this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
1260 points (95.3% liked)
Comic Strips
12959 readers
1579 users here now
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
- The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
- The comic must be a complete story.
- If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
- You may post comics from others or your own.
- If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
- The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
- Politeness.
- Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
Web of links
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world: "I use Arch btw"
- !memes@lemmy.world: memes (you don't say!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah, Idiocracy has this basic assumption that people are generally acting in good faith, even the ones with more selfish tendencies. It's been a while since I've seen it, but didn't someone else get frozen along with the MC and started out with a "fuck you, I'll take care of myself however I need to" before later pivoting to a "we need to work together to save the world!"
Just like that Batman scene where the boat full of civilians and the boat full of criminals have the trigger for each others' bombs. In the real world, I'd bet the guard that was handed the trigger on the prisoner boat would have pressed it almost immediately. And if he didn't, there would have been a riot on the civilian boat to push it rather than a calm vote that decides against it, followed closely by the same thing on the prisoner boat. And many from both boats would have just bailed into the water rather than trust the other boat to not kill them. Joker would have been completely right in his prediction of how things would go. Especially in a city like Gotham. The catch should have been that the boats had their own trigger instead of each others'.
Would you press the button?
Well I'd assume Joker was lying and that each boat actually controlled their own bomb to fuck with the ones who didn't press the button, because who would believe they didn't press it? It would cause so much more chaos that way (actually max chaos might be to rig both buttons to blow up the prisoners, though I could also see reasons for him to rig up both to blow up the civilians).
I'm not even sure I'd be on the boat in the first place, though it's easy to say that in hindsight, knowing how things turn out. I'd probably have made every effort to gtfo of Gotham earlier than that if I could.
But for an answer that doesn't completely sidestep the question, I don't know. It's a prisoner's dilemma and I know the optimal solution is if both sides trust each other, but I'd also have a hard time trusting both the other prisoner as well as the "guards" (in this case Joker) setting up the whole situation, knowing there's no reason they need to be honest about the outcomes of each choice. Like even in the movie, Joker was going to just blow up at least one of the boats anyways when neither of them pressed the button.
Best bet would probably be to go for a swim.
What about you?
I'd like to think that I wouldn't, but I guess you never really know until you're in the situation. Family would make the equation harder as well, I think I'd be much more willing to trust a stranger with my life rather than the lives of my nieces and nephews.