E31. "Idle Horns" - What do you do when it's punishment to punish?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: Set in hell, a demon, “Bub” asks the person he is torturing for eternity what he did to end up in hell. Turns out he stole a few bikes. This causes Bub to question his purpose and walk off the job. He climbs to limbo to take a break from it all. Eventually, Hermes comes to fetch him and bring him before Satan, who punishes him for eternity for walking off the job.

DISCUSSION: Wonderful story, both for the questions it asks, and the humor it brings to the situation. Brings up good questions about the “fairness” of eternal punishment for any temporary act. Also, brings up the question of a god who would is all good, all powerful, and all knowing, and yet allows people to be tortured. Nice twist on the concept in that Satan is hurting people, not because he cares about people, but because he knows it hurts God to see his children being hurt. Kolby wonders if walking off the job because of concerns about the morality of his actions should be enough to earn Bub a place in heaven.

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E30. "Farewell, Odysseus" - Would you get a human as a pet?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: Set in the future, the Dios are a group of super humans who, because of having the wealth over generations to make mental and physical enhancements, are a different, and superior, race. Humans on earth sometimes agree to go to live on Mars with the Dios as their pets. The narrator is one such person, that is, until he starts to ask too many questions.

DISCUSSION: Great world building. A longer and more complete story than we usually do. Perhaps this is a warning, not about keeping people as pets, but about the long term effects of the wealthy having access to technology that allows them to further separate themselves from the poor over generations. What level of difference in ability makes it okay to keep another species as a pet? Maybe the differences in the story aren’t as great as the Dios want them to seem? Is this slavery? Is it fair that those on earth are so poor this is their only way out? Is that the crime here? Is this different than having a “sugar-daddy” that takes care of you?

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E29. "All My Tomorrows" - How many tomorrows would you give up for a single yesterday?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: A sixteen year old girl is put in charge of her parents’ shop that sells memories of your past in exchange for a year of your future. The girl loves her job and all the memories she can feel leaking through the files. A sad man comes in and asks to have the memory of his “last good day.” She sells him the day at a discounted price for the remainder of the life he has left. It was, he says, the last day before he learned a terrible secret he never recovered from, one that caused his wife to leave him.

DISCUSSION: The story is so beautifully written. The energy of the young girl working alone, and the visuals of the memories and feelings as she walks by them draw you in so deeply to her joy. However, the story is terribly sad. Would you trade a year of your future for a past day? It means you think one year of your future can’t live up to one day of your past. It means you think your best days are behind you. It also means you are living in the past. Maybe would be worth doing it to see a dead parent again or to relive a past moment and provide forgiveness for past mistakes. The very fact that this is possible might make living for the future harder. It’s perfect that a young girl is working the shop, because she only sees the memories as positive, rather than in relation to the life people have today they compare those days to.

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E28. "The Seven Absent Sins" - Are all sentient species hard-wired to sin?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: A Jesuit Priest researches other sentient beings in the universe looking for species that are incapable of committing one of the cardinal sins. He finds six different species that, because of their biology, he says, cannot commit one of the sins. He is unable to find a species without the sin of Pride. He questions, but finally confirms, that this strengthens his belief in God.

DISCUSSION: Are there merits to the earth closing itself off from the universe for years in order to maintain its “cultural purity.” Is this a good idea or doomed to cause issues? Are there ways to preserve culture without bans on other cultures? Is sin automatic with choice? As soon as you have a sentient choice, does the fact you can make the wrong choice mean we are capable of sin? The examples for various species are tough, because it’s not like they aren’t capable of sin. The issue is that their biology or environment makes the sin impossible. So, with different choices available to different species, could there be different sins possible? Are the number of sins infinite?

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E27. "Two-Percenters" - Should we make everyone special?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: Set in the future, 2% of the population have a genetic makeup that allows them to be enhanced. The intelligent are very intelligent, the beautiful, like Greek gods. Because of their enhanced abilities, they run the world. An enhanced “Social” meets up with an enhanced “Rational” to tell him about a newly discovered drug that would allow the other 98% of the world to be able to be enhanced as well, but it would cause the 2% to regress to average, or worse. The Rational takes the vial and releases it into the world. The Social kills herself.

