hands-down
Original: hands-down on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Narration / caption above a graph: "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."
The graph is a quarter-circle arc on L (vertical) and W (horizontal) axes. Labels around it: top-left "Greatest life" pointing to the top of the arc; "Zone of impossibility" pointing to the region beyond the arc; "Greatest art" pointing to the far right of the arc; "Pretty good!" labeling a point on the arc.
Panel 2:
Man (with brown/orange hair, pointing): "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!"
Woman (dark hair, pink jacket) listens, smiling.
Panel 3 (left):
Woman: "Hmm. Somehow assigning a single-axis utility score to human life felt OK but this feels weird."
Woman (excited, hands raised): "If we add axes for sex and power we can get a eudaimonia hypercube!"
Panel 4 (right):
Man: "What's that good for?"
Woman: "Ted talk. Immediate Ted talk."
Votey:
A man stands in a cave-like space with two large rounded shapes (boulders/eggs) and a smaller rounded shape. Caption text: "Also a completely inhuman mind. Maybe have it live in a cave alone so we don't have to see it unless it emerges."
Narration / caption above a graph: "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."
The graph is a quarter-circle arc on L (vertical) and W (horizontal) axes. Labels around it: top-left "Greatest life" pointing to the top of the arc; "Zone of impossibility" pointing to the region beyond the arc; "Greatest art" pointing to the far right of the arc; "Pretty good!" labeling a point on the arc.
Panel 2:
Man (with brown/orange hair, pointing): "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!"
Woman (dark hair, pink jacket) listens, smiling.
Panel 3 (left):
Woman: "Hmm. Somehow assigning a single-axis utility score to human life felt OK but this feels weird."
Woman (excited, hands raised): "If we add axes for sex and power we can get a eudaimonia hypercube!"
Panel 4 (right):
Man: "What's that good for?"
Woman: "Ted talk. Immediate Ted talk."
Votey:
A man stands in a cave-like space with two large rounded shapes (boulders/eggs) and a smaller rounded shape. Caption text: "Also a completely inhuman mind. Maybe have it live in a cave alone so we don't have to see it unless it emerges."
Alt text
A four-panel SMBC comic. Panel 1 shows a quarter-circle arc graph with vertical axis L and horizontal axis W, captioned that life is made of two orthogonal goals (great life and great work), and that SQRT(L^2 + W^2) = D is the total distance from the least ideal life. The arc is labeled 'Greatest life' at top, 'Greatest art' at right, 'Pretty good!' on the arc, and 'Zone of impossibility' beyond it. Panel 2: a man points and says this explains why so many great artists and scientists are tortured dickwads, because if you're temperamentally bad at enjoying life, the best way to maximize your D-score is to run straight down the X axis. A woman in a pink jacket listens. Panel 3: the woman says assigning a single-axis utility score to life felt OK but this feels weird, then enthusiastically suggests adding axes for sex and power to get a 'eudaimonia hypercube.' Panel 4: the man asks what that's good for; she replies 'Ted talk. Immediate Ted talk.' Votey: a man stands in a cave with large rounded boulder-like shapes; caption reads that it is also a completely inhuman mind, maybe have it live in a cave alone so we don't have to see it unless it emerges.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.