free-will-5
Explanation
This comic takes on the philosophical debate about free will through the lens of academic politics.
In the first panel, a younger academic rushes up to a professor exclaiming "Professor! Professor! I've done it! I've proved mathematically, beyond doubt, that humans are free!" -- claiming to have resolved one of philosophy's oldest questions.
In the second panel, the professor responds: "We have always prided ourselves on our open-mindedness." This sounds encouraging at first. But in the third panel, the professor continues: "Can you freely choose to let me publish it and take all the credit?" -- immediately exploiting the proof of free will to test whether the discoverer will "freely" submit to academic exploitation.
The joke works on two levels. First, it satirizes the cutthroat nature of academic credit and publication, where senior researchers sometimes take credit for junior colleagues' work. Second, it creates a delicious logical trap: if the junior academic truly proved free will exists, then they should be able to freely choose to give up credit -- but that "free choice" is being coerced by a power dynamic, which undermines the very concept of freedom. The professor's request is a practical disproof of the theoretical proof.