you for taking the time to weigh in so thoughtfully.

          I wish I had made the effort to express myself more precisely, or not at all. I’m sorry i wrote such a short and lazy comment about this really hefty subject.

          So ok, since i brought up colonialism, which i shouldn’t have because i didn’t really need to for the point i was hoping to get across, and Demoted Oblivious wondered tactfully whether i wasn’t white-knighting a wee bit, let me say that I’m white, so yeah guilty as charged, that was not my argument to make and i take that back.

          however, see what i wrote in my original reply to Wagstaff, where the use of the word primitive was a bit of a sidenote that i almost didn’t include (shoulda woulda). So here’s what i was trying to say, in a few more words (just a few, i swear, no need to scroll). every culture has its way of organizing, of codifying relationships between humans and the rest of the world, right? now, i’m super glad for science, like i obviously can’t shut up about evolution and whatnot, but that’s just what i care about because of my circumstances and my choices.

          But it feels unfair and impoverishing to dismiss, or condense beyond recognition, the endless variety of human interpretations of the natural world throughout time and space, the myriad stories that were told and passed on, many of them outrageous and silly-sounding to outsiders, the infinitely nuanced ways that people and peoples ascribe power and authority to myths and rituals, to just flatten all of that as “primitive, magical thinking”.

          Yes, science is awesome, it has revolutionized ways of thinking about nature and reality and consciousness, it boasts unparalleled predictive efficacy, and yet, as far as i am concerned, it is still one attempt out of so many to make sense of our existence, to come to grips with life, and each of these attempts is a treasure worth valuing equally. (there’s some sort of science-as-a-discipline vs science-as-a-worldview distinction in there, moving on though)

          so… why do I care, right? i was raised catholic. and i ended up atheist pretty soon, and have pretty much remained that, and anyway christianity deserves so much anger (including from me) for a lot of good reasons, i really don’t care about it being attacked specifically.

          But i feel like the many ways people view the universe and their place in it, or describe reality in vividly unscientific ways, have made the world more colourful and weird and fascinating to me. and, while many people being brainwashed into bigoted cults is a thing that tragically keeps happening, so much of the beauty and wackiness i’ve seen in people comes from them “choosing” to believe in wild stuff. (in the complicated way that any one of us ever chooses anything and still mostly ends up “choosing” to stick with what we grew up believing anyway)

          Devin, at some point you said Wagstaff was throwing the baby with the bathwater, and i think for me this is absolutely it. Of course it makes sense in some contexts to draw a distinction between before and after the scientific revolution. Or between cultures and subcultures that reject any spiritual reality (most days that’s where i sit) and those that believe the world is not just what is there, where blessings and curses describe a certain sort of experience or a mood or a bond, where you speak to dead people and you feel that they reply, where you experience the presence of certain mythical entities, and all this matters in great part because you share those beliefs with others, they underlie the fabric of everyday interactions as well define the most solemn occasions of one’s life.

          sigh, i’m rambling now right? i realize this is not at all a solidly argued piece of prose but hopefully it made some sense here and there.

          so, um.
          did i make a strawperson out of you Wagstaff? =D i mean, i probably did to some extent, but i tried not to, and anyway as i went on i became less and less sure that i was still replying to you.

          i did kind of dodge out of talking about the politics of using the word “primitive”, bit of a bait-and-switch lol, sorry. but Demoted, you made very good points and i agree with pretty much all of it. Anyway, starting right now, i shall speak only of what i know perfectly.

          …also as i post this i should finally have changed my avatar as i’ve been meaning to do for a while, because while i really vibe with Lucy as a character and i thought that face she made that one time was neat, i am a white guy who regularly gets into political arguments (why) and it feels cringey.

        11. milu

          …rereading, my point as to how people choose or “choose” unscientific beliefs is a bit bleh and i should’ve massaged that wording a bit more, but whatever, i’m letting it stand now just pointing out that i’m not satisfied with it. that said, please feel free to take me to task over it obviously ^^ interesting ideas may happen regardless
          (…if anyone’s still reading past my metric ton of blah)

        12. Demoted Oblivious

          The new grav is cool. Does it have a meaning?

          Also: please don’t go Dunning-Kruger yourself at the far end of the graph (knowledgable and silent). Effective and respectful discourse is a fantastic way to explore ideas and to learn more about ourselves as people. The recent topics, thankfully sparked by Mr Willis’ portrayal of Joyce’s growth, in particular have helped me challenge some of my own ideas and understand some things about myself I had wanted to change but could not yet grasp. Wagstaff has the right of it in arguing that too much of the world today is about silencing ideas instead of discussing and challenging them. To those I have disagreed with and who challenge me in this forum, I appreciate that you share your ideas here as they make me consider my thinking on those topics. Thanks to you all, there are new things to learn here, every day.

        13. milu

          ey, thanks, the pic is from a stencil on a city wall i found, it’s a musical symbol called a quarter rest, meaning “no sound for one beat”. so i guess it could be read ironically, as i regularly post 30+ comments, several of them multiple paragraphs long hahaha

          but it’s also sort of programmatic. i keep wishing i would speak less, especially when i have little of value to say, be more humble etc. maybe i’m telling myself: “rest for one beat”, in the hope that the urge to start pounding my keyboard will have passed. that remark i made up there was a bit sarcastic though, because i know full well i can’t resist opening my big mouth on any number of topics i am not anywhere near qualified to discuss, so ^^

          (…plus i like that the french word for this symbol is “soupir” meaning “sigh”, which really, is just a deep breath. taking a few deep breaths before commenting? that should be mandatory lol)

        14. Jhon

          Dang. I will miss the Lucy grav.

        15. JBento

          I’m sure they DIDN’T believe ALL of them, because the one where Zeus goes to fuck a princess that’s being kept in a guarded locked tower by turning into a shower of, specifically, gold is so obviously a metaphor for “and then he bribed the bugger standing guard” it isn’t even funny.

        16. Demoted Oblivious

          I’d have read it as: the guard got the princess pregnant. “Must’ve been zeus!”

        17. JBento

          “That cheeky bastard!”

  15. Mr. Random

    Basically.
    If nothing in the world is inherently meaningful, then how we determine meaning to ourselves and our principles is what gives meaning relative to us.

    And then there’s always the question of why something must have meaning in order to matter?
    Somethings are beautiful because of their absurdity.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      The problem is, isn’t that essentially the Victorian ludicorusness at work?

      If humans are a part of the universe, they give things meaning, the universe has inherent meaning.

      Because consciousness exists and has given it meaning.

