Comic #2610: 2012-07-09

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Description

Here's the transcription of the text from the comic:

Panel 1: Person 1: "Hey look! I built a program that self-replicates!" Person 2: "If we define life as any piece of information that can self-replicate when physically embodied, this counts as life!" Person 3: "Neat."

Panel 2: Person 1: "But if I press CTRL+Z, it snips out the self-replication part. Now it's non-life." Person 2: "Okay…" Person 3: "Okay…"

Panel 3: Person 1: "And again! And again! And again! Alive, dead, alive, dead, ali—" Person 3: "Stop that!"

Panel 4: Person 1: "What? It's just a weird quirk of the universe. I have a whole computer that just creates and destroys life all day long." Person 2: "I don't want to think about this."

Panel 5: "Somewhere, outside reality…" Person 4: "Hey, what if we make a universe where all meaningful divisions are arbitrary?" Person 5: "Ha!"

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