What are you guys doing here?
When you left you weren't sure whether or not you wanted to know what was in your Dad’s letter so we came up with kind of a cool solution.
Oh yeah, what’s that?
It’s simple really. It occurred to me that knowing and not knowing can be achieved by creating a macroscopic example of quantum superposition. The principle that a physical system exists partially in all of its possible states at once.
We were all thinking it, really. Kind of the elephant in the room.
Anyway, um, I realized if we each present you with an account of what your father wrote to you, only one of which is true, and we don’t tell you which one it is, you will forever be in a state of epistemic ambivalence.
Yeah. And he said if it wasn't epistemic, we might as well not do it.
Sit down, honey.
Raj, you’re up.
Okay. It was a card for your eighteenth birthday. Inside it said: Happy Birthday Howard. I love you, Dad. Oh, and it was a Farsides’ card, the one where the frog has his tongue stuck to the underside of an airplane. Thinks it’s a fly. Silly frog. So funny.
Sheldon.
It was a map, leading to the lost treasure of famous pirate One-Eyed Willy.
Nice try. That’s the plot for Goonies.
Told you.
Don’t.
Amy.
You didn’t know it, but your father was in the auditorium at your high school graduation and he cried because he was so proud of you.
Really?
Or that’s complete poppycock which Amy made that up and it could still be the map.
Penny.
It was a letter explaining that your Dad wasn't who he said he was. Eventually his other life caught up to him and the only way to keep you and your Mom safe was to leave.
I would like to change mine. The pirate’s name was Peg Leg Antoine. Now it’s completely different from Goonies.
No it’s not.
Don’t.
OK, my turn. Your Dad wrote about how family is the most important thing and that you should never throw it away like he did.
Hm.
Bernadette.
Inside the envelope was a picture of your Dad holding you the day you were born. On the back he wrote: Howard, my son, my greatest gift. [Howard gets up and walks away]. You okay?
Yeah. I’m terrific.
So? Which one do you think it is, matey?
Actually I don’t want to know. I want all of them to be true.
Well, one of them is.
That is pretty cool. Thank you guys.
More from this episode
All quotes from this episode →More The Big Bang Theory quotes · These quotes come from Wikiquote's The Big Bang Theory pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.