Something I've been thinking about lately:

The algorithm shows you the opinion first and the humanity never. Online, you see a position before you see a person so you treat it like something to defeat rather than someone trying to work something out. You can dehumanize a screen name without even trying. You can't do that to someone sitting three feet away holding a beer and looking you in the eye.

That's why I started a discussion group here in Columbia called the Penny University named after the Enlightenment-era coffeehouses where anyone could sit down, pay a penny for coffee, and argue ideas with whoever was at the table. Didn't matter who you were. Just mattered what you thought and why.

That's why we meet monthly at Hunter-Gatherer Brewery. We pick a topic and some will be softballs and and some will be heavy and passionate. We talk about it face to face. We will disagree. And then we close with a toast and walk out as friends.

This Sunday we're taking on the death penalty. Someone at that table is going to say something that would get destroyed in a comment section. Instead, they'll say it to real faces people who might push back, but who see them as a person first and a position second. That's where actual thinking happens.

We don't need better algorithms. We need more tables.

TOPIC: The Death Penalty; Effective Instrument of Justice or State-Sanctioned Cruelty.

WHERE: The Hunter-Gatherer Brewery AKA the Hanger. 1402 Jim Hamilton Blvd, Columbia, SC 29205

TIME: 2:00 PM

We'll eat first, talk. Then gather the chairs/table and discuss.

So, do you research and come on down to the Hanger and join our round table-ish discussion.

Yes I know the topic description is a bit loaded but this is a heavy subject and will drive passions and emotions. So consider it a fair preview of what's to come.

So, do your research and bring your best thoughts. Then at the end we'll discuss future topics and add them into a hat for the future. At the end one of us will do the close your eyes and grab three for next month's. I'll also add some meta topics in for a breather if we need it and can't decide.

And a suggestion for the closing toast.

"To the courage to speak, the humility to listen, and the wisdom to remain friends. This discussion is ended"

I was moved here by a company two years ago and I am just now finding ooey gooey butter cake! Why didn't you guys tell me!!! Every bite is like seeing the face of God!!

Side question do I need more exclamation points?

This is for topic submissions that come from our members and want it to be in rotation for a discussion. This way an idea comes to you in the middle of something and you don't want to forget it. You can come here and put it down.

I asked Claude to write a about the half the billion dollar hubris as a Greek Tragedy in the style of Aeschylus. He did not disappoint. I present a modern corporate Tragedy.

A tragedy in five acts, after the manner of Aeschylus

The Promethean Invoice

Or: The Binding of the CFO

Dramatis Personae

Kybernetes The CEO-King, stealer of fire

Arithmia The CFO, keeper of the sacred ledger

The Vendor A god. Speaks only through invoices. Never appears.

The Chorus The Laid-Off. They knew. They always knew.

The Shareholders The Furies, arriving in Act Five with torches

The Contract A silent figure, present in every scene, never acknowledged

Prologue — before the transformation

Chorus

We were here when the servers breathed.
We knew the passwords no one wrote down.
We knew which vendor's API wept at midnight
and which integration held by a single thread of duct tape and institutional memory.
We were the memory.
We carried the context window in our skulls.
Then came the Optimization.

[The Chorus files offstage, carrying cardboard boxes. They do not look back.]

Act I — The Parados: Kybernetes seizes the fire

Kybernetes

Behold! I have climbed the mountain of the Board Deck
and returned with fire stolen from the gods of Silicon Valley!
We shall be transformed. Disruption shall be ours to wield,
not to receive. The old ways — the human ways — are ended.
Their salaries shall become servers.
Their institutional wisdom shall become tokens.
Their thirty years of knowing where the bodies are buried
shall be replaced by something that hallucinates confidently.

Arithmia

My king. I have read the contract.

Kybernetes

No one reads the contract.

Arithmia

I know.

[The Contract moves slightly. No one notices.]

Act II — The First Stasimon: The Chorus, from outside, speaks

Chorus

O Kybernetes, we do not curse you.
We have seen this before, in the age of the Great ERP,
and in the age of the Cloud Migration That Took Four Years,
and in the terrible epoch of the Digital Transformation Consultant
who billed three hundred dollars an hour to explain our own processes to us.

The Vendor is older than memory.
The Vendor has seen empires sign on the dotted line.
The Vendor's pricing model was not designed by accident.
It was designed by someone who understood
that the moment you decommission the old system,
you have already lost the war.

Act III — The Episode of the Invoice

[A messenger enters. He is pale. He has aged visibly since yesterday.]

Messenger

My lady Arithmia. It has arrived.

Invoice — Month 1 of the New Age of Fire

$500,000,000.00

Net 30. Late fees apply. Per the agreement you signed. You did sign it.

Arithmia

Half a billion.

Messenger

Half a billion.

Arithmia

In one month.

Messenger

It scales with usage, my lady.
We have been using it very much.

[Arithmia sits. The Contract stands behind her. It has always been there.]

Arithmia

Can we tell the shareholders?

Messenger

My lady. Do you know what a pitchfork is?

Act IV — The Second Stasimon: Hubris and its wages

Chorus

This is the nature of fire stolen from gods:
It burns exactly as brightly as advertised.
The demo was not a lie.
The benchmark was not a lie.
The pilot program worked magnificently.
The ROI slide was beautiful.

But fire, once lit, does not negotiate.
Fire does not have a relationship manager
who will adjust your bill out of goodwill.
Fire simply burns
at the rate specified in Schedule B,
Appendix 7,
subsection iv,
which no one read.

Act V — The Exodus: The Furies arrive

[A distant sound. At first it seems like wind. It is not wind. It is the sound of a shareholder meeting being called on an emergency basis.]

