2011-06-13
Original: 2011-06-13 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Main comic:
A woman with large wavy hair, speaking at a podium with a microphone, gesturing with open hands:
"If one person kills someone, 50% of the people involved are victims. If 99 people kill someone, 1% of the people involved are victims.
The percent victims is given by V = the limit of K/X as X approaches infinity, where K is people killed, and X is the number of people involved.
Thus, for sufficiently large X, murder is a victimless crime.
So, the bigger we make a war, the more ethical it becomes."
Votey:
Caption: "THE MORE COMMON VERSION:"
A person's face in profile, speaking:
"It's not a lie if we're ALL liars!"
A woman with large wavy hair, speaking at a podium with a microphone, gesturing with open hands:
"If one person kills someone, 50% of the people involved are victims. If 99 people kill someone, 1% of the people involved are victims.
The percent victims is given by V = the limit of K/X as X approaches infinity, where K is people killed, and X is the number of people involved.
Thus, for sufficiently large X, murder is a victimless crime.
So, the bigger we make a war, the more ethical it becomes."
Votey:
Caption: "THE MORE COMMON VERSION:"
A person's face in profile, speaking:
"It's not a lie if we're ALL liars!"
Alt text
A woman with big wavy hair stands at a podium with a microphone, smiling and gesturing with open palms as she delivers a confident speech. Her speech bubble reads: "If one person kills someone, 50% of the people involved are victims. If 99 people kill someone, 1% of the people involved are victims. The percent victims is given by V = the limit of K/X as X approaches infinity, where K is people killed, and X is the number of people involved. Thus, for sufficiently large X, murder is a victimless crime. So, the bigger we make a war, the more ethical it becomes." The joke: she uses a mathematical limit to argue that scaling up murder into war dilutes the proportion of victims to zero, making mass killing supposedly more ethical. In the votey (aftercomic), a caption reads "THE MORE COMMON VERSION:" above a person's face in profile saying "It's not a lie if we're ALL liars!" — a blunter, everyday restatement of the same fallacy that wrongdoing becomes acceptable when enough people share in it.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.