SMBC Comics Forum

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/god-computer

What, Zach, you think you're too good to call it Godputer?

libertarianism, communism, socialism, capitalism , Totalitarianism

think for your self, or something will do it for you....

I don't understand why there's so much emphasis on emotional states. They're just tools, not goals. And they're self-limiting, too - both happiness and sadness tend to diminish over time. Contentment lasts, when there's nothing particularly bad that happened to you recently and you don't need to seek anything, but philosophers rarely seem interested in maximizing contentment.

Unless they're Buddhist, I guess.

I hate it when I see something as smelly...

Genuine question: why do all the diverse people of colour have universally Caucasoid features?

Really, once you see it, you won't be able to unsee it. Is this a limit of artistic ability, halfway-house tokenism, or sometinge else?

"The humans responded by living happy good lives in an effort to make other humans jealous and ashamed." We call this "Facebook".

Rogerborg wrote:Genuine question: why do all the diverse people of colour have universally Caucasoid features?

Really, once you see it, you won't be able to unsee it. Is this a limit of artistic ability, halfway-house tokenism, or sometinge else?

My guess would be limited artistic ability. When you're learning art in the US, no one teaches you how to draw anything but Caucasoid features. This is also often true when you look up tutorials (unless, of course, you specifically look up how to draw people of color). Similarly, if you live among a majority white population and primarily use people you see as subjects for study, you're usually going to be drawing white people.

The sad result of this is that most artists can only draw Caucasoid features correctly, and when they try to branch out into different peoples, they end up grossly exaggerating the facial features and it looks like a racist caricature. Of course, Zach could just look up tutorials on how to draw people correctly, but considering that after all these years he still can't draw a cat, I'd say that his laziness is a limiting factor. However, if you look at the cover for Open Borders, you can tell that he's at least trying to depict people of various ethnic backgrounds with distinct facial features, he's just not doing a particularly great job.

Or maybe I'm giving him too much benefit of the doubt. Or maybe all of the people of color in his comic come from populations with dark skin and Caucasoid features.

I guess I'm living in a bubble of sorts, what features do you mean specifically?

I'm Caucasoid and I don't look anything like those people. God-Computer help us if that guy tries to draw identifiable characteristics of a black character. (As opposed to drawing, or rather coloring a black president since 1994.)

I came here to say that God-Computers suck. You can't argue or reason with them... I suppose that does also go for most gods.

NeatNit wrote:I guess I'm living in a bubble of sorts, what features do you mean specifically?

These skulls are extreme examples used for comparison; most people don't fit squarely into any one of these categories. Also, these skulls are only really useful in populations where those features dominate in particular ethnic groups. In certain populations Egypt, for example, many people have very dark skin but their skulls generally fall into the category that forensic anthropologists in America use for white people. Ultimately it's another way that the concept of race is used as a poor surrogate for variation between populations.

This of course, raises a bigger issue when drawing characters with features from different populations - most of them don't actually express when there's soft tissue on the skull. Even worse yet, when you make a color-neutral image, people can't seem to tell the difference in facial features between populations at all.