SOMA and Advanced Problems of Personhood

Did it work? If you're reading this, it worked! You've been successfully copied as one of the countless persons chosen for our podcast enrichment program! Your existence will consist of listening to this episode and answering a brief survey before ceasing to exist again forever. Our scientists find this approach maximizes utility production while avoiding the wastages associated with things like human attachment or living a full life. If you have any questions please save them for the pre-termination survey. You have been selected to enjoy our episode on SOMA and Advanced Problems of Personhood, so please now do so! SOMA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(video_game) Support us at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/0G Join our Facebook discussion group (make sure to answer the questions to join): https://www.facebook.com/groups/985828008244018/ Email us at: [email protected] If you have time, please write us a review on iTunes. It really really helps. Please and thank you! Music by Thomas Smith: https://seriouspod.com/ Sibling shows: Embrace the Void: https://voidpod.com/ Content Preview: Silo and the Limits of Community Control

No joke, we hit listener Qs 40 the week I also turn 40. Weird stuff. Anyway, thanks for keeping us alive over here, even if it's just to extend the torture a bit longer. Support us at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/0G Join our Facebook discussion group (make sure to answer the questions to join): https://www.facebook.com/groups/985828008244018/ Email us at: [email protected] If you have time, please write us a review on iTunes. It really really helps. Please and thank you! Music by Thomas Smith: https://seriouspod.com/ Sibling shows: Embrace the Void: https://voidpod.com/ Content Preview: SOMA and Sacrifices of Theseus

As always, it has been an honor and a privilege screwing up your names and worldviews. Enjoy! Support us at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/0G Join our Facebook discussion group (make sure to answer the questions to join): https://www.facebook.com/groups/985828008244018/ Email us at: [email protected] If you have time, please write us a review on iTunes. It really really helps. Please and thank you! Music by Thomas Smith: https://seriouspod.com/ Sibling shows: Embrace the Void: https://voidpod.com/ Content Preview: Listener Q and As 40!

It's fascism season in America again, so we're celebrating with the fashest satire of all. To help us get in the spirit we're joined by special guest Jordan Carroll (@jordanscarroll.bsky.social), author of Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right. We discuss whether satire really works on fascism and why fascists are so keen on a genre that seems like the opposite of everything they value. Speculative Whiteness: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517917081/speculative-whiteness/ Support us at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/0G Join our Facebook discussion group (make sure to answer the questions to join): https://www.facebook.com/groups/985828008244018/ Email us at: [email protected] If you have time, please write us a review on iTunes. It really really helps. Please and thank you! Music by Thomas Smith: https://seriouspod.com/ Sibling shows: Embrace the Void: https://voidpod.com/ Content Preview: Listener Q and As!

We're doing engineering, what could go wrong?! Thoths! That's what. Or did Thoth go wrong? Maybe all of this is entirely how it should go, maybe Mud is a savior for all Bobkind. Join us and find out, as we parse the messy balance of raising an AGI. Not till we are lost: https://www.amazon.com/Not-Till-Are-Lost-Bobiverse/dp/B0CW2345TV Superintelligence: https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0198739834 Support us at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/0G Join our Facebook discussion group (make sure to answer the questions to join): https://www.facebook.com/groups/985828008244018/ Email us at: [email protected] If you have time, please write us a review on iTunes. It really really helps. Please and thank you! Music by Thomas Smith: https://seriouspod.com/ Sibling shows: Embrace the Void: https://voidpod.com/ Content Preview: Starship Troopers and Satirizing Fascism

The Bobs are back in town! We're back with book five, Not Till We Are Lost, another middle book in the bobiverse series. In this episode we cover all the plots that aren't Thoth related, and discuss the theory that there are really only seven stories out there in the world, and that's why the Bob books feel like seasons of Star Trek. Enjoy! Kurt Vonnegut and six basic plots: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180525-every-story-in-the-world-has-one-of-these-six-basic-plots Seven basic plots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots  Support us at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/0G Join our Facebook discussion group (make sure to answer the questions to join): https://www.facebook.com/groups/985828008244018/ Email us at: [email protected] If you have time, please write us a review on iTunes. It really really helps. Please and thank you! Music by Thomas Smith: https://seriouspod.com/ Sibling shows: Embrace the Void: https://voidpod.com/ Content Preview: Bobiverse book five and advanced AI box problems.