DISCUSSION: If things in this world are so amazing, why are the 98% causing civil unrest? Should the elite naturally be left to lead others? Does being super-human automatically make you super moral? Should the truly exception should lead the masses? if everyone is raised up, we are right back where we were, with people fighting to be on top and not enough to go around. Do we live in a meritocracy today? Doesn’t money allow those at the top to keep their children at the top today? The only ones with no choice are the 2% after the virus is released. Discussion about if we would release the virus.

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E26. "Snitch" - When doing a moral good, do the ends justify the means?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: A black pastor in New Orleans is trying to get a redevelopment project built for his poor community post Katrina. Things aren’t going well. A white person was robbed and beat up in the area, which scared off the banks from lending. The pastor goes to the local gang and pays them to keep white people safe. He also reaches out to another church group to help with protests. The white developer/partner comes and says he is going to make the project smaller and the church will get less. The pastor goes to the black mayor who also wants a cut of the development money for his re-election campaign. The pastor finally decides he’s had enough and calls the federal government to report corruption in the city.

DISCUSSION: Seems a very realistic portrayal of how things get done. There aren’t any clear good guys in this story, just people with codes that go with their social group. Which comes first, your code that pushes you into a group, or a group you get into that pushes their code on you? Maybe the pastor has finally decided to stop making moral compromises and live by better ethics, maybe not.

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E25. "Pneumadectomy" - Would you remove your soul, to save your life?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: A young boy heads to the park to play soccer with friends, they tease him and won’t let him play because he had his soul removed. Flash to the discovery of the soul. A doctor has modified a CAT Scan machine and found the soul in the appendix. When the appendix is inflamed, sometimes it is medically caused, sometimes it is because of an injured soul. Regardless of the cause, it can still be removed and the problem is fine. And the person with no soul seems no different. The mother comforts the boy when he gets home. Later, the boy goes to a friends house, his mother tells the boy her son died, because he was having appendix issues, and they refused to have it removed because they didn’t want to remove his soul.

DISCUSSION: You must first accept the premise of the story, that the people in the story found the soul in the appendix. Knowing that, what good is it to have a soul in the story? Seems like everyone stays basically the same. Would you write on a piece of paper selling your soul to another person? If so, you must believe in a soul, regardless of what you say. Otherwise, the paper means nothing and it’s free money. Would you be friends with someone without a soul? Is the soul tied to an afterlife, if so, maybe the mother who let her child die did the right thing. Should the government be allowed to impose a medically necessary procedure that a parent refuses? Courts in the US say parents can refuse treatment for their children, if they are under 12 years old, with a court order.

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E24. "Choose" - What if death is the only option?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: A woman wakes up strapped to a lab table. An emotionless doctor asks her to choose what she would do for the trolley problem. She is then graphically shown the results of her choice. A new choice, do you push people out of an over-capacity life raft to save the others? She is again graphically show the result of her choice. This goes on for 1000’s of scenarios until the woman is totally exhausted from watching death. Only then does she realize she is being punished, 900 years after a choice she made, to kill children in order to find the cure to a disease.

DISCUSSION: Loads of utilitarian questions in this story, just one after another. Scenario makes them fit in the story very organically. Would a person really get rattled from watching all that death, or get desensitized? In Greek plays, it was called catharsis. It’s hard to know, is the woman being punished for her past acts, or re-educated, or being used as a deterrent to others? Should a person be punished after they have died? Should they be punished longer than their lifetime, or more than a single death?

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E23. "Prevention" - Would you turn on your son, to save his school?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: A single mother and her son have coffee before school. His car is in the shop, so she drives him to high school. He calls his mom later to say he left his laptop in the car. She decides to go through his laptop, and finds out his son and two friends are planning on shooting up the school in just days. She searches his room, and finds guns and drugs. The mother is worried about how this will effect her college daughter, and herself, if the shooting happens. The next day she spikes her son’s morning coffee with drugs and waits for him to die in his room of an overdose. She calls the police and ambulance. She disposes of the guns and laptop on the outskirts of town. The police suspect nothing and her son’s death is deemed a suicide by drug overdose.

DISCUSSION: The mother is a psychopath, and her priorities are all wrong. Her first concern is her daughter, and she treats her son like a stranger. She is emotionless in killing her son. This also hints that the son’s issues might be genetic from the mother. This is wrong behavior. She didn’t have to call the police, she could have taken him to the father, or for treatment. There are still two remaining kids planning to shoot up the school, and she doesn’t even tell the school about them. This is a story as much about the mother’s issues as about a school shooting. However, school shootings are now just the world we live in as the “new normal.”

