2014-08-24
Explanation
The Joke
A woman is telling a story about walking with her baby sister near a softball game. She explains that she realized she could lower the chance of her sister getting hit by a softball if she sped up and got away from the game quicker. However, she then realized that if she sped up and her sister did get hit, the hit would feel like it was her fault — because she made an active decision. In contrast, staying the same speed was a "non-decision," so even though it was the objectively worse choice, she would never risk feeling guilty or ashamed.
In the final panel, she tells her father: "I guess what I'm saying, Dad, is I understand why you won't go back to get your degree." He responds with "Low blow, kid. Low blow."
The Humor
The comic satirizes the psychological phenomenon known as omission bias — the tendency for people to judge harmful actions as worse than equally harmful inactions. The woman's story perfectly illustrates how people often choose the objectively inferior option (walking slowly near a softball game) because taking action and failing feels worse than doing nothing and having something bad happen.
The punchline lands because the entire elaborate analogy turns out to be a passive-aggressive jab at her father for not going back to school. She has constructed a sophisticated philosophical argument just to tell her dad he is being irrational about his education — which he recognizes as a "low blow."
References
- Omission bias: A well-documented cognitive bias in psychology where people prefer inaction over action even when action would produce better outcomes, because negative outcomes from actions feel worse than negative outcomes from inaction.
- Status quo bias: Related to omission bias, this is the preference for the current state of affairs, where any change is perceived as riskier.