      1. Mr. Random

        I’m not talking about giving something intrisinic meaning.
        Like because my consciousness exists and likes lemon, all lemons therefore now have meaning as they exist in relation to me.
        Very specifically not that.
        I mean, the meaning itself is a relative idea.

        Something that can be applied by one person and agreed upon or ignored by another.

        Or in other words.

        People got opinions.
        Reality exists.
        But we can all agree certain aspects are cool.
        Or not. You do you.

        1. milu

          i agree that certain aspects of reality are cool u_u

      2. milu

        Would you say what you mean by Victorian ludicrousness?

  16. carms

    i have this suspicion that Joe being a Good Boi here means he’s going to do something standardly sex-crazed in a few panels.

    Also, despite being a JoJo shipper, I do hope Joyce has at least one actual relationship before settling down forevermore with Joe (should that be the endgame idc). He’s slept around the world and back, but Joyce’s first ever date was him. I do not vibe with the dire experience asymmetry.

    1. Joyfulldreams

      Totally. At least one relationship, where it’s totally fine, nothing offensive necessarily, but she simultaneously struggles to let go of various facets of her repression while also finding herself dissatisfied because secretly everything she really wants in a partner happens to be basically Joe, but she just can’t admit it to herself.

      Mmmmmmmm.

  17. Muttski

    Joe, revealing hidden depths and understanding rather than than just being a, “Horndog, 1 Each.”

    1. Josh Spicer

      Despite his repeating level of horniness overwriting any form of rational thought he might have, Joe CAN be a smart and good friend when needed.

  18. ian livs

    Gotta agree with panel 4 Joe here, honestly–I felt SO much weight off my shoulders once I stopped feeling pressured to fulfill somebody else’s Divine Meaning. Sure, sometimes it’s stressful trying to figure out for myself how to make what I do meaningful, but at least I won’t burn in hell for doing it slightly wrong and to the left of how I was “supposed” to do it.

  19. tbf

    How does a random fart of proteins choose what has meaning? Physics is pretty deterministic on the macromolecular level.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      There’s a fairly good argument consciousness is interpreted through the machinery of biology but not generated by it. Mind you, that’s because matter does not exist. It’s really just an illusion of waves.

      🙂

      1. thejeff

        Do tell? I’m not aware of any such argument that isn’t essentially religious.

    2. Reltzik

      Computer programs are (barring some malfunction, or an rng based on antenna-static) entirely, 100% deterministic, and yet they still make choices in accord with their nature and the data they’re operating on. And if you think about it, humans are the same. I make choices based on my experiences and predilections, perhaps after engaging in a reasoning process that was shaped by the same. I’ll hold off on the human-determinism question because I don’t have proof either way, but I’m fine seeing choices as arising from who I am. Free will is tricky to define in a coherent, useful way, but that’s free will enough for me.

      1. Clif

        Consciousness does not exist except as an illusion. Physical things cannot be aware of themselves. What we are actually aware of is a model of ourselves that we have constructed and maintain, which turns out to be a useful thing to do, not least because we have learned to base our behavior, at least in part, on this model. But there are significant discrepancies between the model and reality.

        1. tbf

          I’m quite certain I’m experiencing qualia. To say that I’m not, and that it’s just an illusion is just not correct.

        2. AbacusWizard

          How do I know you’re experiencing qualia though?

          For that matter, how do I know that *I’m* experiencing qualia? What if I’m not but I just think I am?

        3. eh, whatever

          Quining Qualia

          And that’s from 1988. There’s no reason for it to be as little known as it is.

        4. Clif

          Interesting. I was in fact unfamiliar with it.

          My point stems more from the fact that a purely physical system, in order to experience it’s own state would have to scan that state, and then what scans the scanner. More directly, our experience of ourselves is demonstrably wrong. We experience ourselves as singular, when in fact our mind is a committee of very different mechanisms. Brain scans are a yet primitive tool, but at this point we know decisions are made some time before we become aware of making them. We know that sometimes our brain becomes recognizes things, but protects us from knowing them. What we experience about ourselves is not the truth, but a flawed image of the truth.

          The classical experiment was to have a person hooked to a sensitive electroencephalography machine decide when to press a button and when they are ready, push it. The electoencephalograph was able to pinpoint a small area down to a relatively few neurons that fired whenever the decision was made to press the button. Then a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil was used to stimulate that area and the person would decide to push the button. The experimenter could control the exact time at which the decision was made, and after allowing for a consistent delay the exact time at which the button would be pushed. And yet the subjective experience of reaching the decision to press the button was reported to be the same and apparently did not feel forced in any way.

          Since then a similar setup has been used for one person to partially control another persons body without affecting the decision process. https://www.washington.edu/news/2013/08/27/researcher-controls-colleagues-motions-in-1st-human-brain-to-brain-interface/

        5. eh, whatever

          Yes. It has been observed that computers are more self-aware than we are: the progress bar.

      2. Wagstaff

        Thanks to the recent loophole-free Bell Theorem test that proved that quantum events are NOT predeterministic (sorry, Einstein), arguing for determinism of any kind in our universe is actually very hard.

        Strictly speaking, determinism isn’t a scientific concept AT ALL because it’s unfalsifiable. There is no experiment or observation that could prove that the event thereof wasn’t predetermined “deliberately” to mislead us. Besides the familiar concepts such as gods and goddesses, there are literally endless possible unknowable “explanations” behind what we call “existence” and the events thereof (a simulation, the dream of a giant scorpion, a video game made by hamsters, a dinosaur’s weed trip, etc.), none of which are verifiable by their very nature and all of which are open to ad hoc justifications.

        Speaking of gods, religions’ best interest is actually against a deterministic universe.

        Religions are deeply invested in the notion of free will. If we do in fact determine our own actions (instead of having them predetermined by the design of God or gods), then we could be held accountable for them. On top of the platform of accountability lay the concepts of sin and virtue, which serve as the ultimate justifications for divine retribution and divine reward, respectively; basically, the justice allegedly intrinsic to the universe. Therefore, start messing around with the notion of free will, and accusations of heresy soon start to fly.

        Of that, the kinds of free will posited by religions are already difficult enough to support on philosophical grounds. Not to mention that ongoing research on the brain is revealing an increasing number of complexities and obstacles regarding the concept of “choice”. Nevertheless, fascinating stuff.

        1. wwwhhattt

          You’re wrong about religion and free will. Christian theologians (I don’t know about other religions, sorry) have always tended towards what we would call determinism, usually because creation meant the creation of all time and space, so you get an Einstein like universe where all things exist at once (the last Canto of the Divine Comedy is a good example). Arendt says that the only Christian philosopher or theologian to really accept free will was Duns Scotus, so that’s only one person in 2000 years.
          The question of sin and free will only really starts in the early modern period, but I can’t remember what the reasons for that are.