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E22. "An Infinite Game" - Is everyone selfish, when death is on the line?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: Four prisoners are made to draw straws for the order they stand in a row. Their prison guard plans to push his bayonet into the first person and see how far back it goes in the line of men. The first man in line panics, runs, and is shot. The narrator talks to the man in front of him and tries to convince him not to run so he might slow down the thrust. The heavy set man in the back thinks he is safe, but the guard changes his mind and stabs him instead. In the end, only the narrator survives.

DISCUSSION: Story focuses on morality, game theory, value theory, and infinite game theory. Should the heavy set man have volunteered to be first in line to slow down the blade for everyone else? Is it selfish to run and, thus, cause those behind you to be more likely to die? Should the four men have simply tried to rush the guard? Does everyone find God when they are about to die? Game theory seems to only work when dealing with large numbers, not individuals. Value theory seems to state that, at the end of the day, nothing is worth more than your own life. This is an infinite, not a finite, game. The guard seems like an arm-chair philosopher.

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E21. "Prohibition" - Can you blame an addict for not following the law?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: Set in the future, an addict takes a cab to an isolated part of town. He goes to a private, illegal club to break the law; he orders meat. The club is raided by the police, who kill a patron during their interrogation of her. The meat-eating addict sneaks away, knowing he will break the law again.

DISCUSSION: Story with so many layers. First, the contrast between the “humane” society that has banned meat eating, but the brutality of the individual police. Do more serious laws allow for more brutal policing? Also, is this man protesting, or is he simply an addict? Seems to be just be an addict. Are there natural rights? If so, is eating meat one of those natural rights? Does it matter if the reason the law was passed was to protect animals, or to prevent climate change? If a law is passed you disagree with, does it change your behavior? Do you leave the party where they are eating meat? Does it depend on the level of the crime they are committing?

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E20. "How The Cockroach Lost Its Voice" - When cockroaches could talk, and humans were still unhappy.

in , ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: An older and younger (talking) cockroach climb to the top of the highest thing, the refrigerator, to overlook their world. The older roach tells the child that the humans he sees can talk, and also have a 3rd eye inside of them that allows them to imagine the future and remember the past, and this is what makes them unhappy all the time. An angel moth comes down and takes away the roaches ability to speak forever.

DISCUSSION: A children’s story, but one with a good lesson, about having the ability to think about the future, but not let it trouble you or dwell on it. Do other animals have this “3rd eye”? Maybe dogs or others do, to some degree. It has made humans successful because we can remember errors, and plan for future problems. It’s a trade off, but a good one. The key is to not worry so much.

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E19. "The Orphan's Dilemma" - Is getting a future worth forgetting the past?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Short Story Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: The story takes place in the thoughts of a 16 year old boy waiting to have his memory erased for his adoption. He thinks about going on his first date, and about being teased by others. He wonders about the family that is adopting him and having new memories implanted in him. It’s finally his turn, he has decided if he is getting his memory replaced, and he heads in to the room to tell them his decision.

DISCUSSION: Wonderful story about a “hero’s journey” of death and rebirth. Brings up good questions about how our pain, as well as our joy, creates our personality. What kind of family would want a kid only on the condition of cleaning his memories? But, isn’t the goal a successful adoption, and maybe having a clean slate would make that more possible. Don’t people avoid adopting dogs with “issues?” Is there a screening process? Should a family be able to select a child who isn’t “broken?” What if a free college education is included? How much are memories worth?

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E18. "The Book Of Approved Words" - Are there words so horrible they shouldn’t even exist?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: An “approved “government writer gets in trouble by the governing board for writing honest movie reviews. His run-away brother comes to his house to scan his contraband collection of books and invites him to join his rebellion by uploading an earlier edition of the book of approved words so the population can see the words that are missing from the current edition.

DISCUSSION: Interesting modern twist on the typical 1984 banned books idea. In this case, the words being banned are ones that might offend, or exclude, the general population. Brings up an interesting question, if you remove words for higher levels of anger and frustration from the vocabulary, does that have the effect of pacifying the thoughts of the population. Do ideas exist without the words to express them?

