sum
Original: sum on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Man with flame-like orange hair: Should you live the perfect life or create the perfect work?
Woman with black hair and round glasses: Oh that's easy. Go for the vector sum.
Panel 2 (a diagram with caption):
Caption: Life is made of two orthogonal goals - great life and great work. We can graph that. Call the axes L and W. SQRT(L^2+W^2) = D, where D is total distance from the least ideal life.
Diagram: A quarter-circle arc in the first quadrant. The vertical axis is labeled L, the horizontal axis labeled W. Top-left arrow points to the arc: "Greatest life". Right arrow points to the arc: "Greatest art". Label inside above the arc: "Zone of impossibility". Label below near the origin: "Pretty good".
Panel 3:
Woman (gesturing): This explains all human experience. Why are so many great artists and scientists and philosophers huge dickwads with tortured lives? Because if you're temperamentally bad at enjoying life, your best way to max your D-score is to run right down the X axis!
Panel 4:
Man: Hmm. Somehow assigning a single-axis utility score to human life felt ok but this feels weird.
Woman: If we add axes for sex and power we can get a eudaimonia hypercube!
Man: What's that good for?
Woman: Ted talk. Immediate ted talk.
Votey:
A hand-drawn sketch on a square framed background: a quarter-circle arc in the first quadrant with a straight diagonal arrow extending up and to the right from beyond the arc, labeled "internet randomist".
Man with flame-like orange hair: Should you live the perfect life or create the perfect work?
Woman with black hair and round glasses: Oh that's easy. Go for the vector sum.
Panel 2 (a diagram with caption):
Caption: Life is made of two orthogonal goals - great life and great work. We can graph that. Call the axes L and W. SQRT(L^2+W^2) = D, where D is total distance from the least ideal life.
Diagram: A quarter-circle arc in the first quadrant. The vertical axis is labeled L, the horizontal axis labeled W. Top-left arrow points to the arc: "Greatest life". Right arrow points to the arc: "Greatest art". Label inside above the arc: "Zone of impossibility". Label below near the origin: "Pretty good".
Panel 3:
Woman (gesturing): This explains all human experience. Why are so many great artists and scientists and philosophers huge dickwads with tortured lives? Because if you're temperamentally bad at enjoying life, your best way to max your D-score is to run right down the X axis!
Panel 4:
Man: Hmm. Somehow assigning a single-axis utility score to human life felt ok but this feels weird.
Woman: If we add axes for sex and power we can get a eudaimonia hypercube!
Man: What's that good for?
Woman: Ted talk. Immediate ted talk.
Votey:
A hand-drawn sketch on a square framed background: a quarter-circle arc in the first quadrant with a straight diagonal arrow extending up and to the right from beyond the arc, labeled "internet randomist".
Alt text
A four-panel SMBC comic. Panel 1: a man with flame-like orange hair asks a woman with black hair and round glasses, "Should you live the perfect life or create the perfect work?" She replies, "Oh that's easy. Go for the vector sum." Panel 2: a hand-drawn graph. Caption reads: "Life is made of two orthogonal goals - great life and great work. We can graph that. Call the axes L and W. SQRT(L^2+W^2) = D, where D is total distance from the least ideal life." A quarter-circle arc spans a first-quadrant graph with vertical axis L and horizontal axis W; arrows label the top of the arc "Greatest life" and the right of the arc "Greatest art," the region above the arc is the "Zone of impossibility," and near the origin it says "Pretty good." Panel 3: the woman explains, "This explains all human experience. Why are so many great artists and scientists and philosophers huge dickwads with tortured lives? Because if you're temperamentally bad at enjoying life, your best way to max your D-score is to run right down the X axis!" Panel 4: the man says, "Hmm. Somehow assigning a single-axis utility score to human life felt ok but this feels weird." The woman, excited: "If we add axes for sex and power we can get a eudaimonia hypercube!" Man: "What's that good for?" Woman: "Ted talk. Immediate ted talk." Votey (aftercomic): a rough sketch of the same quarter-circle arc graph, but a straight diagonal arrow shoots off the chart far past the arc, labeled "internet randomist" - mocking someone who maximizes the D-score by going off the rails.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.