determined
Explanation
This comic tackles philosophical determinism -- the idea that all events, including human actions, are determined by prior causes and that free will is an illusion. A criminal, caught in the act, protests to a police officer: "Ha! You can't arrest me! My muggings are the result of prior probabilities and an environment I didn't design or select, rendering the idea of justice meaningless!"
The caption below delivers the punchline: "Unfortunately, due to the boundary conditions of reality, the policeman was not a philosophical determinist." The officer proceeds to arrest the criminal regardless.
The humor lies in the practical absurdity of using determinism as a legal defense. While the philosophical argument about free will and moral responsibility is a genuine and serious debate in philosophy, the comic highlights that determinism, if taken to its logical conclusion, also determines the policeman's response -- which is to arrest the criminal anyway. The criminal's argument is self-defeating: if determinism is true, then the officer's decision to arrest him is equally determined and cannot be argued against. The comic cleverly illustrates the "pragmatic" problem with hard determinism -- even if it's theoretically true, it provides no practical escape from consequences, because those consequences are also determined.