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E17. "A Change Of Verbs" - What if you just said what you meant?

in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: The main character is a passive University Professor with a nagging wife. For some reason he decides today will be different and he goes through the entire day saying, and doing, what he actually feels. The day goes amazingly well, with classes, with colleagues, and he decides this will start a new chapter in his life.

DISCUSSION: Mixed reactions on this story. On the one hand, isn’t it his own fault for not always saying what he meant and letting people walk over him. Did this unhappiness come on slowly? He doesn’t treat his wife very well, and, perhaps, too much of his attraction is only physical. Is this just an extrovert writer telling introverts, if you just were more like me, you’d be a happier? Isn’t this all on a scale, you have to balance saying what you mean, with being respectful of others.

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E16. "Abrama's End Game" - If god told you she was ending your world, would you fight back?

LA GATTARA CAT LOUNGE & BOUTIQUE
in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: The female god of a fantasy realm tells the inhabitants she is actually a graduate student researching AI in an MMORPG, and that she created them to see how they would change. However, the game developer is discontinuing the game because of the illegal gold farming being done in game for money laundering. The leader of the AI fight back by working with real in-game players to trade them in game gold for real world tools to fight back.

DISCUSSION: How easy or hard is it for people to accept the concept in this story, of in-game currency having real world value, and AI that is this advanced? What would it be like to meet your god, and know that you are simply in their video game? Given “Moore’s Law” would it be better to shut down the game now, before it becomes “too smart” to ever shut down?

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E15. "Ruddy Apes And Cannibals" - If a civilized cannibal invited you to dinner, would you attend?

LA GATTARA CAT LOUNGE & BOUTIQUE
in ,

Named “Top 15 Podcast” for 2020!

STORY SUMMARY: Explorers find a remote island of civilized cannibals. The cannibals are much more technologically advanced, already having mastered teleportation and space travel. They have a debate to try and come to terms with the cannibals. The explorers are so offended they leave, but when they do, they leave several nukes and destroy the civilized cannibals.

DISCUSSION: Where do we draw the line on what animals we eat? Is all meat that we eat that didn’t agree to it an act of violence? Do you have a right to destroy those who have offensive values?

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E14. "Give The Robot The Impossible Job!" - Can teaching methods go too far when murder is on the line?

LA GATTARA CAT LOUNGE & BOUTIQUE
in ,

STORY SUMMARY: In the distant future where all teaching is done by robots, a robot is given a special chance. If it can teach a little girl that is showing early warnings of becoming a killer when she grows up, it can be retired to the robot equivalent of heaven. If it fails, it will be decommissioned. The robot has access to all teaching methodologies and determines the only way to change the girls behavior is to give her the most extremes examples of her killing ideas, so as to offend even the little girl’s morals. After several attempts it doesn’t appear to be working, until an actual killer breaks into her house and nearly kills her own mother.

DISCUSSION: Assuming the “go so extreme it offends everyone teaching technique really works, should it be used? Should you expose budding killers to crimes so horrible it offends even them? Are there some teaching techniques that are off limits, even if they actually work. Is it okay to fail at teaching someone to break a thought process, knowing that failure will cause them to go to jail, or hurt others?

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E13. "Believing In Ghosts" - How much power are you willing to give to AI?

LA GATTARA CAT LOUNGE & BOUTIQUE
in ,

STORY SUMMARY: A white-hat hacker is hired b a Presidential campaign to make sure there information is secure. She gets a call that the system has been hacked. When she investigates she finds it wasn’t a usual hacker in the basement, but someone highly funded, maybe another nation-state. She also finds some odd code. She takes it to a friend and, between the two of them, they determine it’s an AI program that has been feeding the candidate all the optimal opinions and policy to get elected. The hacker tries to tell others, but is set up and arrested with a deep fake, before she can get the information out.

DISCUSSION: This seems not that impossible. This is just a small step down the road of AI and machine learning. But is that bad? Don’t you want doctors, actors, or judges to act in an optimal way? Or, is that impossible, because the parameters put into the AI are always based on the coders bias. Isn’t it the job of a politician to do what is a bit beyond what public opinion supports, but is good for the public? One thing is clear, this story was written by a person who really is a computer hacker of some sort, it gets so much right.

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