Consequent

|< < Prev Comic #7159 (May 20, 2024) Next > >|

Consequent

Title text: How did it become ethics month at SMBC?

Votey

Explanation

This explanation is either missing or incomplete.

Transcript

This transcript was generated by a bot: The text was scraped using AWS's Textract, which may have errors. Complete transcripts describe what happens in each panel — here are some good examples to get you started (1) (2).

[Describe panel here]

How is it that all humans have similar intuitions but we have multiple ethical frameworks that people can't agree on?

We don't. Everyone is a utilitarian consequentialist, they just don't realize it.

What about virtue ethicists, who concern themselves with behaving in a right fashion, or deontologists who want universal maxims based on duty? What about religious traditions based entirely on a deity's commandments?

Take any of those traditions and consider any behavior they permit which consequentialism doesn't. Refusing to lie to save a life. Eating forbidden food. That sort of thing. Now, ask them what they'd do if performing that behavior caused 400 hamsters to explode.

Bet the moment the hamster-fur starts flying, they reevaluate their theory!

You know that joke about how everyone is a prostitute for enough money? It's the same with ethics. Everyone's a consequentialist for enough exploding hamsters.

I'd like to read a paper on this just for the illustrations.

Ham-splosions are the first objective measure of utility.

Caption: smbc-comics.com

Votey Transcript

This transcript was generated by a bot: The text was scraped using AWS's Textract, which may have errors. Complete transcripts describe what happens in each panel — here are some good examples to get you started (1) (2).

[Describe panel here]

If they're not consequentialists they're at least hamster-considering anti-not-consequentialists.

Olo

 add a comment! ⋅  add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅  refresh comments!

Discussion

No comments yet!