2014-08-09
Original: 2014-08-09 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Woman (dark hair): Do you think we have free will?
Man (lighter hair): Pah!
Panel 2:
Man: It's a vacuous question. Does a vast assemblage of virgions, many of them in spin competition, have "free will"?
Panel 3:
Woman: It's like asking if a city has free will! I mean it makes choices, but it's not as if there's some dictator directing things.
Panel 4:
Man: But if there's no free will, how does justice work? How can people be held responsible for their actions?
Panel 5:
Woman: It's one of the hard consequences of realism. We have to live with it.
Panel 6 (man, with a flat/deadpan expression):
Man: I overfed your goldfish today. It's dead.
Panel 7:
Woman (shocked, wide-eyed): What?!
Votey:
The man (close-up, with a smug/sly expression):
Man: You're lucky "justice" is a pleasant lie.
Woman (dark hair): Do you think we have free will?
Man (lighter hair): Pah!
Panel 2:
Man: It's a vacuous question. Does a vast assemblage of virgions, many of them in spin competition, have "free will"?
Panel 3:
Woman: It's like asking if a city has free will! I mean it makes choices, but it's not as if there's some dictator directing things.
Panel 4:
Man: But if there's no free will, how does justice work? How can people be held responsible for their actions?
Panel 5:
Woman: It's one of the hard consequences of realism. We have to live with it.
Panel 6 (man, with a flat/deadpan expression):
Man: I overfed your goldfish today. It's dead.
Panel 7:
Woman (shocked, wide-eyed): What?!
Votey:
The man (close-up, with a smug/sly expression):
Man: You're lucky "justice" is a pleasant lie.
Alt text
A black-and-white comic. A woman with dark hair and a man with lighter hair lie in bed at night, talking philosophy. She asks if he thinks they have free will; he scoffs ("Pah!") and calls it a vacuous question, arguing that a person is just a vast assemblage of particles. She compares it to a city, which makes choices without any dictator directing things. He counters: if there's no free will, how can people be held responsible for their actions? She replies that it's one of the hard consequences of realism, and they have to live with it. In the next panel his face goes flat and blank as he announces, "I overfed your goldfish today. It's dead." She turns to him wide-eyed and shocked: "What?!" The joke: he weaponizes her no-free-will, no-responsibility argument as an excuse for killing her goldfish. Votey (aftercomic): a close-up of the man's smug, sly face beside a speech bubble reading, "You're lucky 'justice' is a pleasant lie."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.