Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

conscience

2024-08-03 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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conscience
Votey panel for conscience
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Explanation

The comic depicts a moral dilemma: a person finds that an old lady has dropped a hundred dollars and debates whether to return it. Their conscience (depicted as a floating angel figure) argues they should return it because "it's the right thing to do." The person counters that the old lady was careless and would just lose it again, so maybe they should keep it.

Then a second figure appears and asks, "Who are you?" The answer: "Economist." The economist-conscience argues that the hundred dollars does not matter much since it was lost so carelessly, and "someone else would've picked it up anyway." This is a parody of economic reasoning -- specifically concepts like opportunity cost and rational actor theory -- being used to justify selfish behavior.

The punchline comes in the final panels where both the angel-conscience and the economist agree: "We can all agree... move on?" They walk away together, united in the decision to keep the money. The joke is that both moral philosophy and economic theory, despite approaching the question from completely different frameworks, can be twisted to reach the same self-serving conclusion. It satirizes how people use intellectual frameworks as post-hoc rationalizations for doing what they wanted to do anyway.

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