Dude. Stop. Saying. All This. Crazy. Nonsense.
NICOLAS MICHAUD
The adventure has been harrowing. The boys have narrowly defeated a disgusting wall of flesh, deadly sign zombies, and a brutal brain beast. They are tired and, to be honest, more than a little annoyed. They had entered the Evil Forest to help Tree Trunks. But they can’t sheathe their weapons for more than a second before Tree Trunks finds another way to put herself in mortal danger. Finally, though, things are going the adventurers’ way. After a nightmarish journey made only worse by Tree Trunks’s own naivety, the three friends will emerge victorious. They’ve found the Crystal Gem Apple atop a mushroom-shaped tree. The crystal guardian protecting the mystical item is helpless to stop Tree Trunks from eating the apple—the boys have figured out his weakness. He must mimic his opponents, and the boys aren’t fighting; they are putting on make-up and prancing about helplessly. Happily, while the boys distract the foe, Tree Trunks takes a well-deserved bite of her prize
. . . and explodes.
The boys, and even the guardian, look on in horror.
[Cut scene.]
[Roll Credits.]
And so began my introduction to Adventure Time. I looked over at my smug friend sitting on the couch and chastised him, using some language not quite appropriate for children’s TV. “Really, dude? That is what you wanted me to see? This show is <insert expletive here> up!” I was told it would get better. And in a sense this is true. We do learn, for example, that Tree Trunks isn’t dead. Rather, she’s been transformed into a nearly all-powerful god who later tries to kill the boys. And that seems to be much of the way Adventure Time works. The things that make no sense in one episode are explained thirty episodes later.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the episode after Tree Trunks explodes, no one talks about losing her. When things happen in the land of Ooo, the characters tend to take them, no matter how insane, with a pretty casual attitude—and move on. For a long time, I found this fact very frustrating. I mean, she just exploded! They aren’t going to deal with that in the next episode at all??? It seems like everyone in Ooo is pretty comfortable living in a very random world. Yes, sometimes, we get explanations, . . . albeit a season later. Adventure Time, though, doesn’t pretend that everything needs to make sense. Sometimes we find out why things happen, and sometimes the world is just filled with magic and nonsense. I think that’s why adults who have only seen an episode or two can be pretty critical of the show: “But it’s so weird and crazy.”
The funny thing, though, is that Adventure Time mimics our real world far more than we would like to realize. Yes, sometimes we get explanations for the amazing and random things that happen around us, but often we have no clue what’s going on and just move forward without comment.
This Place Is Weird
Here’s what I mean: our own world is far crazier than we realize. Really, everything just seems pretty stable and sensible because of our size and perspective. The fact is, though, that—like in the land of Ooo—seemingly random and crazy things are happening all around us and in us all the time.
If we were as small as an electron, all of the stuff that seems so solid to us like buildings, and bricks, and candy would actually reveal itself to be made of stuff that is whizzing around at unbelievable speeds. The stuff, the matter, which makes up everything around us is made up of constantly shifting particles that never touch, spin around constantly, and speed past each other in what might be random ways. And if we were as large and long-lived as the sun, we wouldn’t see the universe as a stable and sensible thing. Everything around us would be spinning, bubbling, and bursting constantly.
Pick the most stable object in the world, and if you really look at it, closely (like with a mathematical super microscope), you’ll realize two things: 1. that “solid” object is mostly empty space, and 2. that stable object is more like a boiling pot of water than anything solid. It’s like the world of Ooo is just a bit more in touch with the truth of that reality than we are.
It’s easy to kind of blow off Adventure Time as nonsense because it allows randomness and weirdness into its world, in the extreme. Some of us might defend our beloved show by arguing that it isn’t really that random, because so much of it is tied together if you watch enough episodes. But what I’m saying is that Adventure Time is mimicking the way the world actually is, particularly because the world really is random, totally crazy, and lacking explanation. I think the creators do this on purpose. You can’t watch the show for long before you realize that Pendleton Ward and his team are creating a world that is purposefully playing with questions about the nature of time, space, and reality. They are doing metaphysics (the study of the nature of reality), and they are doing it really well.
Don’t Deny My Science!
