2014-12-16
Explanation
The Joke
A king or ruler announces a series of genocides with escalating philosophical implications. First: "We killed all of the dinosaur-riders. We're not sure how many there were." Second: "We killed all of the ethicists. We're not sure if that was right or wrong." Third: "We killed all of the epistemologists." Someone asks "Why?" and the king responds: "No one can answer that."
The Humor
The comic is a dark logic puzzle built on self-referential consequences. Each genocide eliminates the very people who could address the uncertainty raised by the act. Killing the dinosaur-riders (census-takers or record-keepers, implied by uncertainty about their numbers) means no one can count how many there were. Killing the ethicists means no one remains who can evaluate whether the killings were morally right or wrong. And killing the epistemologists -- scholars who study the nature of knowledge itself -- means no one can even answer the question "why," since epistemologists are the ones who deal with the justification of knowledge and belief. Each successive genocide is more philosophically devastating than the last.