Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

A character claims to have a strong moral compass. When tested with increasingly difficult ethical dilemmas, their moral compass turns out to point wherever is most convenient for them personally. They always have a principled-sounding justification for why the moral thing happens to align with their self-interest.

The Humor

The comic exposes motivated reasoning in moral thinking: we usually decide what we want to do and then construct a moral justification for it, rather than the other way around. The "moral compass" metaphor is turned on its head — a compass that always points toward your self-interest is not a compass, it's a mirror.

Context

This aligns with Jonathan Haidt's moral psychology research (described in The Righteous Mind), which argues that moral reasoning is primarily post-hoc rationalization: we have gut reactions first and construct justifications second. The comic illustrates this "elephant and rider" model — our rational mind (the rider) thinks it's steering, but it's really just narrating where the elephant (our emotions and self-interest) was going to go anyway.