Oh SMBC... - by faetal
Melan on 16/8/2012 at 14:26
And he even named the character Felix. Heh. :cool:
Chimpy Chompy on 16/8/2012 at 15:27
... why does one elated person and a billion miserable ones amount to more total happiness than a billion and one reasonably content people?
SubJeff on 16/8/2012 at 15:42
What is SMBC?
Chimpy Chompy on 16/8/2012 at 16:15
it's linked in the first post
scumble on 16/8/2012 at 17:22
I think it started off well, but the one man happiness concept doesn't make a great deal of sense. On the other hand I might be forgetting to just find it funny...
faetal on 16/8/2012 at 18:34
Like all humour, it won't please everyone.
Chimpy Chompy on 17/8/2012 at 09:12
In this context for the humour to work it needs to be based on a more sensible criticism! And I'm sure genuine problems can be posed for utilitarian ethics.
Generally SMBC is pretty good, mind you.
demagogue on 17/8/2012 at 10:03
I've seen a variation of this joke from the flip side. It was like one poor little girl that was made increasingly miserable so everybody else's happiness was added just a little. It was never entirely clear why... but implied something like a drug was made out of whatever her spleen excreted or something like that, and I believe it kept getting worse and worse for her until she ended up just living in a locked box with a small hole for air and food to be dropped in and tubes coming out to the happy dispensaries. (Wasn't so much of a "joke" as just really black or surreal humor, as everybody at some point had to look at the girl in the box as a major source of all their happiness. And are we really ok with this? You could imagine the utilitarian computer saying hells yeah! =V )
Edit: That variation on it hits home because it makes you think about like sweatshop workers in poor countries making the Nike shoes people go crazy for here, while their own life may be pretty dismal. Somebody might get the idea overall world happiness really is better as a result of their sacrifice, they were going to be miserable anyway but oh man those shoooooeeess!!! -- putting aside for the joke's sake reasonable arguments that if they weren't in the factory they might be in an even worse situation out in the fields, but you still get the idea.
