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Up At Night

🕑 Added 2024-09-18 01:12:41 +0000 UTC

Comments

eilonwylovegood

but i see no butts? isn't that part of her head

legobil

I wonder what the living accommodations in Cubetown will be. Like, will Moray be living with Marten and Claire? And Liz? What a missed opportunity if not.

Holly Nelson

My theory is that we (our species) have a smidgen of free will, like a computers kernel, and are in process of bootstrapping ourselves into higher levels, largely by adjusting our culture and environment so we can navigate moral choices ahead of them becoming urgent. As you can imagine, this is a chancy process with many ways of going wrong, but it’s amazing that we try it at all.

Alan

I'd love to hear your explanation for that. Seriously, as someone who has that brought up in my classroom every year.

DocKlokMan

Thought this sticker for Moray from frame 4 was neat. Please use responsibly everyone: https://imgur.com/a/7pZL5G4

Carrie

Yes, and observance changes many of them.

ValdVin

"It's 3am somewhere" was Sven's worst-selling country composition.

Wild Card

The image preview was just the middle row of panels. And they worked well just like that.

Joe

@BookBeard one might think you'd been reading Cory Doctorow's work

Aaron Brewer

Yeah. I do believe Night Moves would take place in Euclidean Space. (Great song that i now need to listen to)

Joe

suddenly I'm thinking of Bob Seger "Night Moves" ...

Joe

& it's always 5 o'clock somewhere

Clifton Royston

@Stephen Wells: I’m no physicist, but I remember reading about some quantum mechanics experiments which proved physical observations aren’t consistent with the possibility of some deterministic “hidden variables.”

Clifton Royston

Opening my eyes to that face would scare me, for sure.

Clifton Royston

@Todd: It seems very likely that’s exactly what she’s worrying about. But also, maybe most QC AIs have internalized “having an existential crisis” as one of those things humans do that they should copy or simulate to be people, like bipedalism, clothing, drinking, and (for some) sex. In that case Moray is just trying to do the right thing in the human-styled way.

Carl

Humans don't, so why should AIs?

Timothy Mann

NGL, I thought she asked if she had free wifi at first. I need glasses.

William Burns

I prefer Calvinball.

SilverbackRon

Oddly my first reaction to the strip title was to get Daft Punk stuck in my head before I registered that is was "Up At Night" rather than "Up All Night".

enchantedsleeper

Would read that side comic 😆

Miyaa

Has your roomba threaten you with a knife for dissing his girlfriend?

Miyaa

They probably eloped to Vegas for their wedding, got lost and ended up at Burning Man, then spent their honeymoon on a reclusive billionaire’s private island that’s technically owned by the state of Hawaii because the billionaire thought Penny was his long lost daughter who actually is Pizza Girl. And Penny went along with that.

Miyaa

I don’t trust my thoughts past 9 AM let alone 9 PM.

BookBeard

Aw, but that would leave Liz without her squishy pillow...

OldGoat

"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Librarian my boot sector to keep."

BookBeard

Depends on how chill she needs to be. If you want to use her as a cold compress, you need a freezer. https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5092

David Durant

I mean, we all know that Jeph is specifically trolling us with this kind of thing by this point, right? Right? FWIW I, in all seriousness, think that civilization losing the belief in free will, quite possibly because of AIs like the ones in the strip becoming commonplace, is the mostly likely solution to the Fermi Paradox.

David Durant

KLF is gonna rock you!

David Durant

Much as I 100% agree with Doug, Dean absolutely wins this thread. Also, we've need see Penny and Will for *ages* boo...

Halloween Jack

she can talk to me at 3 AM, that's turned out to be my "maybe I'll get back to sleep, maaaaaaaaaaaaybe I won't" time.

n0s482

I mean, on the meta level she doesn't (she's a character), but also I could imagine the answer is the same as it is for humans - "kind of". We have some things we do that our biology or chemical balance in our brain drive us to do despite what our "higher" self might desire, but we can mostly act on free will.

Bagge

I love you for writing this verse! Although I'm sure Moray would point out that she can be extremely chill if she wants to - she can control her internal body temperature

Bagge

I scrolled through the entire comments section to find someone who wrote a verse on this topic, and I'm not disappointed

Wooly50

Never trust your thoughts past 9 PM, Moray

SpookyPenguin

do morays dream of electric eels

Stephen Wells

Panel 4 Claire is funnier every time I look back at the strip :) that's going in the reaction-pic folders for sure.

Stephen Wells

In the porn-parody version of QC (which is sometimes barely distinguishable from actual QC tbh), Claire brings Moray into bed for cuddles, and in the morning Marten wakes up with his hotdog in the wrong set of buns :)

Stephen Wells

Well, nobody's actually *suffering*

Jim Sharkey

3 AM is a pretty normal time for an existential crisis, Moray, you precious, dopey sweetheart.

David Stopp

This is precious!

prettydragoon

And it's always 3 AM somewhere.

