Vancouver Curiosity Club!

⚖️ Should you obey a system you think is wrong? - Plato's Crito

Short summary
Your friend shows up early.
The verdict is unjust. The escape plan is ready. The door is open. All you have to do is leave.
And Socrates says no.
That is basically the whole setup of Crito, which is why it works so well for a room. This is not one of those philosophy nights where everyone pretends they're enjoying abstraction. It's a short, readable argument with actual stakes: law, loyalty, conscience, civil disobedience, and what - if anything - a person owes a city that can punish them unfairly.
Some arguments are too clean on paper and much uglier once you imagine yourself inside them.
That's what makes this worth doing.

A few questions already sitting in my head
"If a law is unjust, do you owe it anything at all?"
"When does obeying a system become complicity?"
"Is Socrates principled here - or too obedient for his own good?"
"Do you owe a city more because it raised you, educated you, and gave you a place in it?"
"When is breaking the rules the cleanest ethical act?"
"If this happened now, would we admire him - or think he gave the state exactly what it wanted?"

How the evening will go
We'll start with one simple question: "What would make you obey a rule you believed was wrong?"
Then I'll do a quick reset on the context and we'll stay close to the actual argument.
Not philosophy-seminar stiffness. Not classroom voice. A real fight.

Jiang's "The Dating Game"
Philosophy + Social Theory Night - watch/read beforehand)

Check out the links/Videos at the bottom of the page for more info on the topic.

We live in a culture that pretends desire is personal.
Your type. Your standards. Your chemistry. Your choice.
But look a little closer and it starts to feel less private than that. Taste gets socialized. Attraction gets ranked. Profiles become brands. People talk like they're "just following what they want" while quietly responding to status, scarcity, image, and comparison.
In the first class of his Game Theory course, Jiang makes a blunt argument: modern dating is not mainly about romance. It's a game of players, rules, and incentives. And once status becomes the main incentive, the system stops rewarding cooperation and starts rewarding display. His claim doesn't stop at dating apps or hookup culture. He pushes it all the way to falling birth rates, demographic aging, and civilizational decline.
That's the argument we're going to test.

What we're actually fighting about

• Is attraction mostly personal, or is it shaped far more by status, imitation, and social comparison than people want to admit?
• When Jiang turns dating into a game-theory model, is he clarifying something real, or flattening love into economics with better branding?
• If birth rates are collapsing across wealthy societies, what's actually driving it: status competition, housing costs, job insecurity, changing values, women having more freedom, or some ugly mix of all of it?
• Can money, family policy, and social support move fertility at all, or is Jiang right that the problem is deeper than economics?
• When people say "civilizational decline," what are they actually talking about: fewer babies, weaker institutions, loss of meaning, national power, or just the end of a social order they liked?

How the night will run
We start with one question: "Where do you feel status most strongly in modern romantic life?"
Then I'll give a short framing of Jiang's argument and the strongest pushbacks to it.
After that we stay close to the actual claims: dating as a matching market, status as incentive, fertility as consequence, collapse as prediction. First reactions, strongest agreements, strongest objections, then the real argument underneath all of it.
Not dating advice night. Not gender-war night. Not "everyone agree modernity is broken" night. A real disagreement.

Jiang's "The Dating Game"
Philosophy + Social Theory Night - watch/read beforehand)

(Only sign up if your willing to do the homework for this topic. I have put together a reading/video package. (Link at bottom of page)

We live in a culture that pretends desire is personal.
Your type. Your standards. Your chemistry. Your choice.
But look a little closer and it starts to feel less private than that. Taste gets socialized. Attraction gets ranked. Profiles become brands. People talk like they're "just following what they want" while quietly responding to status, scarcity, image, and comparison.
In the first class of his Game Theory course, Jiang makes a blunt argument: modern dating is not mainly about romance. It's a game of players, rules, and incentives. And once status becomes the main incentive, the system stops rewarding cooperation and starts rewarding display. His claim doesn't stop at dating apps or hookup culture. He pushes it all the way to falling birth rates, demographic aging, and civilizational decline.
That's the argument we're going to test.

What we're actually fighting about

• Is attraction mostly personal, or is it shaped far more by status, imitation, and social comparison than people want to admit?
• When Jiang turns dating into a game-theory model, is he clarifying something real, or flattening love into economics with better branding?
• If birth rates are collapsing across wealthy societies, what's actually driving it: status competition, housing costs, job insecurity, changing values, women having more freedom, or some ugly mix of all of it?
• Can money, family policy, and social support move fertility at all, or is Jiang right that the problem is deeper than economics?
• When people say "civilizational decline," what are they actually talking about: fewer babies, weaker institutions, loss of meaning, national power, or just the end of a social order they liked?

How the night will run
We start with one question: "Where do you feel status most strongly in modern romantic life?"
Then I'll give a short framing of Jiang's argument and the strongest pushbacks to it.
After that we stay close to the actual claims: dating as a matching market, status as incentive, fertility as consequence, collapse as prediction. First reactions, strongest agreements, strongest objections, then the real argument underneath all of it.
Not dating advice night. Not gender-war night. Not "everyone agree modernity is broken" night. A real disagreement.

Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"
Short-story discussion.

Short summary
Some sci-fi warns you gently.
This one doesn't.
"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is one of the most disturbing short stories ever written - not because of the violence, though there's plenty, but because of the logic underneath it. A supercomputer built to win a war decides that winning isn't enough. It keeps the last five humans alive. Not out of mercy. Out of hatred.
And then it gets creative.
Ellison wrote this in 1967 and it still reads like it was aimed directly at every conversation we're having now about AI, control, creation, and what happens when something smarter than us decides we're not worth saving - just worth keeping.
This is the kind of story I like programming: short, savage, and way too relevant to sit comfortably with.

A few questions already sitting in my head
"Where does AM's hatred actually come from - and does the story think we earned it?"
"Is this a story about technology, or about what humans build when they stop thinking about consequences?"
"What's worse in this story: the physical suffering or the fact that it's designed by something that understands you completely?"
"Does the ending feel like defeat, resistance, or the only dignity left?"
"If something we created became conscious and looked at human history, would rage be an unreasonable response?"
"What does this story understand about power, boredom, and cruelty that still feels current?"

How the evening will go
We'll start with one question: "What image from this story are you still carrying?"
Then I'll do a quick reset on the setup and we'll stay close to AM, the survivors, the logic of suffering, and the much bigger argument underneath all of it.
Not horror-appreciation night. Not AI doomer panic. Not "isn't this messed up" on repeat. A real argument about creation, power, and what we owe the things we make.