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The Tyranny of Chance: Assis, Borges, and the Randomized Bargain
We've turned the basement into a casino! A man who turns to fortune-telling to assuage his conscience. A society that chooses its victims through a lottery. Does "mathematical fairness" absolve the citizens of Omelas, or does it simply creates a more sophisticated illusion of justice? Today it's the dark philosophy of Jorge Luis Borges’s "The Lottery in Babylon" and Machado de Assis’s "The Fortune-Teller." How do we use fate, destiny, and algorithms to justify systemic inequality and sacrifice, unsettling our modern reliance on "chance" to explain the suffering of others? Episode 6.31 -…
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