2011-05-21
Explanation
This two-panel comic plays on the concept of prophetic dreams. In the first panel, a man lies in bed rattling off an enormous list of random scenarios he is dreaming about: "Hang-gliding, wearing a hat, waiting for the bus, end of the world, tripping over my shoe, being at work, smelling a flower, fighting about politics, being a cowboy, getting married, swimming in the ocean..." and many more. In the second panel, labeled "Later...," he spots a blimp and exclaims "Oh my God! I had a premonition about this last night!" to a confused companion.
The comic satirizes the common belief in prophetic or precognitive dreams. The joke is that if you dream about enough different scenarios every night -- covering dozens of mundane and extraordinary situations -- eventually one of them will coincidentally match something that happens in waking life. People then selectively remember the "hit" (seeing a blimp) while ignoring the vast majority of "misses" (all the other things dreamed about that did not come true). This is a well-known cognitive bias called confirmation bias, and the comic illustrates it with perfect clarity.