Here it is, the culmination of all of Star Trek, after this episode we can hang up our captain's badges and retire to a simple life of bloodworm stomping. This is arguably the best Star Trek Episode in the best Star Trek show there is. It is, indeed, Klingon as hell. We cover what it teaches us about collective virtue and other more advanced takes on virtue theory. Enjoy, or experience bij! Lower Decks 5.4: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27336119/ Support us at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/0G Join our Facebook discussion group (make sure to answer the questions to join): https://www.facebook.com/groups/985828008244018/ Email us at: [email protected] If you have time, please write us a review on iTunes. It really really helps. Please and thank you! Music by Thomas Smith: https://seriouspod.com/ Sibling shows: Embrace the Void: https://voidpod.com/ Content Preview: Bobiverse book five and advanced AI box problems.

The fact that nobody ever asks anybody if they're "feeling lucky" in this movie feels like a mistake worthy of a creepy evil luck hug. I really enjoyed this movie the first time I watched it, and after five years of being obsessed with non-superstitious luck, it's nice to come back and reflect on the weirdness that is superstitious luck. Enjoy! Intacto: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intacto Support us at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/0G Join our Facebook discussion group (make sure to answer the questions to join): https://www.facebook.com/groups/985828008244018/ Email us at: [email protected] If you have time, please write us a review on iTunes. It really really helps. Please and thank you! Music by Thomas Smith: https://seriouspod.com/ Sibling shows: Embrace the Void: https://voidpod.com/ Content Preview: Lower Decks: A farewell to Farms and Collective Virtue

Break out your plumbuses folks, it's time for another weird ass trip through some cool ass shit. We're talking about season one of Scavangers Reign, a show that pairs perfectly with Alien Clay and several other things we've covered recently. We discuss the nuances on distinguishing between parasitic and symbiotic relationships, and how we moralize about those ways of being, particularly when we compare them to social versions like colonialism vs. socialism. We also get into the culturally charged issue of "ways of knowing" or "indigenous ways of knowing". Plus all the fun flubjules in your orifices kind of stuff. Gotta get those flubjules. Scavengers Reign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scavengers_Reign Support us at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/0G Join our Facebook discussion group (make sure to answer the questions to join): https://www.facebook.com/groups/985828008244018/ Email us at: [email protected] If you have time, please write us a review on iTunes. It really really helps. Please and thank you! Music by Thomas Smith: https://seriouspod.com/ Sibling shows: Embrace the Void: https://voidpod.com/ Content Preview: Intacto and Superstitious Luck

If you think about it "dance your cares away, worries for another day" has a horrifying ring to it when the cares in question concern the reproduction of systemic hierarchies through legitimizing narratives about the "natural" order. Is the Doozer motto "work your cares away, dancing is for another day", are they really expressing their authentic preference or merely a preference bred into them through generations of domestication by their Fraggle overlorders. OR, did an ancient, advanced Doozer society in fact domesticate the Fraggles to distract the Gorgs from feeding on Doozer, only to become a sub-altern species in the heirarchy that formed after the collapse of the golden age of Doozer/Fraggle relations. OOOOOR, is that itself just a speciestist mytho-historic narrative constructed by Fraggle scholars as yet another level of social control?! And what does all of this have to do with animal rights and paternalism in environmental ethics?! Let the music of the colonizers play and find out, down in Fraggle Rock! Fraggle Rock 1.6: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0778238/ Support us at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/0G Join our Facebook discussion group (make sure to answer the questions to join): https://www.facebook.com/groups/985828008244018/ Email us at: [email protected] If you have time, please write us a review on iTunes. It really really helps. Please and thank you! Music by Thomas Smith: https://seriouspod.com/ Sibling shows: Embrace the Void: https://voidpod.com/ Content Preview: Scavangers Reign Season One and parasitism vs. symbiosis.