human-nature
Explanation
The Joke
The comic presents a "Know Your Schools of Thought on Human Nature" guide with four philosophical perspectives. The "Optimism" school says people are basically good, and "I want to hear as much as I can." The "Pessimism" school says people are basically bad, and similarly, "I want to hear as much as I can, but so I can protect myself and understand its reasoning." The "Realism" school takes a more nuanced view, stating that people are complicated and sometimes good and sometimes bad. But then the fourth school, "Realism" (presented as the true realist position), says that people are "really bad at figuring out if they're good or bad," and therefore "I want to hear as much as I can, so I'm going to ignore the exact right people."
The comic satirizes how every philosophical position on human nature ultimately just becomes a way to justify one's pre-existing biases about which information to pay attention to and which people to listen to or dismiss.
The Humor
The comedy builds through the structure of the guide, which sets up a pattern of increasingly nuanced positions that all arrive at the same self-serving conclusion. Each school of thought claims to want more information, but the final panel reveals the punchline: even the most sophisticated philosophical framework just becomes a tool for selectively ignoring people you disagree with. The joke works because it is uncomfortably true -- people across the political and philosophical spectrum all claim to value open-mindedness and evidence, but in practice use their worldview as a filter to dismiss inconvenient voices.