2015-01-22
Explanation
The Joke
A bearded philosopher sits in a leather chair and announces that after years of study, he has concluded that the goal of life should be the maximization of personal pleasure. He has published a discussion of the topic in the Annals of Philosophy. The other person looks at the publication, and it is titled "Why I Wish I'd Gotten a Finance Degree Instead."
The Humor
The comic satirizes the irony of a philosopher arriving at hedonism (the maximization of personal pleasure) as the ultimate goal of life — and then realizing that his own career choice of philosophy is the worst possible path to achieving that goal. If personal pleasure is what matters most, then he should have pursued a career in finance, where he would have made far more money and been able to afford far more pleasures.
The joke operates on the meta-level: the philosopher has spent years of rigorous study only to reach a conclusion that retroactively invalidates the worth of those years of study. His academic paper is essentially a confession of regret. It also pokes fun at academic philosophy more broadly, suggesting that the field's conclusions sometimes undermine its own reason for existing.