Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Why do we talk about the characters as if they were real? But then, why not?
Surgoshan:
The earth is technically infinite and yet has finite boundaries. Posit a two-dimensional world, Flatland. A flatlander can conceive of only two dimensions. Put him on the surface of the earth and tell him to travel to the edge. He would travel for a long time and eventually return to his starting point, utterly bemused as to how he got there.
Were you to attempt to travel to the edge of the universe, you, too, would return to your starting point, bemused by a higher dimension yet. The universe is infinite without being infinitely large.
pwhodges:
And remember that there are different infinities as well.
Paul
Doug S. Machina:
That is the most succint expression of why the universe is thought to be infinite when it's finitely old and started at a single point in my rather shallow investigations of the subject.
The idea came from New Scientist I think. I guess they didn't say "infinitely large" then, but I remember the idea was that there's much more space and matter than ways to arrange it.
--- Quote from: pwhodges on 20 May 2008, 14:18 ---And remember that there are difference infinities as well.
Paul
--- End quote ---
Pardon?
pwhodges:
Sorry - should have been different. Just as there are numbers of different sizes, so there are infinities of different sizes.
Paul
Red Peril:
The answer lies in Sociology, particularly someone like Anderson. Essentially our knowledge of people in the world around that is not based on direct interaction is essentially imagined, so even when we think about something that someone we know very well did our interpretation is basically non factual. Bearing in mind that our knowledge of the world is basically a product of our own imagination, and so is our knowledge of most of the people in it, it is a fairly short step to privileging webcomic characters as equal to real people, because we know as much about, if not more, than most of the real people in the world, and our construction of them is just as accurate as our construction of the majority of people in the world. Or maybe its just because these characters are actually more interesting than a lot of people you meet anyway.
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