solved
Original: solved on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Blonde woman in yellow jacket: What's your solution to the trolley problem? Do you kill five people or kill 1?
Woman with dark curly hair: Easy. Kill the lower number of people.
Panel 2:
Blonde woman: But suppose this: you're a doctor and you can kill 1 person to save 5.
Dark-haired woman: Obviously you don't.
Panel 3:
Blonde woman: Aha! They have the same structure. Hypocrisy!
Dark-haired woman: It's not hypocrisy. It's ecology. It's real life as an evolved ape.
Panel 4 (narration over a snowy landscape):
Dark-haired woman: In the first scenario, the trolley driver is just in an unlikely and bad situation. They may make a better or worse choice, but they're probably not going to end up in a runaway trolley ever again.
Panel 5 (narration over a snowy landscape):
Dark-haired woman: In the second scenario, you got a surgeon who thinks they can run around killing people all day as long the murder meets some utilitarian standard. In that case, you basically can't have any surgeons because everyone is terrified of going anywhere near them.
Panel 6:
Dark-haired woman: Pretty soon society stops working because anyone can be executed the moment some morality equation turns up with a plus sign.
Panel 7:
Blonde woman: Okay, but it's meant to be an abstraction. Is one thing better than the other?
Panel 8 (narration over a snowy landscape):
Dark-haired woman: Just an abstraction? So in this story, there are seven beings summoned into existence just to see how they solve a moral dilemma? If you're in THAT universe, the obvious move is to kill as many people as possible to thwart the evil creator deity.
Panel 9:
Narration / dark-haired woman: This is why philosophers and scientists don't get along.
Dark-haired woman (arms raised): To solve a trolley problem, you must first invent the universe!
Votey:
The weird thing is they made that path themselves years ago
Blonde woman in yellow jacket: What's your solution to the trolley problem? Do you kill five people or kill 1?
Woman with dark curly hair: Easy. Kill the lower number of people.
Panel 2:
Blonde woman: But suppose this: you're a doctor and you can kill 1 person to save 5.
Dark-haired woman: Obviously you don't.
Panel 3:
Blonde woman: Aha! They have the same structure. Hypocrisy!
Dark-haired woman: It's not hypocrisy. It's ecology. It's real life as an evolved ape.
Panel 4 (narration over a snowy landscape):
Dark-haired woman: In the first scenario, the trolley driver is just in an unlikely and bad situation. They may make a better or worse choice, but they're probably not going to end up in a runaway trolley ever again.
Panel 5 (narration over a snowy landscape):
Dark-haired woman: In the second scenario, you got a surgeon who thinks they can run around killing people all day as long the murder meets some utilitarian standard. In that case, you basically can't have any surgeons because everyone is terrified of going anywhere near them.
Panel 6:
Dark-haired woman: Pretty soon society stops working because anyone can be executed the moment some morality equation turns up with a plus sign.
Panel 7:
Blonde woman: Okay, but it's meant to be an abstraction. Is one thing better than the other?
Panel 8 (narration over a snowy landscape):
Dark-haired woman: Just an abstraction? So in this story, there are seven beings summoned into existence just to see how they solve a moral dilemma? If you're in THAT universe, the obvious move is to kill as many people as possible to thwart the evil creator deity.
Panel 9:
Narration / dark-haired woman: This is why philosophers and scientists don't get along.
Dark-haired woman (arms raised): To solve a trolley problem, you must first invent the universe!
Votey:
The weird thing is they made that path themselves years ago
Alt text
An eight-panel SMBC comic. A blonde woman in a yellow jacket asks a dark-haired woman (curly hair, green and red outfit) for her solution to the trolley problem: kill five people or kill one? The dark-haired woman says easy, kill the lower number. The blonde counters: what if you're a doctor and can kill one person to save five? The dark-haired woman says obviously you don't. The blonde accuses her of hypocrisy because the two cases have the same structure. The dark-haired woman replies it's not hypocrisy, it's ecology, real life as an evolved ape. Over panels showing tiny figures in a vast snowy landscape, she explains: in the first case the trolley driver is just in an unlikely bad situation and won't end up there again, but in the second case a surgeon who kills whenever a utilitarian standard is met would make everyone terrified of surgeons, and society collapses once anyone can be executed the moment a morality equation turns up positive. The blonde says it's meant to be an abstraction and asks if one thing is better than the other. The dark-haired woman replies that if it's just an abstraction where seven beings were summoned into existence to solve a moral dilemma, the obvious move is to kill as many people as possible to thwart the evil creator deity. Final panel: she throws her arms up and declares, 'This is why philosophers and scientists don't get along. To solve a trolley problem, you must first invent the universe!' Votey aftercomic: a single hand-lettered panel reading, 'The weird thing is they made that path themselves years ago.'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.