6 ms·
42
by osullivj 7y ago
42
- abledon 7y agothe answer is easy, its asking the right question thats the hard part
- zaarn 7y agoI believe in one part it's somewhat implied the question is "What is 6 times 9?", which is silly considering the answer is wrong.
- sohkamyung 7y agoYes it is; in base 13. :-) [1] [1] http://www.6times9.com/ http://www.6times9.com/
- zaarn 7y agoBy coincidence mostly.
- DrScientist 7y agoAre you saying the improbability of that approaches infinity?
- Izmaki 7y agoSo, there may be a real, meaningful question which result is 42, when using a different "base" to view the question at?
- zaarn 7y agoI think it's more poetic to view it as the question for the meaning of everything has a wrong answer to it. It doesn't make sense, the universe isn't specifically obligated to make any sense, so why should the ultimate question and answer?
- romdev 7y ago'I may be a sorry case, but I don't write jokes in base 13.' - Douglas Adams
- fullshark 7y agoThe miniseries ends with that reveal, and Arthur quips “I always knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe.”
- HansHamster 7y agoThe programming joke goes something like this: #define SIX 1+5 #define NINE 8+1 return SIX*NINE;
- mar77i 7y agoWell, on yet another level, isn't the universe - at least, as far as it's limited to our own human condition - all about wrong answers?
- simonh 7y agoIn the TV show, near the end you can just about hear the strains of Bob Dylan singing "How many roads must a man walk down....".
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoThat's on IIRC the Earth 2 in its very early existence and Arthur and Ford start pulling scrabble letters from the bag... I guess it has a few million years to run to resolve to the correct question. :) Presumably the mice would then require a third supercomputer to tell them why this is the most important question of life, the universe, and - you know - everything.
- shkkmo 7y agoIsn't it also implied that the question was wrong because humans weren't supposed to land on the earth in the first place and serve as a bug in the calculations?
- UncleSlacky 7y agoThe reason the question came out wrong is because Arthur is descended from the Golgafrinchans, not the native ape-men, i.e. the program was corrupted early on.
- moosterv 7y ago101010 in binary... (I owe, I owe, I owe)
- mar77i 7y agoApparently DA didn't think anything of the value of the number and just determined "42 will do"...
- rusk 7y agoI believe it was ”pick a number, any number” which was disclosed by Marvin quite early on, apparently as an easter egg. I read something explaining this somewhere ... don’t have the link to hand ...