“But Nick,” you might reply, “How can you say they are doing this so well when science is constantly improving and giving us all kinds of useful explanations for the world? The world isn’t random. It follows a series of physical and mathematical laws that we can use to help us understand the world.” You might also point out, “And because those laws are so reliable, we can use them to predict things like when stars will explode, when Haley’s comet will appear, and even, with the right data, the way human beings will act.” Fair enough. But I’m going to lay all of my cards on the table. I’ve decided to play from my Card Wars deck, “David Hume” (1711–1776). BAM. I win!
Oh, you want me to explain why . . . fine, fine, fair enough. Let me backtrack a bit. When we explain the world, we use different kinds of reasoning to do so. One kind is called deductive reasoning. This kind of reasoning is very mathematical. Basically, it’s the lock-tight reasoning we use when we say, “If A happens, then B will happen. A has happened; therefore B must have happened.” For example, what if we know something like, “If Jake gets hungry, he will become a jerk.” Well then, if that statement is true, the next time we see Jake get hungry, we know to expect he’ll be a jerk. That’s almost the way the laws of physics seem to work. They are pretty lock-tight. How do we know a Crystal Gem Apple will fall to the ground? Well, we know, “If I drop it, it will fall.” Then, all we have to do is drop it.
Here’s the problem. How do we know that first statement is true? For example, how do we know that Jake will be a jerk if he gets hungry? I guess we might say we know from observation. We’ve seen Jake get all jerky whenever he gets hungry. So we can start making predictions. Maybe Princess Bubblegum can examine Jake and give us some sort of explanation like, “When Jake’s cells are low on sugar, his brain gets less energy, and so his neurons start firing in an unusual way.” But, really, this doesn’t explain Jake’s anger, the feeling. We can see that his brain responds differently when he’s low on sugar, but how does that explain his becoming a jerk? In other words, how does specific neurons firing equal jerkiness? PB’s explanation, like any scientific explanation, can show us how things work, but doesn’t, if you keep looking closer and closer, answer why they work that way, instead of some other way.
Let’s take a simple example that we’re all comfortable with—magnetism. We know that magnets attract. Well, at first, that may seem magical. But scientists aren’t big fans of magic (as we learn from Princess Bubblegum) and they want better reasons for why things are happening. So they examine the magnets and they see that the atoms in the magnets align a certain way. To make a long story short, that alignment causes the exchange of particles called photons. When those photons are being switched back and forth between two objects, they move toward each other. In fact, from what we can tell, all of the forces in the universe are caused by the exchange of certain particles. Like gravity is caused by the exchange of a particle called the graviton . . . we think, in all probability. Okay, great, so PB has given us the explanation. Magnetism isn’t magic; it’s the exchange of photons. Done. Right? But wait . . . why does exchanging particles make things attract each other?
That’s where the scientist has to struggle a bit. PB might say something like, “Well, when particles are exchanged, that causes a force, and that force brings the particles together.” But if we’re honest, we have to admit that we don’t understand why the particles create that force. What the heck’s going on here? This isn’t to say that science is doing a bad job. Science is awesome. The problem is that science relies on a very deductive world. But you can always ask a question about the first statement, like a little kid: “Why?”
Take the famous “Matter and energy can’t be created or destroyed” law (known as the first law of thermodynamics). We use that law to make all kinds of predictions about the world, to help us build stuff, and blow stuff up. But if we ask, “Why can’t matter be created nor destroyed?” PB would be at a bit of a loss. Basically, what it comes down to is, we’ve never seen it created or destroyed so we kind of assume. Okay, okay, I admit there is A LOT of brilliant math that goes into proving the truth of that law as well. But all it will take is one observation, one good observation, of that law not holding, and we will have to reconsider that law, and figure a way to deal with this new information, and reconsider our math. That might be science’s greatest strength . . . rather than assume truths, scientists try to challenge them, even their favorite laws.
Just Let Science Do the Work
The strength of science, in many ways, is its ability to make predictions. PB makes not just an observation, but many and from that she can infer a law. Every time Jake gets hungry, he turns into a jerk. We see that happen over and over again. So now we can make an experiment: “Okay, let’s deny Jake food and see what happens.” If he turns into a jerk, we have confirmation, and our prediction has come true! We do that a few thousand more times (poor Jake), and we have a “law” on our hands. But every good scientist knows these laws are technically not laws the way we would like to think of them. They are theories. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t theories the way most of us think of theories—like guesses. No. No. NO! Scientific theories are tested and tested and tested all over the world thousands of times, and to be a “law” or “theory” means that there has never been a single case of the tests showing a different result. There’s a lot of strength behind this. But this doesn’t change the fact that even our most super-strong scientific theories rest on observation.