        2. Wagstaff

          Whole schools within Abrahamic religions have been condemned of heresy just because of their views on their free will.

          For instance, in the 1600s, the Christian sect known as the Jansenists held that humans were powerless to avoid sinning because they were deprived of God’s grace after the Fall of Man. They further argued that any humans subsequently offered God’s grace were equally powerless to resist it. The logical conclusion they reached is that humans could not be held accountable for either their sinful nature or their redemption thereof. Predictably, this aroused papal condemnation for heresy.

          Along a similar vein within Islam, two groups emerged during the Umayyad period, between the 7th and 8th centuries, that were both denounced because of their contentious views on free will. The school of Jabariyyah viewed humans as divine puppets whose actions were determined by the Islamic god Allah and who consequently bore no responsibility. To back up their assertion, they cited the Koran 76:30: “But you cannot will, unless Allah wills”. In contrast, the school of Qadariyyah proposed that humans possessed a free will completely independent of the will of Allah, making humans a rival to Allah. Senior lecturer in Islamic Studies Abdur Rashid Bhat wrote that “both these groups were disapproved of by the Muslim community, for their rigid, extremist and heretical stands”.

        3. Amos Batista

          Oh, this discussion about free will also exists in Islam, isn’t? Interesting.

        4. Jhon

          Buddhism is very big on cause and effect. Our actions are affected by causes and conditions. Including past actions (from past lives even). But they are influences, not compulsions. We still get to choose.

          Otherwise liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth would be impossible. Enlightenment would be futile.

        5. Clif

          AaaaaaaYYYYYAA!!!!!!! #@$%Y$^$W#!!!

          The Bell Theorem test only provided an argument that quantum events are not predeterministic if you already accept the brain damaged Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, an idea as crazy as assuming that the other side of the moon doesn’t exist if you can’t see it. The wave equation is completely deterministic. It’s only if you insist that the wave equation magically collapses from some unknown mechanism that you get any non-determinism. And then you have to assume that it magically uncollapses to explain quantum erasure. There has never been any actual evidence of collapse; the appearance of collapse to an observer inside the system is completely explained by decoherence restricting the observation of superposition. Bells Theorem is exactly what you should expect, and is surprising only if you insist on viewing it as a non-deterministic probabilistic system.

          Ignore DeWitt’s many worlds mumbo-jumbo (it’s all one world, just more complicated than we realize) and go back to what Everett originally said. Which basically boils down to “there is no collapse.”

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

          Yes, it’s a theory and could be wrong, but the mathematics of the wave equation is deterministic.

        6. Clif

          Sorry, you hit a hot button.

        7. Wagstaff

          It’s alright. I have much the same attitudes towards commen misconceptions of it as well. Especially how “quantum” has been appropriated into marketing blurbs and bumper sticker slogans that make me cringe so hard my eyeballs nearly touch my visual cortex!!!

          Oh, and Sandra and Woo and its section aren’t helping AT ALL in that regard.

        8. Wagstaff

          I didn’t say that the “Many Worlds Interpretation” was true at all. I don’t mean this in an overly blaming fashion, but you are kind of attacking a straw man.

          But I’m kind of at fault too, seeing that I didn’t list the source that I reviewed in my class on Physical Reasoning. In 2015, a test of the Bell Hteorem was conducted which closed all known loopholes and confirmed empirically that quantum events are not deterministic. This was what Einstein argued against, asserting that a full understanding of the universe can only be statistical, and that quantum events have some “hidden source of information” that determines their outcome. That’s a major oversimplification by a few metrics, but you get the idea.

          However, this spite being driven by particles subject to quantum physics, that does not mean that events on everyday scales are also subject to quantum superposition (i.e., the moon not existing for sure until you look at it). According to the Normalization Theorem, wave functions eventually even out to give classical physical behavior, similar to how an infinitely long sign wave eventually looks like a plain straight line when you zoom out far enough.

          So quantum physics even today does not necessarily disprove determinism. It just makes arguing for determinism much more difficult.

          However, I still stand by my epistemological position. Determinism cannot be falsified by any conceivable observation or experiment, so it really isn’t a scientific concept at all.

        9. Clif

          No, I know you weren’t advocating for many worlds interpretation. I’m the Everettist, which is akin to many worlds.

          The irony is that Everett’s interpretation met Einstein’s dictum that God does not play dice with the universe.

        10. Clif

          Agreed that determinism isn’t a scientific concept, as such. It’s more a mathematical concept. Speaking of which…

          The paper you link to implicitly accepts the Copenhagen interpretation. All the concern with local system and action at a distance and confusion of cause and effect goes away when you just consider the events in Hilbert Space. Physicists of my acquaintance have refused to consider Hilbert Space as being something real as opposed to being a mathematical convenience, but if you don’t accept Hilbert Space as being physical, I’m not sure how you can make Quantum Theory work at all.

          ((Not referring to just any Hilbert Space of course, an abstract Hilbert Space being purely mathematical, but the one specifically relating to QM.))

        11. Wagstaff

          What exactly do you mean by “something real”?

          I mean, there’s a pocket of people in the astronomy community who are skeptical about the very existence of dark matter, purely because a form of matter like that sounds more like science fiction than science. However, it really is the least convoluted explanation for the patterns we see in the cosmos, making the minimum unproven assumptions necessary to explain the most data. None of the proposed alternatives to dark matter can explain that which was found in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, microwave background radiation patterns, useful gravitational lensing, AND the abnormally fast spin of our galaxies all at the same time.

          I think it may be very much worthwhile to take a similar approach to quantum physics, in that the most scientifically valid explanations are not necessarily the most intuitive to us humans. See Richard Dawkins’ Middle World to learn more about where I’m coming from.

        12. eh, whatever

          an idea as crazy as assuming that the other side of the moon doesn’t exist if you can’t see it

          Well, no, it’s many orders of magnitude less crazy, because, first, you are “seeing” all sides of the moon right now (if its gravity suddenly disappeared, you’d notice!), and, second, it isn’t a single particle. It’s composed of lots and lots of particles that “observe” each other – interact with each other. That’s why this kind of thing gets harder and harder to achieve the more particles are involved.

  20. Beau Kirin Maysey

    a great feat to produce out of Joe a want to get started with homework, but this is awfully cute, even if a bit dismissive…

  21. Ellegos

    “All right, I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”

    REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

    “Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”

    YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

    “So we can believe the big ones?”

    YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

    “They’re not the same at all!”

    YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

    “Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”

    MY POINT EXACTLY.”
    ― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

    1. StClair

      I was just thinking of that bit, re some of the comments above. Thank you. 🙂

    2. Demoted Oblivious

      Nobody does Death like Sir Terry Pratchett.

  22. RassilonTDavros

    I was feeling conflicted between a) getting into the Joyce/Joe dynamic and b) shipping Joyce/Dorothy, when I remembered that Joyce already solved this problem for me. I CAN SHIP MANY AND ALL THINGS, MY SHIPS ARE QUANTUM

    1. Yotomoe

      Joyce is like me and ships Jennifer with literally everyone.

      1. Rose by Any Other Name

        That’s basically how my wife and I write our bi/poly romance novels.

        Set up a love triangle and then subvert expectations by having absolutely no “who do I choose” drama and collapsing the waveform into a threeway.

    2. WanderingLynx

      Quoting a classic art cinema film from 21 years ago… “Both. Both is good.”

      1. Keulen

        The Road to El Dorado is that old? Damn it now I feel old.

  23. BBCC

    Girl, you have two hours ’til it’s due, YES START THE ASSIGNMENT.

    1. Miri

      Had. She had two hours. Now she has two hours minus (the time for Joe to get showered and dressed + the time for them to walk to where they now are + the time for Joyce’s brain cramp to work itself out into an existential crisis).

  24. Yotomoe

    Also there’s this weird desire of humans being “special” and “unique”. We already have speech and language and tools, do we really have to constantly brag about how special we are? Like it bugs me when people don’t consider themselves animals.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      I mean, humans have provided meaning to the cosmos by ascribing it such. If you don’t believe in extraterrestial consciousness like God, angels, or otherwise, we are the divine as all purpose in the universe flows from man.

      Which is a part of nature, which means that humans are yes that very important.

      Self-awareness desevres to be treated as important.

      1. Yotomoe

        Being self aware just means we have knowledge, it doesn’t make us special. If humans died out i do not doubt that some other animal would eventually evolve to be smart enough to figure out all that stuff for itself. We simply have the tools in which to quantify these things. It’s somewhat close minded to attribute that solely to our humanity and not just a very ideal sequences of evolution that rewarded us.

        1. Wagstaff

          Very true.

          To quote War Games, “nature knows when to give up”.

        2. StClair

          Falken was projecting more than a little, IMO, from his own nihilism and grief. If my understanding of the history and diversity of life on this planet is at all correct, then Ian Malcolm’s famous opinion on the subject is far more accurate.

      2. eh, whatever

        …whatever “meaning” means.

        How widespread self-awareness is, and how best to define it, is another can of worms.

    2. StClair

      If one is raised to believe that those things are gifts from God, then they aren’t qualities that are special or admirable in and of themselves. What does make us special is our position in His plan. We were set above all others.

      (I have seriously encountered this attitude before. Nothing we have, no quality or ability that is “good,” is something we can take credit for or pride in; it all comes from God.)

      1. Leorale

        This was def part of Joyce’s former belief system.
        https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/freezeframe/

        1. Leorale

          And soon after it:
          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/mysterious/

        2. StClair

          Yep, there it is. Thanks for the link(s).

      2. Wagstaff

        Oh my…

        I’m sure lots of you have heard of codependency, relationships where people source their self-worth, approval and identity from an external source instead of having those cultivated inwardly. Codependence had been historically shown to be a very chaotic and ultimately unhealthy relationship model.

        But it’s the ultimate relationship model in many religions, where it becomes theodependency. Here, instead of having self-worth and approval cultivated inwardly, those are sought from God, or gods. In the absence of any evidence of these beings, it really amounts to humans who claim to represent them.

  25. WanderingLynx

    I got wordy yesterday, but the way these two understand each other, Joyce’s slow-burn trust, how Joe shows this side of him only to her… GDI, but squeeeeeee

    1. Joyfulldreams

      I’m becoming more and more convinced by the day that they’re endgame. It’s just going to take literally forever for it to happen. The slowest slowburn to ever, ever smoulder.

      1. WanderingLynx

        437 YEARS IN THE MAKING. Yeah. I don’t think Joe will be Joyce’s first boyfriend, but they are endgame. I didn’t want to ship it, and I’m usually not invested in straight ships, but fuck it. They’re cute as heckie :’D

    2. Wagstaff

      The unfolding is quite profound, yes.

      And by the way, yes, my specialty is in fact physics! I’ve actually written two scientific papers thus far (one on dark matter and one on electromicroscopy), although neither of them were published.

      1. WanderingLynx

        Dude, that’s fascinating o.o I really really wanna ask for more information on it, but I’d understand if you’re not comfortable with that. Both are things I only have a passing knowledge of, but as I said, I’m always hungry for some learning.

        I would’ve loved to be an astronomer, and realizing how much math it took to get there was a heavy blow when I was a child, ahaha :’) I have ADHD and one of my particular symptoms is dyscalculia.

        1. Wagstaff

          When it comes to physics, mathematics is only a small part of it. Einstein himself once said that behind every useful principle of physics is a simple picture, that even a child could understand, and if there’s no simple picture, it probably isn’t a good one. Physics is nearlh all about this critical reasoning, and observation and experiment. As important as it is for physics, mathematics is just the bookkeeping. Just about the same applies to astrophysics and astronomy.

          (By the way, Einstein also had ADHD or something very similar, although it’s a myth that he was bad at math.)

          As for my papers, do you know of a way I can share an excerpt or two anonymously, or to you in particular?

        2. WanderingLynx

          I’m pretty fond of A Brief History of Time, and Cosmos both in the Carl Sagan and Neil Degrasse Tyson versions. My grandfather worked in an observatory! We’re from Chile and he was a technician at La Silla. He helped me cultivate a fascination with space from early on, and at school I never flunked physics because the teacher understood that I got the concepts, just messed up in the equations. I’d agree with Einstein there ;3 I think, the mark of a good scientist in any discipline is being capable of explaining a complex thing in a way any amateur could learn it.

          I wish I could answer your question, though :C I… Can’t think of a way you could share, but it’s alright! Protecting yourself from plagiarism matters much more, and I wouldn’t want to harm your investigations in any way. Thank you for being willing ^^ That’s really cool of you!

        3. milu

          just set up a burner email address and give the address in a comment?

        4. Demoted Oblivious

          This^^ Proton Mail is all about privacy and security. So you can create an address without needing personally identifying info. Use it. Share it. Rx your message, and then nuke the account.

          Alternatively, one can publish to Freenet and then post the url here.

