507. Like Razorblade Pie: The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore (Feat. Alebrelle)
Added 2022-07-18 13:01:07 +0000 UTC
This show goes over the short stories of Michael’s favorite speculative fiction author and notable curmudgeon Harlan Ellison. Each episode Michael pairs (read: forces a friend to read) a short story with a guest that it “applies especially to.” This episode it’s the short story “The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore” and the guest is Alebrelle.
They discuss the moral complexities of intention, action, and outcome, the definition of free will, and the movie RIPD.
Art (above) by LucaBANDA
Michael Swaim: https://twitter.com/SWAIM_CORP
Alebrelle: https://twitter.com/Alebrelle
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Comments
The story about the rat covered baby. I bet that was his baby from the affair.
Cyclops giraffe
2023-09-26 10:23:27 +0000 UTCPBS has an amazing YouTube channel called Space Time and just this week they put out an episode about the implications of quantum mechanics on free will. TL;DW: It's still an open question, and likely will be indefinitely. But the idea of "superdeterminism" argues that a scientist’s “choices” on when / how they measure a quantum event could be correlated to the event that they’re measuring. The appearance of randomness in quantum mechanics comes from the assumption that the measurement and the event are independent events. If they are actually both effects of a single cause at some point in the past though, then we can resolve the apparent paradoxes of uncertainty and things like faster-than-light communication between entangled particles — by simply sacrificing free will. Unfortunately, as I understand it superdeterminism isn’t falsifiable with known science, because the entire observable universe was causally linked if you go far enough back in time.
Christopher Metzger
2022-07-26 19:23:22 +0000 UTCFantastic episode! Alebrelle's views on free will and the lack thereof matches my own except that as a wanna-be physics nerd, I do consider quantum probability (and the Many Worlds Interpretation) as making even the mostly irreducible complexity moot. But functionally, the "illusion" of free will, and for that matter, consciousness and continuity, is all we have to go by, so their importance in the "choices" and their consequences still matter, for all intents and purposes. And to Michael: it's outcome, man. When I was much younger, I was all about intent, but to the rest of the world, outcome is what "matters". Great, great conversation!
Dave Ruff
2022-07-22 13:37:43 +0000 UTCSuperb episode. This feels like Razorblade Pie in its purest form.
Scottie Wottie
2022-07-21 21:47:33 +0000 UTCFungoes are long high fly balls that batters hit to outfielders for practice. My brothers used to hit fungoes to each other for fun.
Ellen Swaim
2022-07-21 19:49:07 +0000 UTCCongratulations to Micheal for getting engaged!
Andrew Duck
2022-07-19 05:05:08 +0000 UTC