This is where David Hume comes in. Hume pointed out that our examination of the world really isn’t deductive so much as it is inductive—we infer truths of the world from observation. Induction is great. It is what helps me know that if I keep poking bears with my sword they get angry and try to kill me, so I’d better not poke bears. It’s also what helps me predict the fact that the Ice King is probably going to try to kidnap a princess . . . because every time we meet the cabbage-head he tries to cart off an innocent princess victim. But, notice, the key word is “probably.” Induction is probabilistic. It can never give us a “law.” It lets us say, “Okay, every time I’ve tried this, this has been my result. So I’m going to say it will probably happen again.” Sound familiar? This is exactly how science works! The only difference (and it’s a very important difference) is that when scientists use induction, they have tried it thousands and thousands of times, always getting the same result. And so when they say, “It will probably happen,” there is a very good chance they’re right! Not to mention there is a butt load of mathematics to back them up.
Really, what we’re seeing, though, is that our predictions about the world hinge on our observations of the world. And that’s not a bad thing, and certainly not an attack on science. The fact that science is inductive, at its core, rather than deductive, is why we can trust science. If science were truly deductive, then scientists could just assert laws, and we would just assume they were true. Instead, scientists point out to the world and say, “See, we can observe the fact that the theory is correct.” The one thing that’s really missing is that final metaphysical piece. Maybe the scientist is right—gravity is a law, or damn close to it—but why does the exchange of gravitons cause the change that we see? Why does the firing of neurons make Jake jerky? And why can matter and energy be neither created nor destroyed (probably)? And the scientist can only look more closely and say, “Well, because atoms have these properties,” or, “Because the universe follows this mathematical law.” But why??? Why those laws? Why those properties? Why? Why? Why? Why?! Sorry, I think I need a sandwich!
This Random Pattern Generator . . . So Clever
Okay, so here’s the deal. We’re being a bit hard on PB and science in general. Science is awesome and we really should listen more closely to scientists rather than just picking the theories we like and ignoring the ones we don’t. After all, you never see a bunch of people start screaming at each other over gravity. We are all more than happy to let scientists tell us about gravity (despite the fact that we can’t even find the darned graviton!), but evolution? Well, we’ll argue about that and ignore scientific experts.
Our tendency to ignore science when we don’t like the conclusion (as is the case with climate change) is not what I’m advocating. Science does have a difficulty, though, and it isn’t evolution or global warming. The problem that Hume pointed out was that we make assumptions about causality when we observe the world. We assume when we see two things next to each other, that they will keep being connected.
Remember that Crystal Gem Apple? If you didn’t know it turns you into an evil godlike entity, would you have eaten it? After seeing Tree Trunks explode, I think the last thing I would do is eat that apple! And I only saw it happen once! But what if that was just a random occurrence? What if it only happens to elephant-basketball things (or whatever she is)? What if it was just because the sun wasn’t shining in the forest that day? We don’t know!
Human beings are pattern-makers. We like to think that we’re finding cause and effect in the world, that we’re finding patterns, but I think we are actually creating the patterns. We are just so arrogant that we assume that the patterns we make are true of the nature of reality. It’s kind of like looking up at the sky and seeing clouds. We might see Finn in the clouds, or maybe we see Gunter in the clouds. And we can get pretty annoyed if other people don’t see what we see. “Look, how can you not see it? The little wings are right there!” But really, that’s a pattern we made. Our brain makes the cloud into something we see as Gunter. Our brain likes to connect the dots, but dots can be connected in many different ways. We tend just to connect the dots in ways that make sense to us and help us survive.
So, as is especially the case with bad things, we connect the dots to be careful. If someone eats an apple and explodes, I won’t be eating that kind of apple. We’re so preoccupied with pattern-making that we even do it unreasonably sometimes! Don’t we have a tendency to say things like, “Oh, no, I don’t chew bubblegum because this one time when I was five I was jumping rope while blowing a bubble and an eagle saw it and dive-bombed me, and I ran away but the jump rope caught in a tree branch, and I tripped and skinned my knee—so that’s why I’ll never chew bubblegum again . . .” (You mean that never happened to you? Weird.)