        5. eh, whatever

          See if arxiv accepts a pseudonym.

          Also, if they’re not published, why do you call them “papers” and not “manuscripts”…?

          (And why weren’t they published? Were they rejected in peer review?)

        6. Wagstaff

          Nah, I just never bothered. They were both for my scientific writing class, and both of them got an A. Just to be fair, the one on electromicroscopy was a collaborative effort between me and my friend, who is also a physics major.

    3. Gunslinger

      I mean, Joe has shown this side to Amber insofar that he’s trying to be a decent brother, and hints of it towards Sarah. Walkyverse Joe had a similarly platonic relationship with Joyce even before he matured.

      Personally I see this as Joe forming meaningful relationships with women who are sexually off-limits as a kind of mental compartmentalisation; before eventually being able to have a meaningful romantic relationship with someone he connects to emotionally AND sexually. Just for shits and giggles I’m shipping Joe and Conquest.

      1. DailyBrad

        Maybe in-part to sidestep a lot of the weirdness of Walkyverse Conquest, I am pretty sure this one is like 16.

  26. Kravis

    *cues Peter Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey” on the hacked muzak*

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnVf1ZoCJSo

  27. LazyReader

    A: You’re not a monkey, You are a primate.

    1. 3oranges

      Some biologists have a big push to always have groups include all their descendants. Birds are dinosaurs is pretty normal now. Birds are reptiles fairly common. I haven’t heard birds are fish much, but I have heard some people say humans are fish…it makes me wonder what they think about whales.

      Anyway, to those people humans would definitely be monkeys, because it would be synonymous with simians (which include a lot of primates but not lemurs and so on).

      1. eh, whatever

        With “fish” there’s the trick that you can replace that term by “vertebrates”. For “dinosaurs” and “reptiles” such cover terms didn’t already exist, so those terms were extended instead.

        …well, for “reptiles” including birds there’s been “sauropsids” since 1864, actually. I don’t know why that seems to be so little known.

        1. 3oranges

          Yeah, I greatly prefer that too, but I have talked to people who will use fish that way anyway.

        2. thejeff

          Whales are indeed fish. 🙂

          It’s all essentially due to the common terminology solidifying when we understood a lot less about evolution and the relationships between groups, relying on little other than “these things seem to be similar to each other and different from these other things.”

          I think people mostly use the more common terms, like “fish”, “dinosaur” or “reptile” because it’s more amusing, but it’s also a way to push people into thinking more deeply about evolution and our connectedness.

          Birds are a subgroup of dinosaurs, which are a subgroup of dinosaurs, which are a subgroup of sauropsids, which are a subgroup of tetrapods, which are a subgroup of fish.

          If you think about it, there’s as much justification for saying “humans aren’t animals” as for “birds aren’t reptiles”. Either way it’s just a matter of defining the group as “everything descended from this common ancestor, except for this group that we want to exclude”.

  28. Bagge

    “Other people of our choosing”

    https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/hug-2/

    1. milu

      oh, nice callback!
      And nice reminder that, Joe may be the best person for Joyce to be having this moment with, but Dorothy has done so much to help Joyce accept herself as an atheist. she’s been a role-model, she’s displayed more moral integrity than probably anyone Joyce had met before, which in itself did a lot to defuse the scariest part of atheism for her, being the idea that it meant no moral compass. And she’s been kind and accepting and caring and an all-round great friend. DOROTHY <3

      1. RassilonTDavros

        Honestly that’s a big part of why Joyrothy is my OTP where Joyce is concerned. JoJo ain’t half bad as an alternative, though!

  29. Some1

    My theory is that we’re all living in a simulation and the religions of the world are all just remnants of past simulations where those religions were the truth.

    1. Yotomoe

      My theory is that every religion has truth in it but none of them are right. Like there’s simply no way for us to discern the whole truth from a past so long divorced that there’s no way to get everything right. Like we get to the afterlife and it’s like…unlike any religion we’ve ever studied and some guy we’ve never heard stories about is like “so you kept the scripture right? you know not to eat any animals smarter than a rabbit, right?”

      1. Wagstaff

        Yeah, documents really aren’t self-authenticating. It doesn’t really help that religious guidelines were only written down hundreds of years after people started following them, in what wasn’t even close to their original languages. And of course, the people who wrote them down evidently had no reprobation ln adding personal and political embellishments.

        1. tbf

          God very clearly signed the book of Jezuboad with his public key. If that’s not self-authenticating, I don’t know what is.

        2. Wagstaff

          But of course, those are Moses’ OWN English words, so we HAVE to take them at face value.

          See where I’m going with this (again)?

        3. thejeff

          Look, if English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.

        4. milu

          based

      2. Rectilinear Propagation

        So, The Good Place theory?

    2. C.T. Phipps

      There’s some actual evidence for that, which is more than I can say for some belief systems I know.

      🙂

      1. milu

        huh? what evidence?

    3. Icalasari

      I always hope it’s like a true VR experience for education on life in the past (iunno, some trillions of lives are lived out in seconds?) and I get to copy paste people I care for into another simulation that goes for MUUUCH longer/patch them in if it’s a multiplayer experience

  30. PB

    All right, NOW I will allow myself to squee over this ship again.

    eeeeeeeeeeeee~

  31. MrSmith

    I don’t squee but I very much enjoy and appreciate this friendship and mutual trust shown between Joyce and Joe.

    As a relationship it may well be the most mature relationship we’ve seen between the characters.

    Which means one of them (probably Joe) will do something boneheaded very shortly

  32. Sirksome

    You know what? I’m gonna go ahead and say it. I do not care for the JoJo ship. That’s right. I do not care for the JoJo ship. Don’t get me wrong this moment is nice but the ship is like 3 hours long and I just can’t get into it. It insists upon itself. Stop playing this slow burn will they won’t they “Oh, Joe’s improving himself so much!” Bullcrap! He’s still the dude who purposefully triggered Sarah on a whim just cause she was having a good day!

    1. Yotomoe

      😛 It’s been 3 hours long here but personally i’ve been waiting for it for decades. (They had great chemistry in Itswalky and Roomies)
      Also they’ve technically dated before.

    2. Thag Simmons

      I mean telling someone you do not get along with that “I’m in a good mood and even you can’t bring me down” is absolutely a challenge.

    3. Delicious Taffy

      Petah, remembah the tiiiime ?

    4. Spencer

      “Trigger” is a pretty specific phrase with pretty specific meaning, whereas what Joe did was annoy her for his own amusement, you know, like Sarah does to Joyce all the time to the point of dancing a jig at the thought of her going to biology class for the first time.

