STM317 said:
I even read this in his voice. Miss ya, Norm
Toyman! said:
I like that, and its correct, but I appreciate his answer a little more.
The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story.
The number itself is, ultimately, nonsense. Useless. Unimportant. The joke is the important part. Its a lack of understanding of who we are, what we are doing here, and even the inability to fully comprehend the enormity of "The Great Question"
Hell, its even the fact that The Great Question was never actually asked, not explicitly.
All of that, and more, wrapped up in two numbers. An answer that can be processed by any human with the ability to see the absurdity of our world.
Humanity is blindly grasping for Truth and we get 42.
Anyways, here's something meme adjacent.
In reply to Mr_Asa :
Yup. Always thought that.
In reply to Mr_Asa :
I saw an explanation a long ways back, and I think it cannot be found online so I can't quote it, but it was a brilliant explanation of The Answer as given by Deep Thought, and the Question as given by random chance (not Random Dent) with Scrabble tiles.
I don't think that Mostly Harmless had even been written yet.
Very loosely, and not written nearly as well, God created the Universe and people developed digital wristwatches. Digital wristwatches at the time of the writing of the books used LED displays, which are very energy intensive, so they only displayed the time if you pressed a button. To prevent accidental displaying, you had to press THREE buttons.
Man was despondent that it was impossible to check the time if they were holding something in their other hand like an umbrella or briefcase. God heard Man's plight and in His generosity gave Man three extra fingers on their wrist.
Man was even MORE despondent now. "We have thirteen fingers now! All of our maths is based on having only ten fingers! Now we have to learn maths all over again! How do I learn to count again? What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"
So the Answer, if you do the maths, is forty-two.
The riddle is that Man is never satisfied with what he has.
We are sorry for the inconvenience.
--
As far as I know, this is wholly unofficial (but the version that I saw read very much like DNA had written it) but it neatly ties in the Answer, the Question, the constant commentary about how people of Earth were so unadvanced that they still thought digital watches were a good idea, and God's general attitude in the books.
6 times 9 is in fact 42 in base 13.
In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :
I almost want to eat at a place that serves a Filthy Kevin.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Fairly sure that's the Base 13 that D.A. mentioned in the quote I posted
In reply to ShawnG :
Any of them, really. I ever start a restaurant I'll offer all four.
Not sure this belongs here, but we don't have a "Thanks, I hate it" thread.
Make sure you turn the sound on.
In reply to Mr_Asa :
That's Bill McClintock's work. He has a whole YouTube channel full of that, including the full song and not just a one minute excerpt.
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