consequentialism
Original: consequentialism on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1
Red-haired person: Ethics should always be consequentialist. We need to consider not just our actions, but their potential results.
Panel 2
Dark-haired person (in red coat and yellow scarf): Maybe, but the problem is that you can't predict the future, especially in the very long term.
Panel 3
Red-haired person: So your ethical system is basically "do what will probably be good in the short term, and to hell with whatever comes later."
Panel 4
Dark-haired person: Yeah, but it's okay because science keeps improving our ability to predict. So, the "short term" we can predict gets longer and longer until it encompasses the rest of the future.
Panel 5
Red-haired person: That just creates a new problem: if you can predict the future perfectly, there is no ethics because everything is pre-determined.
Panel 6
Red-haired person: Your ethical framework only works if you believe humans will always be smarter than, say, cows, but pretty much idiots on a cosmic scale.
Panel 7
Dark-haired person (now smiling, gesturing toward the red-haired person): [no dialogue]
Panel 8
Dark-haired person: Which... actually... huh.
Red-haired person (cheerfully): This is the best of all possible worlds!
Votey:
A hand-drawn line graph. The vertical axis is labeled "happiness" and the horizontal axis is labeled "predictive power." The curve rises to a sharp peak near the low end of predictive power, then drops off steeply and flattens into a long low tail. A red dot far out on the low, flat tail of the curve is labeled "Humans."
Red-haired person: Ethics should always be consequentialist. We need to consider not just our actions, but their potential results.
Panel 2
Dark-haired person (in red coat and yellow scarf): Maybe, but the problem is that you can't predict the future, especially in the very long term.
Panel 3
Red-haired person: So your ethical system is basically "do what will probably be good in the short term, and to hell with whatever comes later."
Panel 4
Dark-haired person: Yeah, but it's okay because science keeps improving our ability to predict. So, the "short term" we can predict gets longer and longer until it encompasses the rest of the future.
Panel 5
Red-haired person: That just creates a new problem: if you can predict the future perfectly, there is no ethics because everything is pre-determined.
Panel 6
Red-haired person: Your ethical framework only works if you believe humans will always be smarter than, say, cows, but pretty much idiots on a cosmic scale.
Panel 7
Dark-haired person (now smiling, gesturing toward the red-haired person): [no dialogue]
Panel 8
Dark-haired person: Which... actually... huh.
Red-haired person (cheerfully): This is the best of all possible worlds!
Votey:
A hand-drawn line graph. The vertical axis is labeled "happiness" and the horizontal axis is labeled "predictive power." The curve rises to a sharp peak near the low end of predictive power, then drops off steeply and flattens into a long low tail. A red dot far out on the low, flat tail of the curve is labeled "Humans."
Alt text
An eight-panel SMBC comic showing a conversation between two people walking through a snowy field at dusk: a red-haired person in a green jacket and a dark-haired person in a red coat with a yellow scarf. The red-haired person argues that ethics should always be consequentialist, weighing the potential results of our actions. The dark-haired person counters that you can't predict the future, especially long-term, so consequentialism reduces to "do what's probably good short-term and to hell with later." The dark-haired person replies that science keeps extending how far ahead we can predict, until the predictable "short term" eventually covers the whole future. The red-haired person points out two problems: if you could predict perfectly there'd be no ethics because everything would be predetermined, and the framework only works if humans are smarter than cows yet idiots on a cosmic scale. The dark-haired person pauses, smiling, and says "Which... actually... huh," while the red-haired person cheerfully concludes, "This is the best of all possible worlds!" Votey (aftercomic): a hand-drawn graph with "happiness" on the vertical axis and "predictive power" on the horizontal axis. The curve spikes to a tall peak at low predictive power, then crashes down into a long flat tail. A red dot far out on that low tail is labeled "Humans" — the joke being that humans have just enough predictive power to be miserable, far past the happy peak.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.