      1. Sirksome

        Maybe “trigger” was the wrong word if we want to be specific about my vocabulary choice and I’m not going to defend Sarah for taking pleasure in other people’s misery, but I hope you realize the difference in what Joe did and Sarah dancing when Joyce wasn’t there to witness it. And even if what she did was in poor taste I think the claim that Sarah purposefully antagonizes Joyce for her own amusement is false and ignores most of the context of their relationship. Context Joe does not have with Sarah. That’s putting aside the mysogynistic undertones of that interaction.

        But my point was Joe is still that guy. He hasn’t actually changed much and maybe he doesn’t need to if he’s comfortable with himself, but I don’t find his current self a great fit for Joyce. Not that I really have any say on if they hook up.

        1. Spencer

          Joe is That Guy, yeah. That’s why his character interactions with Joyce involve showing him what he’s like when he’s not That Guy, when he’s not deluging himself and everyone around him in his macho dudebro bullshit.

          Like, do you think it’s a coincidence that Joe gives up on changing (a change he attempted to make because he realized his macho dudebro bullshit he thought had zero consequence was, in fact, contributing to a miasma that Joyce suffered through due to Ryan) and tells Joyce that people never actually change, and then when Joyce hurts Jacob in a pretty bad way Joe launches into a speech about how she’s always changing for the better and that she will one day be so perfect Jacob will wish he’d gotten in on that?

          And it wasn’t really a misogynistic undertone, it was quite the overtone, actually, because Sarah was talking to him with blatantly naked contempt and told him he could do nothing to drag her out of her good mood, so he said the most deliberately annoying thing he could think of, and then kicked off a subplot about how Sarah doesn’t need to be misanthropic asshole to people she actually likes because she can use Joe to direct that negativity towards him.

        2. Sirksome

          Ugh! I actually hate that though! (As in the agreement that Joe and Sarah will continue to be assholes to each other so Sarah doesn’t misdirect her misanthropic tendencies towards her friends) That was never actually a problem. Joe just created a solution to an issue he created to justify him being a jerk. Sarah’s friends understand and accept she’s antisocial. Joyce even stated as much at the end of that storyline when their dispositions switched back.

        3. Spencer

          I dunno, I feel that entire thing about Sarah being in a good mood because of Space Magic was, transparently, her trying to justify being actually happy by it actually being about how she revels in everyone being miserable. There needs to be a reason why Sarah is happy, because if Sarah’s happy that means everyone will know things about her, and Joyce’s final line of dialogue was trying to tell her that she’s going to be loved regardless and can healthily express herself in front of Joyce without coming up with some weird fantasy narrative.

          (link for reference: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/03-see-you-in-the-funny-page/rainorsunshine/)

          I don’t think Sarah’s antisocial (which is also a pretty specific term), I think she’s an introvert who had a group of friends she opened up to and that blew up in her face so hard she withdrew further, so she’s keeping everyone including Joyce at arm’s length, except as Joyce herself put it a long time ago, Sarah can’t just be her friend through big explosive gestures of love, she has to show it in little ways too.

        4. Sirksome

          I think Sarah’s antisocial as in she doesn’t like social interaction. I would link to that scene where she denied letting Becky tag along to get spicy nugs with her for no real reason other than because she doesn’t like hanging out with people. A trait fed by her general misanthropy. Amber reads as more of an introverted person or at least she used to be. Sarah isn’t shy as much as she just doesn’t like people.

        5. Spencer

          I don’t think Sarah is shy but I do think she craves to have at least some people in her life for emotional connections. She’s not Joyce or Dorothy, she doesn’t want or need to be effortlessly social, but I feel it’s a clearly subtextual element to Sarah’s character that her misanthropy was learned more than it was decided, that this is how she’s gonna protect herself from another Dana situation.

        6. Chris (the other one)

          I’m truly curious now… who would be great for Joyce. Not even especially within the current cast of characters. What type of man is the ‘right’ kind of man to give her a mrs degree? Joe has gone to college for two reasons, that I know of: get a degree and bang all the wimmin, from 10’s on down. When’s the last time we heard of that? He’s not all bad, especially compared with the others of the current cast….

        7. Sirksome

          Ideally I’d say either a gender swapped or slightly gayer Dorothy would be great for Joyce, but the idea people need to pair off into romantic couples to be happy or fulfilled is something I don’t truly agree with anyway. I think Joyce needs to figure herself out more first and if that leads her to smooching and such on folks that’s fine (Even if it’s Joe I guess) But to me Joe always has that risk with him. I don’t think there’s anyone in the cast that’s a good fit for her if that even matters cause there aren’t a lot of dudes in general. Joe and Jacob are like the only two viable guys and Joyce screwed the Jacob option. Danny maybe, but he has a lot of self discovery to do on his own and Joyce would actually have to remember he exists for longer than two minutes after talking to him. Plus he’s boring.

    5. Sombrero

      Will they won’t they? We know they definitely won’t in our lifetime, unless:

      -We are classmates of Willis’ children.

      -Willis decides to experiment with flashforwards (coloured in delicious pink).

      Shippers will ship, tho.

    6. Josh Spicer

      I wouldn’t say it’s 3 hours long when people (me included) have been shipping them since AT LEAST the started to text each other.

    7. RassilonTDavros

      “I do not care for the JoJo ship.”

      Me either, the orangutan made me feel really uncomfortable.

    8. DailyBrad

      -three hours long

      Where are you pulling that from? Like, are you genuinely under the impression they haven’t had moments or suggestions of deeper meaning to each other prior to this? Or are you just being facetious?

  33. Renadt

    I have a feeling these two are actually going to be a couple.

    1. Yotomoe

      Goodness I can only hope.

  34. Yotomoe

    Joyce and Joe should bang. Y-Y’know as a prime example of how selective breeding is a huge part of what allowed evolution to take place. Yeaaaah.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      I agree, mostly on the grounds that they’re two characters in close proximity to each other and that’s as far as my standards go when it comes to fiction.

    2. Keulen

      Yes, they should do it, for science of course.

      1. RassilonTDavros

        Dunno, “for science” sounds more like a Dina/Becky ‘shine to me.

    3. Spencer

      What if

      They held hands

      1. Schpoonman

        Better save that for Slipshine.

  35. Tenzhi

    You can still be God’s specially crafted monkey. It’s just the creation process took longer than a few days. If I recall my Bible facts correctly, the days in Genesis were originally a less precise measurement anyway.

    In my sci-fi brain, that slightly later section that spends way too much time on begetting is actually an evolutionary chronicle. There was a time in my life when I gave that sort of thing too much thought.

