ethical-conundrums
Original: ethical-conundrums on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1: A woman with brown hair (the speaker, who appears throughout) addresses someone off-panel.
Woman: Suppose you have a starving family and you pass a bakery.
Panel 2:
Woman: If you don't steal bread your family will die. If you do steal bread you are put into a runaway trolley!
Panel 3:
Woman: The trolley is headed for a crowd of people. You can pull its path so that it only hits one person.
Panel 4:
Woman: If you hit that lone person, their body will be surgically connected to yours in order to survive.
Panel 5: A listener (off-panel until now) finally interrupts.
Listener: Now this--
Woman: STOP!
Panel 6: The woman, exasperated, with another person visible in the foreground.
Woman: You're just concatenating ethical problems in a way that doesn't provide any additional clarity!
Woman: TWIST: the person who's surgically connected to you IS THE BAKER. (a small framed picture of the baker is shown on the wall)
Votey:
The woman (now drawn in a detailed, anguished close-up) continues, distraught.
Woman: And he wants you to pick which of your twins lives!
Woman: Suppose you have a starving family and you pass a bakery.
Panel 2:
Woman: If you don't steal bread your family will die. If you do steal bread you are put into a runaway trolley!
Panel 3:
Woman: The trolley is headed for a crowd of people. You can pull its path so that it only hits one person.
Panel 4:
Woman: If you hit that lone person, their body will be surgically connected to yours in order to survive.
Panel 5: A listener (off-panel until now) finally interrupts.
Listener: Now this--
Woman: STOP!
Panel 6: The woman, exasperated, with another person visible in the foreground.
Woman: You're just concatenating ethical problems in a way that doesn't provide any additional clarity!
Woman: TWIST: the person who's surgically connected to you IS THE BAKER. (a small framed picture of the baker is shown on the wall)
Votey:
The woman (now drawn in a detailed, anguished close-up) continues, distraught.
Woman: And he wants you to pick which of your twins lives!
Alt text
A six-panel comic. A brown-haired woman keeps piling ethical thought-experiments on top of each other in an escalating, absurd chain. Panel 1: 'Suppose you have a starving family and you pass a bakery.' Panel 2: 'If you don't steal bread your family will die. If you do steal bread you are put into a runaway trolley!' Panel 3: 'The trolley is headed for a crowd of people. You can pull its path so that it only hits one person.' Panel 4: 'If you hit that lone person, their body will be surgically connected to yours in order to survive.' Panel 5: A listener tries to break in with 'Now this--' and the woman snaps 'STOP! You're just concatenating ethical problems in a way that doesn't provide any additional clarity!' Final panel: undeterred, she adds 'TWIST: the person who's surgically connected to you IS THE BAKER,' with a tiny framed portrait of the baker on the wall. The joke is the runaway accumulation of mashed-up trolley-problem dilemmas that add complexity without insight. Votey: a detailed, anguished close-up of the woman's face as she presses on: 'And he wants you to pick which of your twins lives!'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.