ethical-conundrums
Explanation
The Joke
A philosophy professor presents an ethical thought experiment to her class that starts simply enough: "Suppose you have a starving family. You pass a bakery." But then it rapidly escalates into absurdity. If you don't steal bread, your family will die. If you do steal bread, you get hit by a runaway trolley. The trolley is headed for a crowd of people, but you can alter its path so it only hits one person. If you hit that lone person, their body will be surgically connected to yours in order to survive. A student yells "Stop!" and objects: "You're just concatenating ethical problems in a way that doesn't provide any additional clarity." The professor's response reveals the final twist: "The person who's surgically connected to you IS the baker" — bringing the whole convoluted scenario full circle.
The Humor
The comic satirizes the tendency in philosophy classes and ethics textbooks to construct increasingly elaborate and unrealistic thought experiments. It specifically parodies the trolley problem (a famous ethics dilemma), Jean Valjean's bread-stealing dilemma from Les Miserables, and the "violinist" thought experiment by Judith Jarvis Thomson (where you wake up surgically connected to another person). By mashing all of these together, the comic highlights how these hypotheticals can become so convoluted that they lose their philosophical usefulness. The student's objection is the voice of reason, but the professor's deadpan reveal that the surgically attached person is the baker shows she is fully committed to making the scenario as needlessly interconnected as possible.
References
- The Trolley Problem: A famous thought experiment in ethics, first introduced by Philippa Foot in 1967, asking whether it is moral to divert a trolley to kill one person in order to save five.
- Jean Valjean / Les Miserables: Victor Hugo's novel features a protagonist who steals bread to feed his starving family, raising questions about the morality of theft under desperate circumstances.
- Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist argument: A thought experiment from her 1971 paper "A Defense of Abortion," in which you wake up surgically connected to a famous violinist who needs your body to survive.