dude . you ' re really drinking the propaganda punch if you ' re that fucking blind . <| sep |> Well looks like its time to star fucking things up I guess <| sep |> I don ' t think so . Are they meant to ? haha <| sep |> Title Ten ThousandTitletext Saying ' what kind of an idiot doesn ' t know about the Yellowstone supervolcano ' is so much more boring than telling someone about the Yellowstone supervolcano for the first time . Comic ExplanationStats This comic has been referenced 8788 times , representing 6 . 4174 % of referenced xkcds . x k c dtranscribersubjectignore % 20 memessageignore % 20 me x k c d t r a n s c r i b e r s ubjectdeletemessagedelete % 20 t 1 daee 9 la <| sep |> That ' s sad then . <| sep |> I ' m not trying to muddy things with semantics . I ' m trying to analyze what is involved in rewarding and punishing someone and finding that under consequentialism we not only ought no longer , but can no longer punish or reward people . This matters , because you seemed to say it was a worthwhile effort , under consequentialist morality , to try and find out how best to reward and punish people . As it turns out , since we can ' t actually punish or reward people , this isn ' t a worthwhile endeavour . I take it that what you actually meant , and what ' s worth spelling out , is how best to condition people to behave in what we deem good ways . But now a moral question arises that didn ' t arise in your previous formulation . We now have to ask , even under a consequentialist morality we have to ask , whether we should condition people in this way . Before , when we were talking about reward and punishment , it seemed obvious that we should reward and punish people , since these notions are tied up with desert , and if people deserve reward and punishment the only relevant question is how best to do it . But now , when we see that we are actually talking about how to condition people , we should ask whether we should do so at all . So my analysis , far from being mere semantics and far from muddying the issue , actually clarified the issues in your comment and turned up a relevant question to ask that before we missed .