    1. 3oranges

      The days aren’t really in the right order, though, and in any case it doesn’t go with the religion Joyce was taught because evolution works through death and death is not supposed to predate humanity’s fall.

  36. Kitschensyngk

    Part of me is happy that Joyce has taken one more step away from her fundamentalist upbringing.

    Another part of me wants to fast forward to biology class to see how Dina will react to this renouncing of magical thinking and embracing of empirical evidence.

  37. Jon

    Dumbing of Age Book XI: What’s So Bad About Being a Monkey?

  38. PiotrW

    These two *will* end up being together, won’t they?

    1. eh, whatever

      Yes, in two years in-comic.

  39. Nick

    I *NEVER* would have expected to say this when I started reading this comic, but I’ve been shipping Joe and Joyce for a while now.

    I think it crystalized for me when he had that argument with Jacob about her in the gym, but I’d say the signs of it started around the Do List Donut incident.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      Honestly when I started reading I never would have thought Joe could become a likeable character, period. Early on he just came off as a sexist dumbass who occasionally had something resembling a good point re: Danny.

      1. Nick

        Agreed. I find Joe really interesting now, but I’ll be the first to admit that you have to sit through a long period of him appearing to be one of the few characters with no redeeming qualities in order to get there. Some of the signs of his depth show up VERY early on, but unless you’re very clever it takes a long time to even begin to realize their significance. His character for the first several books is a slow burn.

  40. Leorale

    Panel 5 Joyce is almost correct, but not quite. She isn’t dependent on Joe to give her meaning, she needs to depend on herself.
    People-monkeys give ourselves meaning. It’s neat.

    1. Rycan

      Maybe not dependent on Joe per se, but she’s at least partially dependent on other people to give her meaning. No manwoman is an island.

      1. JBento

        But some of us are peninsulae with a VERY NARROW isthmus, and we quite like it that way.

        1. Demoted Oblivious

          Perfect gravatatar. ++

        2. JBento

          Why, yours is quite fetching as well.

          Shout-out to milu, who made it out of Willis’s representation of the perfect eyeroll.

  41. WanderingLynx

    The comments section is always cool, but I need y’all to know that the 100000% A++ Quality discussions these last strips have provoked have made these last days way better than they would’ve. You’ve pulled me out of Bad Fibro Brain Fog & Depresh ™. Thank you so much! ♥ ~

  42. Anastasia

    These two are so cute together. I want them to date so bad ><

    1. StClair

      They did. Mike came along.
      It went about as well as you might expect.

      1. Spencer

        So you’re saying that problem is solved for another go.

        1. Schpoonman

          Yes.

      2. Anastasia

        That was while Joyce was misguided. She’s improving.

  43. KSClaw

    I keep getting distracted by how adorable Joyce looks with her glasses

    1. Keulen

      I maintain that glasses make already cute girls look even cuter.

      1. Needfuldoer

        +1

        Her entire look is adorable this chapter.

  44. Rabisch

    Awwww. This is so cute to see♡. Joe is really a precious friend who care a lot about Joyce. But it’s time to start the assignment and I’m very curious about what they will write and how. Maybe they will have a fight about proper use of grammar?

  45. Eldritchy

    Heh Joyce is being hit with the existential crisis that people in the XIXth century had to deal with.
    It reminds me this one comment I read about Lovercraft’s works. His branch of horror was inspired by the shift in how everyone perceived the world. A kind of generational existential dread. Due to all the scientific development, including Darwin, people woke up to the reality that they were not special and the world was not created for them. The world was no longer a God-created and managed machine, and their path through life (working towards Salvation) was no longer so simple. Their entire perception of the world which they lived with for millennia simply collapsed.

    1. Raen

      The thing about Lovecraft is that some of the reactions of his characters are just… baffling, without the context that he was only just getting used to what we all grew up with. I think in particular of Nathaniel Peaslee and Randolph Carter, who are driven mad by journeys through unknown worlds that could easily be adapted by Disney.

      1. Eldritchy

        Well dude had a list of phobias so long you could probably publish it as a separate book…

        1. Clif

          There was not a book, but a documentary on what Lovecraft was afraid of, as I recall.

          Let’s see if I can find …

          Well, not any more. But The Heroic Nerd is appropriate.
          https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2006/10/19/the-heroic-nerd/

          [Lovecraft] was also frightened of invertebrates, marine life in general, temperatures below freezing, fat people, people of other races, race-mixing, slums, percussion instruments, caves, cellars, old age, great expanses of time, monumental architecture, non-Euclidean geometry, deserts, oceans, rats, dogs, the New England countryside, New York City, fungi and molds, viscous substances, medical experiments, dreams, brittle textures, gelatinous textures, the color gray, plant life of diverse sorts, memory lapses, old books, heredity, mists, gases, whistling, whispering–the things that did not frighten him would probably make a shorter list. – Luc Sante

  46. MrSmith

    I’m really liking the intimacy these two have with each other, as considering what happened with Ryan and Toedad, Joyces trust in men would be at an all time low (and rightly so) yet here she is allowing unspoken consent for Joe, of all people, to touch her

    Also Joe, having spent enough time with Joyce, having a good idea of what to do in this situation and doesn’t belittle her or her changing beliefs

    Its a really nice piece of character development for both of them

  47. ADLegend21

    They’re gonna get married, aren’t they?

    1. Wagstaff

      Considering that the place of marriage for the last 200 years was heavily influenced by Romanticism and therefore Christianity, there’s a chance she may also wind up rejecting the idea that she needs to marry ANYONE in her life.

      1. King Daniel

        …that’s a pretty Western-centric point of view. Like, you’re aware that non-European cultures have also had marriages for millennia, yeah?

        1. thejeff

          Yeah, but that may not have a lot of impact on Joyce’s notions of marriage. Even western notions prior to a couple hundred years back may not.

          For most of those millennia across most of the world, marriage was more akin to a family contract than our current ideas of romance.

        2. Eldritchy

          I don’t know about you but I prefer the Western “Marry for love” over the “You are a piece of meat to be sold for the family” approach…

    2. Spencer

      They are already married.

      1. RassilonTDavros

        NANI?!?

  48. Alris

    Lovecraft is my go to for why you can’t ever truly separate art from artist
    Lovecraft was racist in ways that made many people in the 20’s cringe and it’s quite arguable that much of his work is so evocative BECAUSE of that.

    A man so afraid of the world around him is a very natural mind to develop an equally (to him) terrible and uncaring universe.

