Conversion
Original: Conversion on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
A professor (a woman with brown hair, wearing a red shirt) stands at a green chalkboard, holding a piece of chalk, facing a row of silhouetted students.
Professor (speech bubble): "Scenario: You're in a runaway trolley, but you can switch tracks. Every time you hit an individual person, five are spared. You have to perform this action at n switches in a way that generates the most ethics in the shortest line of track."
Caption (below panel): We turned the philosophy students into computer scientists so subtly that no one noticed until it was too late.
Votey:
A close-up of a person's face (the red-button character, drawn in simple line art) speaking, mouth open.
Speaker: "Now you have to use logic to pose questions AND answer them!"
A second figure in the foreground reacts in horror, screaming: "NOOOOOO"
A professor (a woman with brown hair, wearing a red shirt) stands at a green chalkboard, holding a piece of chalk, facing a row of silhouetted students.
Professor (speech bubble): "Scenario: You're in a runaway trolley, but you can switch tracks. Every time you hit an individual person, five are spared. You have to perform this action at n switches in a way that generates the most ethics in the shortest line of track."
Caption (below panel): We turned the philosophy students into computer scientists so subtly that no one noticed until it was too late.
Votey:
A close-up of a person's face (the red-button character, drawn in simple line art) speaking, mouth open.
Speaker: "Now you have to use logic to pose questions AND answer them!"
A second figure in the foreground reacts in horror, screaming: "NOOOOOO"
Alt text
A black-and-white-bordered SMBC comic. In the main panel, a brown-haired professor in a red shirt stands at a green chalkboard, chalk in hand, addressing a row of silhouetted students. Her speech bubble reframes the classic trolley problem in optimization terms: "Scenario: You're in a runaway trolley, but you can switch tracks. Every time you hit an individual person, five are spared. You have to perform this action at n switches in a way that generates the most ethics in the shortest line of track." The phrasing turns a moral dilemma into an algorithm-design problem (minimize cost over n switches). The caption reads: "We turned the philosophy students into computer scientists so subtly that no one noticed until it was too late." Votey (bonus panel): a simply-drawn face declares, "Now you have to use logic to pose questions AND answer them!" while a foreground figure recoils and screams "NOOOOOO," horrified at the prospect of having to formally prove answers.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.