Kybernetes

What is that sound?

Arithmia

The Furies, my king.
Though in this age they are called institutional investors
and they carry proxy voting rights instead of serpents.

Kybernetes

Can we issue a press release? A pivot announcement?
A vision statement emphasizing our commitment to responsible AI?

Arithmia

My king.
You laid off the person who wrote the press releases.

[Long silence. The Contract, which has been present the entire play, turns slowly to face the audience. It has always known this moment would come.]

Chorus — final ode

We do not rejoice.
Our mortgages remain.
Our children's school fees remain.
We were not saved by this irony.
We were merely proven right,
which is the loneliest kind of victory
available to those
who carried the knowledge
and were the last to be asked.

Here ends the tragedy.
The Vendor has not been reached for comment.
The Vendor is never reached for comment.
The Vendor is renewing auto-billing as you read this.

The Penny University of Columbia

 Founding Session | Sunday June 14th | 2 PM | Hunter-Gatherer Brewery AKA The Hanger

1402 Jim Hamilton Blvd, Columbia, SC 29205

We've been talking about it. Now we're doing it.

The Penny University is Columbia's answer to a simple question:

What if we had a place where adults could actually argue about interesting things, with rules, and civility, and with a good beer in hand?

The debut session is a builder's meeting. Here's the agenda:

2:00 PM Meet & greet. Order food. Get settled.

3:00-3:30ish PM Walk through the discussion charter: how moderation works, speaker etiquette, what makes this different from an internet argument.

4:00ish PM Open floor: Nominate future debate topics.

5:00 PM We pull next month's topic from a hat. That's how it's decided. Democracy without drama.

No homework. No agenda to defend. First session is about meeting each other and building this thing together.

Hunter-Gatherer Brewery | 2 PM | June 14th

Comment below or DM if you're coming! Would love a rough headcount. The more the better.

Also. I will personally buy a drink for the first person who, at any point during the discussion, can say:

 "Well, I never in all my life!" and make it work.  If we're doing this right, someone will earn that drink.

Has civil debate actually become impossible in America or have we just stopped trying?

So the first Penny University session will be Sunday June 14th at the Hunter-Gatherer Brewery AKA The Hanger 1402 Jim Hamilton Blvd. Columbia, SC.

Let's get there 2ish. Eat, then talk. I figure the first one will be feeling out the group on rules, conduct, size etc. But hey if a discussion breaks out, who am I to judge?

Also I will buy a drink for the first person to fit in a; "WELL, I NEVER IN ALL MY LIFE!" into a sentence naturally.

Have a question, a subject suggestion, want to shake your fist and yell at the sky! I hope in time addition to making each other sharper, we can also have a support island in a sea of bullshit.

Socrates claimed a private inner voice steered him away from error his whole life. His Daimon. Most of us have some version of it: the quiet "don't do that" we feel before we've reasoned our way to why. The question isn't just whether you have one it's whether you trust it.

So: Do you follow yours? When has it saved you? And harder when has it been off, and how would you even know the difference between genuine intuition and fear, bias, or wishful thinking wearing the same costume?

I'll go first. and this ones personal.

My first wife. I KNEW I needed to not date this person, and definitely not marry her. But I did both from a mixture of dumb young feelings and attachment and just plain stupidity and my Daimon was exactly right.

So what about you guys? When was your inner voice right or wrong and do you listen now or still do the "I know better!" argument?

Hey everyone! I'm u/Thuban, a founding moderator of r/Penny_University.

This is our new home for all things related to our discussion and debate group. We're excited to have you join us!

What to Post

Post anything that you think the community would find interesting, helpful, or inspiring. Feel free to share your thoughts, questions & potential topics.

Community Vibe

We're all about being friendly, constructive, and inclusive. Let's build a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing and connecting.

How to Get Started

1. Introduce yourself in the comments below.

2. Post something today! Even a simple question can spark a great conversation.

3. If you know someone who would love this community, invite them to join.

4. Interested in helping out? We're always looking for new moderators, so feel free to reach out to me to apply.

Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let's make r/Penny_University a home.

I used to have a thing at my house called Dinner and a Conversation.

Moved here for a job and don't have the house & yard to do it. But, I miss it and would like to restart it. So back then, we'd eat first then gather around a campfire and talk. It started with just random discussions and then the discussions evolved into different ideas, thoughts etc. and the discourse was wonderful. I started moderating to keep the flow and give everyone a chance to speak. towards the end we all learned something and we'd disagreed on things but at the end we all remained friends. The group cared about one another, differences and all. Also, in it were every different demographic group you could think of. Every voice got time and respect.

What I'm looking for is a Pub with space off the side and the size to give us peace as well as needing the traffic on a Sunday. Talk rules would be akin to the great debates of the Scottish Enlightenment in Glasgow. So say one Sunday afternoon/evening, once a month we eat and then we talk. So, we'd need space and a kinda outta way area. Which is why I'd pick a Sunday afternoon. We'll try to find ideas and thoughts amid the clickbait and rancor of the internet age. Thinking group size of 15-25 or we'll be there all night. Also think 2- 3 hour-ish discussions.

So the questions to be answered are, which local bar/pub would have a good space for it?

and are we so divided that this is naive to think about?

If there's enough genuine interest, and we can find a place that works. I'll post discussion guidelines and create a reddit for it.

>Edit:11:47 pm. I'm genuinely intrigued this has the enthusiasm it does. I'll check out some bars tomorrow and see the spaces and also make sure they'd be cool with it. Then we'll go from there.