    1. Eldritchy

      Honestly I find this approach to Lovercraft uncharitable. The man was Severely mentally ill. He wasn’t just afraid of black people, he was afraid of Everything and he did put in the effort to improve later in his life. It’s not like he was actively hateful and hurting people.

      1. thejeff

        Yeah, he was bigoted in lots of ways, but the racism stands out, even so.

      2. Jay

        Google Lovecraft’s cat name

        1. Eldritchy

          The name was given to it by his dad from what I know and honestly I don’t even defend his actions. I just want to let people know Why he was like that.

        2. Jhon

          That tells us about his dad. Lovecraft was basically raised by his aunts. As was P.G. Wodehouse. Do you see where I’m going with this?

          ( good because i dont )

  49. Pearl

    The last two panels of this one are really weird because the fact that we create our own meaning is if anything just as profound a realisation of the nature of humanity and our uniqueness compared to other species.

    1. Jhon

      I am having a wonderful time here today.

    2. Demoted Oblivious

      How do you know that a cat doesn’t give itself meaning? Or a whale? Or a 200 year old tortise? The only supported things we do (unique to ourselves) are proxy wars and child abuse. Bad Things. (sure other animals will kill or cannibalise children, but they don’t torture them for 15-20 years and then send them out into the world) Yay us, we’re unique.

  50. Icalasari

    Wait til Joyce hears about the concept of, “We don’t know what happens after death, but currently many sat you just cease”

  51. Alan in DC

    “Random Fart of Proteins”…

    BAND NAME!

    1. Chris (the other one)

      Nah, the girls need to name their roller derby team Galassos’ Random Fart of Proteins.

      1. Jhon

        and subs.

    2. Demoted Oblivious

      “Random Fart of Proteins”
      –The name of my sex tape

  52. Psi Baka Onna

    To be honest, my own athieism is partly enforced by the fact that I find the idea of an omnious invisible sky man with a plan terrifying. If he doesn’t exist then my attempts at any goal depends on how hard I work at gaining the right skills and networking etc. If he exists then everything depends on whether or not an intangible force likes me more than any of the other people with the same goal. My own self perception is good enough to know I’d be a background character in that kind of setup at best.

  53. Kim

    This moment is going to be referenced in their wedding vows, right? *Calling my shot here!*

    1. Needfuldoer

      It’s the rain existential crisis.

  54. Amos Batista

    I got this existential crisis when my dad brought an old “Origin of the Species” instead a children histories book. He made a mistake, because the books are pure blacks in cape.
    Of course I never gave the book back.

  55. Chris (the other one)

    So, some (all?) Universities give credit for death of a roommate, (..) looking at you Walky!, wonder if any professor’s give project credit for existential crises?

    1. Eldritchy

      Philosophy professor would be my bet.

    2. Demoted Oblivious

      I got a three day extension on a term paper because my kid was born 3 weeks early after a week long labour with complications (yes I was there in hospital supporting mom, and not sleeping). I got pneumonia in the process. Does that count? (it was absolutely the worst paper I ever wrote. But he passed me. I suspect a mulligan).

  56. Sol

    Man they’re just so cute is it so wrong that I want to see them grow closer and kiss? ;-;

  57. SlothfulCobra

    Well if you really care about some kind of special divine attention for the human race, you can always believe in the whole Christ came down to save human souls thing and there’s no evidence of like a gopher jesus. Nobody’s stopping you from that. I kinda thought Christianity was supposed to put more emphasis on the new testament than the old anyways.

    Alternatively, there’s all the stuff that humans do that other animals don’t, like wearing clothes, building complex things, metalworking, reading and writing, and all that junk.

    1. Demoted Oblivious

      Those examples all fall under ‘tool use’. Arguing otherwise is subject to the same flaws as god-of-the-gaps. No animals use tools. Otter cracks shell with rock. No animals shape tools. Chimpanzee chews stick to make spear. No animals modify tools beyond their basic shape. Crow bends wire into hook. No animals use technology. Dog pushes button to talk to owner. No animals actually communicate, that’s just a trained response. Gorilla signs that she is concerned about an absent person. She keeps looking behind herself to see if the missing person is there, because gorillas perceive the future as behind them where they can’t see.

      As I already wrote yesterday and again today. We abuse children and wage proxy wars. Yay us, we’re unique. But give it time and I’m sure we can teach other species to do the same.

      1. Uly

        Other animals mistreat children too, especially other people’s children, ESPECIALLY another male’s children.

        1. Eldritchy

          [lion roars in babycide]

        2. JBento

          Un-fun fact – lionesses will ALSO absolutely murder any cubs that:

          a) they’re not related to, and

          b) they can get their paws on.

        3. Demoted Oblivious

          Oh yeah. They kill them all the time. What they don’t do is keep their own kids around, beat up on them and emotionally degrade them, using them as their personal abuse receptacle until the kid commits or attempts suicide.

          But hey, still, god of the gaps, so yeah, we’re not as unique or special which was the point anyways.

        4. temperaryobsessor

          My guess is its less that it doesn’t exist but more like were asking ourselves different questions when observing animals and if we saw an abused wolf we might just chalk it up to pack dynamics or some other bullshit.

          If we are allowed to be specific enough we can say we sent members of our own species onto the moon intentionally.
          As far as I know humans are the only creatures with the word nature.

  58. Jhon

    I’ve been saying that in an absurd universe devoid of inherent meaning you have to make your own. And here’s Joe backing me up.

    ( that squee you heard five minutes ago was me )

  59. sreiches

    I’m impressed with how well Joe’s reactions to and behavior toward Joyce here reflect a Jewish upbringing.

  60. darkoneko

    Casual headpat and she’s not even freaking out

    1. Eldritchy

      When you’ve been dealt 10d10 of psychic damage, an extra 1d4 isn’t very noticeable.

  61. walterw

    “random fart of proteins”?

    the argument i like is that we’re not random at all, we’re an end product of millions and millions and millions and _millions_ of years of enduring the blast furnace of natural selection burning away the stuff that doesn’t work

    like neal stephenson says, any creature still alive today is by definition a stupendous badass

    1. StClair

      there’s still a lot of stuff that works “well enough“. the biological equivalent of “does it mostly not crash? okay, ship it.”

  62. Roborat

    I am constantly amazed at the directions the forum for this comic go.

    Also, based on Sir Willis’s alt text comments, the Book 11 title is going to be written in a very small font, or the book is going to be huge.

  63. Rectilinear Propagation

    OK, but why didn’t Joe forsee Joyce needing more time to even be able to get started on homework in a Biology class?

  64. Ashley

    You’re not just a monkey, Joyce.
    You’re a monkey with GLASSES!

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