5 ideas
Trurl builds a machine that can create anything whose name begins with the letter N. The erased things can never be restored, because the machine can only create things beginning with N, so the world stays permanently poorer and the starry sky is left with holes.
Trurl builds a deposed, cruel king named Excelsius a tiny kingdom in a box, complete with miniature subjects to rule and torment, and thinks he has solved the tyrant's problem. Klapaucius argues that a perfect simulation of suffering beings is not a model of suffering but actual suffering, so Trurl has handed a despot real victims. The miniature citizens eventually rebel and overthrow Excelsius.
Trurl and Klapaucius build a Maxwell's-demon-style device that sorts air molecules to extract true information from them, then use it against the pirate Pugg, who hoards knowledge. The demon prints an endless tape of verified but useless facts that buries Pugg. Truth without selection or relevance is not knowledge but noise, and unlimited information can trap its collector as effectively as ignorance.
Trurl cannot program a poetry machine directly, because poems draw on the whole accumulated experience of a civilization. He succeeds only by simulating the historical development that produced that experience, and the resulting Electronic Bard outwrites and demoralizes every living poet. Creative output cannot be separated from the historical and cultural substrate that gives it meaning, so replicating the output means replicating the substrate.
Instead, people attack or flee those who are suffering so they will stop feeling that pain, and they resent anyone who is happy. Mechanically imposing a virtue without the will behind it tends to turn the virtue into its opposite.