Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

good-3

2022-07-27 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
good-3
Votey panel for good-3
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic features a recently deceased person arriving at the gates of heaven and speaking with God. The person says "I did it! I was good enough to get into heaven!" but God corrects them: "No, you weren't."

God then explains that in a universe governed by chaotic dynamics -- where butterfly effects mean that any action can cascade unpredictably -- just staying home and doing nothing could still cause catastrophic consequences somewhere on Earth. The implication is that in such a universe, it's impossible to be truly "good" because you can never fully control or predict the consequences of your actions (or inactions).

God then reveals the person was actually brought to heaven to discuss "consequentialist existentialism" -- a philosophical framework combining consequentialism (judging actions by their outcomes) with existentialism (confronting the absurdity and meaninglessness of existence). The joke is that even the afterlife isn't a reward but rather an eternal philosophy seminar about the impossibility of moral responsibility in a chaotic universe. This is a classic SMBC move: using the afterlife setup to explore a genuine philosophical problem in an absurd context.

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