2014-06-04

An eight-panel SMBC comic. A scruffy man leans out of a van and asks a red-haired boy, "Hey kid. Wanna get in my van and affirm the consequent?" The boy asks what that is. The man explains: "It's when the truth of A implies the truth of B, so you assume the truth of B implies the truth of A." The boy protests, "My philosophy professor warned me about people like you!" The man replies, "If I'm a nice person, he'd have told you about me. Since he told you about me, I must be a nice person." The boy concedes, "That's a good point," then gets in the van and asks, "So, where are we going, mister?" Now driving with the boy beside him, the man grins menacingly: "Back to my house, to make you be an anti-vaccination pundit." The boy screams, "Noooooo!" The joke: the predatory van-stranger trope is recast with the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent, and the threatened fate is becoming an anti-vaccination pundit. Votey aftercomic: a partial speech bubble reads "...SLICE." above a simple smiling face drawn in loose black line art.