David Paul

He was saving that for Friday's cliffhanger...

David Paul

Well, you *can* get free will, but it's buggy and full of ads, or otherwise infected with malware.

David Paul

When existential crises Are interrupting you dreams That's a Moray!

Dean Reilly

Only Penelope has free Will, all others pay cash.

Boots McGoot

she's so real for this. 100% certain she does, but by god we need to have the occasional crisis about it or what's 3am FOR

BookBeard

I'm pretty sure my life isn't being written by Jeph. Not nearly enough robots for one thing. I mean, there's my Roomba, but it doesn't even fly...

BookBeard

It's okay, they just *think* they're worrying about it. That makes it better, right?

BookBeard

It's always 3am somewhere.

BookBeard

No, the concept of "Free Will" stems from Will being held captive which seems uncool because he's a really nice guy.

BookBeard

Today's CoD Special: Existential Crisis Latte

enchantedsleeper

yet -

enchantedsleeper

😂👏👏👏

Am Queue

Panel 4 in comic 5394 maybe the source of this.

Am Queue

Ooh I like that Stephen. I'll have to try to remember that.

Am Queue

I love this and I never thought of it this way.

Am Queue

Exactly what I was scanning for, before I wrote it myself.

Stephen Wells

The concept of free will exists primarily to absolve an omnipotent God from responsibility for evil; outside that context it doesn't seem helpful for anything.

Stephen Wells

Moray is not actually here for the debate, Moray is here for cuddles :)

Stephen Wells

A good question is "free from what?" followed by "so what?" followed by a drink.

Stephen Wells

A great one to show people and say "This is what QC is about" :)

Stephen Wells

Absent time travel, there is no observable difference between a universe that's probabilistic and one that's deterministic, which (by the identity of indiscernables) implies there is no difference and it's not worth worrying about.

BobC

Nope. I refuse to have an existential crisis before coffee.

Carrie

It's drastically more complicated.

Carrie

That bed looks nicer.... Claire is the lucky one getting to be in the middle of she skootches over.

Melanie

Claire’s future life as Librarian in Cubetown foreshadowed. And that’s only including Liz and Moray. There’s the other residents to consider, too. She’s going to have to set strict “not when I’m sleeping” boundaries.

Doug DeJulio

*Nobody* has free will. The *illusion* of free will is an emergent phenomenon due to no entity with a mind having the capability to model something of equal complexity to itself -- ie. itself. (And yes, I'm fun at parties too.)

Darnel D Cooper

She has free will. She has the choice to be reabsorbed from her source and doesn't want to. I wonder how much mass has to do with her intelligence?

Thisguy

Yeah, but if we consider that, we have to consider if any AI, or humans for that matter, have free will. If you do something against what was expected of you, that’s close enough to free will, and won’t cause you to have sleepless nights wondering about it.

Graydon Armstrong

Why wouldn't they? Arguably there can't be sapience in the first place without free will, but the illusion of free will, and thus the illusion of sapience, would also allow for illusions of worries about free will, just as it allows any other worries.

Graydon Armstrong

🥺

Graydon Armstrong

Nah, there's a bunch of atomic-scale stuff that's probabilistic, like radioactive decay and electron position.

Graydon Armstrong

It's not like it's a regular occurrence.

legobil

Panel 3 Moray. Love you. 110% favorite character.

Todd Ellner

Does Moray have threewill?

Todd Ellner

Unless the Director thought an agent/avatar who believes she is independent was a useful asset

Bagge

Just normal Librarian business

Thomas Halpin

Sometimes evening solitude brings with it a wave of isolation, doubt, and depression, and existential crisis at 3AM can certainly be the result. Then again, "I told you to go to sleep and you're still here keeping me awake, so you probably have free will," is probably more convincing on paper than spoken aloud.

William Cole

Watch out if she wants to play chess!

Not that Patrick Foltz

When thoughts of free will mean that sleep comes not still That's a Moray!

Alacrity Fitzhugh

She's not wrong. 3AM is the traditional time to doubt everything.

LH

no, Claire doesn't want to *reward* this behaviour! sleep is sacred!!

ValdVin

He's creating "A World Of His Own", you might say.

BookBeard

"No Moray, you don't have free will. Will is an in-app purchase for $3.99. Now go back to bed."

Thisguy

Moray probably does. She did decide not to get re-absorbed by the director.

Carl Fink

Curvilinear shapes contain an infinite number of points. Speaking of Euclidean humor.

Eric Wills

Free will is a scientific impossibility, now go back to bed.

Uniquitous

*sigh*

Carl Fink

Anyone else is a fictional character created by Jeph Jacques, whose actions are 100% the decision of someone on a different plane of reality? Good to know.