You get my point. We make predictions of cause and effect just because we see things happen together. We assume that because “A” happens before “B,” there must be a connection between them. “When I let go of the apple it falls, so there must be a causal connection.” We feel even more supported in this belief if it keeps happening over and over again. Certainly, that’s what science relies on. But what Hume asks us is, “Where is the actual connection?” We can do all the math, and assert all of the physical laws we want, but we can’t find the actual connection between the two things. We can never say for sure that the next time I let go of an apple that it wouldn’t fly up. Maybe there will be a reason, like God changing the laws of physics, or a little UFO sucking upward with its abductor ray, but either way, we don’t know for sure that the future will be like the past. In fact, it often isn’t. But our predictions of the future rely on our assumption that the future will mimic the past in a predictable way.
Why do we think the future will be like the past? It might just be because things seem very stable and regular from our perspective. But we’re very mistaken about that. The world of the very tiny, the quantum world, is so random and crazy as to drive philosophers nuts. I like to think that scientists have better reason to assume that the future will be like the past, because they’re discovering the basic framework of how the universe works. But if they, and we, are honest, what we really mean is they are discovering the framework for how the universe tends to work and seems to work. At any given moment, we might discover that the causal connections we think connect events are completely wrong. Certainly, it’s happened in the past. It’s not unusual for us to develop a whole theory of how the world works, do a bunch of mathematics to support it, and then discover that we were completely wrong.
You Kids Better Stop Donkin’ Around!
Think of how we once assumed that the Earth’s the center of the universe. It’s not like everyone just assumed that without doing some science and math. There was tons of mathematics that scientists did to support that conclusion. They could use that math and the physics they developed to make predictions about planets and stars. And what they saw made observational sense! They could see the universe moving around the unmoving world. And then Copernicus and Galileo came along and turned the world on its head. Almost literally! AND THEN what’s funny is Newton and Einstein came along and pointed out that location and motion are relative and (technically speaking) it isn’t inaccurate to say that the universe is moving around the Earth—it just makes the math much more complex and annoying. Not to mention the explanation is a bit less sensible.
But that’s the problem. It’s the same problem when have when we reject Adventure Time for being a bit loopy. We want things to make sense, but “making sense” really means “makes sense to me from what I know about the world.” But what we know about the world is often wrong. To go back to that first point, we know the world to be stable, solid, and predictable, but really all that stable stuff is made of stuff that is constantly moving, and shifting, and is mostly empty space.
So maybe that’s the real problem. We’re trying to find laws of physics and laws of causality that make sense to us. And by that we mean stable, and rational, without random events. We want those laws to explain a world that we see as consistent and solid—but it isn’t. It might be that the people of Ooo are in a far better position to actually figure out the nature of reality. They come from a world that has random stuff happen all the time, they know the world isn’t stable or solid, and so they don’t try to force it to make sense that way.
In other words, maybe that’s why Finn and Jake were horrified—but not really surprised—when Tree Trunks exploded. When the boys try to make sense of the world, they don’t try to smuggle in consistent laws of physics that help explain a solid and stable universe. They don’t assume that the future will be like the past. So, to them, making sense doesn’t require that they have this constant concept of “causes always leading to effects.” The world that they see every day (which makes sense to them because they see it every day) has random occurrences all the time. We have no idea how to deal with those kinds of things, because the world we grew up in seems to be so regular and constant that we assume “regular and constant” means “sensible.”
What I mean is only this: when we look closely at the universe, scientists are now realizing that there is a lot of randomness in it—stuff that sounds crazy, like virtual particle pairs appearing and disappearing for no reason, particles affecting each other across the universe without touching, even particles arriving places before they left! And this drives scientists crazy. In fact, Einstein couldn’t stand it. He said once, “God does not play dice with the universe!” This crazy randomness of the universe is something that the rest of us ignore. But at least the scientists are trying to figure it out. The worry is that as long as we expect the universe to make sense in the way we assume sense should be—stable, constant, and causal, then we may never understand the universe, because it is none of those things!
The funny part is that all that randomness wouldn’t bug us all so much if we lived in a world like Ooo. Well, to be more specific, we do live in a world like Ooo, but because of our size and perspective, we’re only just are starting to realize it—but it may only be young minds, those to whom shows like Adventure Time make sense, who can really accept and understand the true nature of reality.