Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic explores the ethical implications of eating cows through a child's questions. The child asks if it's okay to eat cows, and the mother responds that it is because cows don't have souls -- they're just "complex stimulus-response machines." The child then asks a follow-up question that catches the mother off guard by pressing on where the line is.

The twist comes in the final panels: the child asks "You're not gonna eat me, are you?" The mother says "No" but then adds "But I'd be okay if I did." This is the punchline -- the mother's philosophical framework for justifying eating cows (that they're just stimulus-response machines without souls) logically extends to humans as well, since from a materialist perspective, humans are also complex stimulus-response machines. The mother inadvertently reveals that her justification for eating meat, taken to its logical conclusion, would also justify cannibalism. The comic satirizes how people construct convenient philosophical frameworks to justify their existing behaviors without thinking through the full implications.