ethical-conundrums-2
Explanation
The Joke
An alien visits Earth and announces itself as the leader of humanity, saying it has come from across the galaxy and wants to know how the human species would solve an ethical conundrum. The human woman responds with a hesitant "Wow... uh, okay." The alien then presents the scenario: a bridge is headed for a large group of garment workers, and you can tell them it will kill them all unless they steer it into a star, killing a small number of adorable beings on the star.
The woman suggests they call these "trolley problems" and that most of them have known solutions. She asks why they don't just do that. The final panel shows the alien steering a ship directly into a star, with the caption "No reason" -- revealing that the alien wasn't actually asking for philosophical guidance but was looking for moral justification for something it had already decided to do.
The Humor
The comic parodies the classic "trolley problem" in philosophy by scaling it up to absurd cosmic proportions -- a bridge hitting garment workers, steering into a star, adorable beings. The alien's question is suspiciously specific, and the punchline reveals it was never a hypothetical at all. The alien was seeking post-hoc ethical justification for a decision it had already made (or was in the process of making). This satirizes how people often use ethical thought experiments not to genuinely explore morality but to retroactively justify actions they've already committed to.
References
The trolley problem is a famous thought experiment in ethics, first introduced by philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967 and later elaborated by Judith Jarvis Thomson. It asks whether it is morally permissible to divert a runaway trolley to kill one person instead of five. The comic's title "Ethical Conundrums 2" suggests this is a sequel to an earlier comic exploring similar territory.