2012-05-28
Original: 2012-05-28 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Title caption (top banner): ETHICS GETS WEIRD WHEN YOU TRY TO ACCOUNT FOR FUTURE RESULTS
Panel: A person seen in profile holds up a sheet of paper covered in handwriting. The handwritten note reads:
"Lives saved by Batman = B
Therefore, Lives saved by the people who killed Batman's parents = (B-2)"
Votey:
A hand-drawn line graph. The vertical (Y) axis is labeled "PEOPLE WHOSE DEATHS ARE IN PART A RESULT OF YOUR ACTIONS". The horizontal (X) axis is labeled "TIME". The plotted curve rises exponentially, sweeping upward to an arrowhead at the top right.
Panel: A person seen in profile holds up a sheet of paper covered in handwriting. The handwritten note reads:
"Lives saved by Batman = B
Therefore, Lives saved by the people who killed Batman's parents = (B-2)"
Votey:
A hand-drawn line graph. The vertical (Y) axis is labeled "PEOPLE WHOSE DEATHS ARE IN PART A RESULT OF YOUR ACTIONS". The horizontal (X) axis is labeled "TIME". The plotted curve rises exponentially, sweeping upward to an arrowhead at the top right.
Alt text
A yellow banner across the top reads "ETHICS GETS WEIRD WHEN YOU TRY TO ACCOUNT FOR FUTURE RESULTS." Below, a person shown in profile holds up a sheet of handwritten paper. The note reads: "Lives saved by Batman = B. Therefore, Lives saved by the people who killed Batman's parents = (B-2)." The joke: since Batman became a hero because his parents were murdered, the murderers indirectly get credit for every life Batman saves, minus the two they directly took. The votey (a small follow-up panel) is a hand-drawn graph with an exponential curve climbing sharply upward; its Y-axis is labeled "PEOPLE WHOSE DEATHS ARE IN PART A RESULT OF YOUR ACTIONS" and its X-axis is labeled "TIME," suggesting that the longer you live, the more deaths your actions can be tenuously connected to.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.