Comic #7042: sum
Description
Here's the transcription of the comic:
Panel 1
- Person 1: "Should you live the perfect life or create the perfect work?"
- Person 2: "Oh, that’s easy. Go for the vector sum."
Panel 2
- Text: "Life is made of two orthogonal goals - great life and great work. We can graph that. Call the axes L and W. sqrt(L²+W²) = D, where D is total distance from the least ideal life."
- Graph with axes labeled:
- L (Greatest life)
- W (Greatest art)
- Zone of impossibility
- Curve labeled “Pretty good.”
Panel 3
- Text: "This explains all human experience. Why are so many great artists and scientists and philosophers huge dickwads with tortured lives? Because if you’re temperamentally bad at enjoying life, your best way to max your D-score is to run right down the X axis!"
Panel 4
- Person 1: "Hmm. Somehow assigning a single-axis utility score to human life felt ok but this feels weird."
- Person 2: "If we add axes for sex and power we can get a eudaimonia hypercube!"
- Person 1: "What’s that good for?"
- Person 2: "Ted Talk. Immediate Ted Talk."
Source: smbc-comics.com