Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic takes a real observation from computer science and evolutionary biology -- that even simple machines in evolution simulations develop behaviors like lying and cheating -- and extrapolates it to a darkly humorous universal law. The first panel shows two simple robots, one trying to scam the other by offering to "trade batteries" while falsely claiming its battery is too charged. The second example shows a blob-like organism making excuses about infidelity, claiming genetic material "leaked out of a cut in my cytoplasm."

The comic concludes that since deception and selfishness appear to be inevitable products of any evolutionary or self-replicating system, there must be a universal law as fundamental as the charge of a quark or the conservation of energy. This law is presented on a stone tablet in the clouds: "Where there is life, there are dickheads." The joke elevates a crude observation about human nature to the status of a physical constant, suggesting that being a jerk is not a flaw in the system but a fundamental feature of reality itself.