Notes for season 5 episode 6, “A More Perfect Union”
05:04 “Uncle Ralph’s” Irish passport gives his nationality as “Éireralpho” instead of Éireannach. The show then dips into national stereotypes to imply the real Ralph will be too drunk to attend a wedding. (It’s not that the Irish aren’t heavy drinkers, it’s that it’s statistically similar to several large European countries that aren’t frequently portrayed as such.)
06:13 Janna’s Angler profile includes “Occupation: Mischief-maker” and “Drinks: yes, please!”
08:30 Samaritan makes the recruitment pitch that paints a couple of specific “high-frequency traders” as indirectly responsible for multiple deaths (e.g. a specific low-cost air-conditioning repair company went out of business, and there was no market alternative, which led to deaths). The show is constantly presenting the outcomes of systemic failures and sets about dealing with the symptoms in an incredibly inefficient way. Samaritan, apparently, swaps inefficiency with brutality directed at an individual level.
09:30 There are anti horse-doping protestors holding signs at the driveway of a stable owner (“HORSES CAN’T SAY NAY”, “SAY NEIGH TO DOPING”). Which is fair enough, but I’d suspect that their efforts would have been better spent asking for effective regulatory oversight, rather than attempting to shame the owners one at a time. US horse racing has a poor reputation in terms of doping. Three years after this episode aired the “Horseracing Integrity and Safety” bill was introduced in Congress, passed in 2020 establishing the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, and anti-doping rules and enforcement began in 2023.
21:52 Samaritan’s employment pitch appears to be a series of trolley problems. It presents two corrupt executives about to make a deal which, within a few years, will lead to hundreds of lives lost due to defective aeronautical equipment. That this is being shown to an assassin, implies that the Samaritan approach might be to deal with those executives before the deal is struck. Like the anti-doping protesters, it’s not making a pitch for better safety regulation, or corporate accountability. The Artificial Super-Intelligence trained to fight terrorism is implying that the approach taken in fighting terrorism should be broadly applied anywhere lives are at risk.
(As though the real fear of AI is that it would take extreme rhetoric, collective hypocrisies, and self-serving lies at face value… and act on them.)
42:55 The scenario in which an AI claims only it can prevent a politically-initiated nuclear war is an interesting twist on the tired “what if an AI decides to start a nuclear war?” question.