Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic uses the metaphor of a black-and-white sphere to illustrate a shift in the author's understanding of why people argue. The title sets up the analogy: "Imagine truth is a sphere." In the first panel, labeled "This is what I used to think caused arguments," two people look at the same sphere from different angles -- one sees mostly the black side and declares "the sphere is all black," while the other sees the white side and declares "the sphere is all white." This represents the charitable interpretation that disagreements arise from people having different but equally valid perspectives on a complex truth.

In the second panel, labeled "This is what I think now," the two panels are virtually identical -- the same two people making the same declarations from the same positions. The joke is that the comic has not changed at all between the two panels, implying that the author's updated, more cynical view is that people do not actually disagree because of perspective differences. They argue because they stubbornly insist their partial view is the whole truth, even when they could easily see the other side. The lack of any visual change between the panels forces the reader to look more carefully, reinforcing the point that the problem was never about limited perspective but about willful refusal to consider other viewpoints.