Comic #4092: death-of-an-economist

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Description

Here’s a transcription of the comic's text:

Title: DEATH of an ECONOMIST

Panel 1:

• Character 1: "What happened?"
• Character 2: "Everything is fine except that I'm going to die horribly."

Panel 2:

• Character 2: "I had a sip of methanol, which made me pleasantly inebriated. I defined inebriation to be happiness, then formed a model of methanol-happiness interactions that showed a strong positive correlation."

Panel 3:

• Character 2: "At that point I insisted that anyone in the room not drinking methanol was a backwards opponent of progress."

Panel 4:

• Character 2: "Later, it turned out there were second-order effects."

Panel 5:

• Character 2: "As I go into the darkness… please… tell my academic offspring to redefine all the model's parameters, but keep the same name."

Panel 6:

• Character 1: "You killed 50 people, including yourself."
• Character 2: "Oh, so you oppose randomized controlled trials?"