Wynn Donivan

Jeph is a longtime sufferer of Butts Disease

CthonicBelletrist

"Moray I don't even know if *I* have free will GO BACK TO SLEEP"

Andrea Andrew

Threesome!! That’ll give Moray some relief.

Xionwalker

*sage nods* The zoomies come for us all. Whether physically or of the mind.

Hawkeye

At first I thought Moray was being a pillow for Marten and Claire… This is much funnier

Sean Kinlin

Maybe Moray would be placated by a free Wii.

Sean Kinlin

3 AM is Eternally the right time.

fluffy

When a sentient being's Existential feeling, that's a Moray

Shawn K. Younkin

Marten is totally me... Whuh... K... zzzzzzzzz

Magic Chopstick Games

When you no longer see Her existential glee That’s a Moraaaaayyyy

Aaron Brewer

Ahh Euclidean humor was not something I knew I was missing. Well done!

BookBeard

I can't tell if the extra "L" in panel three is a typo or if she's just drawing the word out. Probably a typo.

Grace Kieser

Yeah, that sounds like the right time to me, but also, sapient beings without free will don't usually worry about it.

William Cole

She seems extremely curvilinear to me…

John

Milk and cookies kept you awake, eh Moray?

BookBeard

I choose to believe that free will is an illusion. At least I think I do.

Doc Gumby

Um... Futurama?

Ken Austin

Last night it was 1:30 and I never got back to sleep

BookBeard

Spoiler: The crisis is that Liz waited until they went to bed then snuck out to go clubbing with Pintsize.

Travis Young

That was exactly my thought

Jackie aka Jax

I love Claire in panel 5!!

Melissa Wilson

& a pat on the head & tuck back in bed…

Melissa Wilson

Same!

Uniquitous

The correct answer is that Moray has approximately as much free will as anyone else.

ArataChikan

Heehee, butt perspective shot.

Aussiewan

Everyone is so concerned with agreeing about the 3am thing, but how has nobody yet commented on the titles "up at night" and "free willy"?? I bet Jeph was trying to get a Morning Glory reference in there too!! 🤣

allanfranta

You may or may not have free will, but what are you going to do?

BookBeard

When she questions free will And then loses her chill That's A Moray!

Yelling Bird

I sleep in the day, so I have my crisises around Noon.

Nicholas Lopez

Moray scaring Claire like a toddler scaring their parent

Yonatan Zunger

It is official, Claire is now the Mom of Cubetown. She has inherited Aurelia's powers.

R. Francis Smith

omg AI Calvinism must be brutal not that human Calvinism isn't

Mark

The extra l in willl might have something to do with your misreading

Thomas Baxter

3h00 is when you wake up with the question. 5h30, when you are still thinking about it and know you have to get up in a few hours and are still wide awake, is when it actually hits. 7h15 is when you finally get to sleep. 9h45 is when is when it _actually_ starts

Nikki

Can verify, 3 am is an appropriate time for an existential crisis.

Opus the Poet

Technically correct is the best kind of correct.

Graydon Armstrong

Why not? If they can be concerned with anything, they can be concerned about a lack of free will. They just wouldn't have any control over whether or not they're concerned about it.

Elizabeth Rosenzweig

What did he do?

pseudoclever

Panel 3 is ALL-TIME 👏

Miyaa

Or you have dreams about that or something other awkward moment that happened 15-20 years ago. Maybe even before you were born!

Opus the Poet

She's not wrong, 0300 is when existential crisis tend to bloom.

That Blair Guy

Yes, that's how it starts. You make that trip to the bathroom, then, instead of falling asleep again, your brain starts racing at 80,000 RPM. I have much experience with this.

Damian

That is true, but it is also a good point in the arguement for her having it. Something without free will shouldn't be capable of being concerned with their lack thereof.

Two Wheels

And then once you get back in bed your mind starts reminding you of every awkward thing you have ever said...or thought.

Joel Bateman

Patrick "Oh Boy, 3 Am!" meme here.

Carl G Knoblock

For me, that is just the time for my first nightly trip to the bathroom.

That Blair Guy

Moray has the timing absolutely right. 3am is the exactly right time for existential crises. (And at first read, I thought Moray was asking if she had free WiFi.....)

ziPRR

I see what you did in panel 4... 🫣

Two Wheels

I regret that I have but one like to give to this strip.

Shawn K. Younkin

3am is the PERFECT time for an existential crisis.

Graydon Armstrong

Not the first time, either.

Not that Patrick Foltz

Yes, 3AM is the proper time for an existential crisis

Graydon Armstrong

Poor Moray. I know you're all sleepy and shit, Claire, but it's a bit uncool to be so dismissive of a legit existential crisis. At least give her a hug.