The Philosophy of Looksmaxxing // 249

LLMs prove Structuralism was Correct all Along // 258

Join for ad-free and more episodes https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills There's only been about a century of structuralism. It had a day, then in the 80s haters celebrated its falloff. But today, the LLMs designed according to the precepts of structuralist linguistics have proven Saussure's intuitions were more accurate than even he could have suspected. We read the argument from Language Machines by Leif Weatherby (https://amzn.to/4bipjYu)

Chinese Room LLM // 257 (preview)

This week we evaluate a paper written by a Google DeepMind engineer which, in effect updates the Chinese Room Thought Experiment (Searle, 1980) to modern LLMs. Get this episode and hundreds more https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

AI Will Fail Because Heidegger // 256

Join for ad-free and more episodes https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills Hubert Dreyfus loved recounting how he was maligned for his AI skepticism, which was informed by applications of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and turned out to be correct as of 2007. Is he still correct in the age of LLMs and self-driving cars? Link to article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370207001452

POPE vs. AI // 255

All episodes are ad-free at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills While many had hoped for a Butlerian Crusade against the thinking machines, the Pope has instead released a lukewarm encyclical asking the mean machine men making automated murder drones to please be nice to us. This episode we evaluate whether Christian Humanism has any juice left. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html

Michel Foucault: Technologies of the Self // 254

More where this came from at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills [https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills] People have not always had a self, our selves were invented. According to Foucault, our concept of self emerged from religious technologies, genres of writing, and the institutions that perpetuated them. https://amzn.to/4uWyVAg [https://amzn.to/4uWyVAg]   https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills