Bigger Problem
Bigger Problem
[Cueball, holding a clipboard next to his body in his left hand, holds his right hand palm up towards White Hat.] Cueball: I'm trying to fix <problem with the world>. Can you help?
[Cueball stands with both arms down while white Hat lift one hand up toward Cueball.] White Hat: It's obvious you don't actually care. If you did, you'd be trying to fix <bigger problem> instead.
[Same setting as the first picture, wit Cueball's hand a bit further out towards White Hat.] Cueball: Okay, want to help fix <bigger problem>? White Hat: No, for another reason I'll think of later.

Cueball is asking White Hat to help fix an unspecified problem with the world. Presumably, he is working for some form of charity and perhaps asking for donations or signatures. White Hat responds by saying that Cueball doesn't care (about, presumably, the world) and that he would be working to fix an unspecified larger issue if he really cared. Cueball then asks if White Hat would rather be working to solve that problem. However, White Hat says that he doesn't want to, but that he also hasn't come up with an excuse not to yet. White Hat seems as if he couldn't be bothered, and wants to go on with his life.
The claim that someone is not working towards an important issue, while not always completely invalid , is commonly used as a cheap tactic to ignore a solution to a problem, even when the person using it does want to help out with either cause and is also a logical fallacy known as the " Not as bad as " fallacy, Fallacy of Relative Privation , or Appeal to Worse Problems . In the last panel of this comic, White Hat reveals that he isn't sufficiently devoted to either cause to act on them, so that his bringing up the larger issue appears less like interest in the larger issue than an excuse to not support Cueball's cause.
The title text furthers this point. While the argument used by White Hat is supposed to imply that the person giving the argument cares about an issue that matters more (to the exclusion of the other issue), it's often used, as seen in this comic, as an excuse to not work to fix any problem, making it "a real slam-dunk argument against fixing any of them."
Both causes in the comic are referred to ambiguously and surrounded with angle brackets to imply that they can be filled it with any two problems, as the comic is supposed to depict a common situation that happens during discussions of many different causes.
This comic is quite similar to 871: Charity because both have a character that responds to people trying to help "by figuring out a reason that they're not really as good as they seem". Additionally, it seems to relate to 1447: Meta-Analysis on being very meta. 1232: Realistic Criteria has an extremely similar conversation between Cueball and White Hat.
People sometimes use similar fallacious reasoning against themselves, thinking that they shouldn't tackle "simple" "unimportant" problems when there are "important" problems outstanding, even if the former are within their ability to handle but the latter aren't.  This can be a form of self-sabotaging behavior.
In essence, this may be an example of the principle "The perfect is the enemy of the good." That is, it is better to make a small advance which does some good. If you insist on doing nothing until you cure everything to perfection, nothing will be done.
[Cueball, holding a clipboard next to his body in his left hand, holds his right hand palm up towards White Hat.] Cueball: I'm trying to fix <problem with the world>. Can you help?
[Cueball stands with both arms down while white Hat lift one hand up toward Cueball.] White Hat: It's obvious you don't actually care. If you did, you'd be trying to fix <bigger problem> instead.
[Same setting as the first picture, wit Cueball's hand a bit further out towards White Hat.] Cueball: Okay, want to help fix <bigger problem>? White Hat: No, for another reason I'll think of later.
