wolf-3
Original: wolf-3 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1 (Narration): Every day the boy would go into the woods and cry "Wolf!"
Panel 2 (Narration): Men from the village would come to save him only to realize they'd been deceived.
Boy: Ha! You tried to save me from death, dumbshits!
Panel 3 (Narration): They told him his pranks would one day backfire against him.
Villager: We won't always come if you always lie!
Panel 4 (Narration): Unfortunately, the boy had statistical training.
Boy: The odds of a wolf eating me are infinitesimal, while the pleasure I receive from pranking you guys over and over and over is vast. The expected value here is quite positive.
Panel 5 (Narration): The boy continued crying wolf and nothing bad ever happened to him. He is very old now and remembers this period of his life fondly.
Old man: Heh. They were all dumbshits.
Votey:
The old man, in a speech bubble: Why am I alone?
Panel 2 (Narration): Men from the village would come to save him only to realize they'd been deceived.
Boy: Ha! You tried to save me from death, dumbshits!
Panel 3 (Narration): They told him his pranks would one day backfire against him.
Villager: We won't always come if you always lie!
Panel 4 (Narration): Unfortunately, the boy had statistical training.
Boy: The odds of a wolf eating me are infinitesimal, while the pleasure I receive from pranking you guys over and over and over is vast. The expected value here is quite positive.
Panel 5 (Narration): The boy continued crying wolf and nothing bad ever happened to him. He is very old now and remembers this period of his life fondly.
Old man: Heh. They were all dumbshits.
Votey:
The old man, in a speech bubble: Why am I alone?
Alt text
A five-panel SMBC comic retelling "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." Panel 1: a small boy stands in green woods; narration reads "Every day the boy would go into the woods and cry 'Wolf!'" Panel 2: a group of bearded villagers arrive; the grinning boy says, "Ha! You tried to save me from death, dumbshits!" Panel 3: a villager warns, "We won't always come if you always lie!" Panel 4: the boy, unfazed, explains he has statistical training: the odds of a wolf eating him are infinitesimal while the pleasure of pranking everyone is vast, so the expected value of crying wolf is positive. Panel 5: a very old, bearded, bespectacled man sits in a chair, smiling, narration noting nothing bad ever happened to him and he remembers this fondly; he says, "Heh. They were all dumbshits." Votey: the same old man, now drawn alone, says in a speech bubble, "Why am I alone?" The joke: his clever expected-value reasoning ignored that lying drove everyone away.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.