Comment on xkcd #3184: Funny Numbers
Thaurin@lemmy.world 6 hours ago42 is from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. They built an enormous computer that is the most powerful ever built to calculate the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything. The computer, after many years of processing, came up with 42. The confused crowd that gathered to hear the answer did not understand. Turns out, 42 is the correct answer, but what is the question?
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Yeah I remember that, saying 42 is the answer to everything was what I called nonsense, as I could just as easily say 42 meaning everything is, more like 6 7 being nothing. Poof, now everything is a multiple of nothing, and at the end of the day none of it made any sense.
melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
Funny enough, there’s a point in a later book in the series where they suggest the “ultimate question’” that 42 is an answer to is “What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”
MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml 1 hour ago
Which works in base 13!