Ashley Frawley (5:42)

The.

Podcast Host (Matthew) (5:44)

Latest disclosures of the Epstein files. So what have you all made of these, these latest revelations?

Guest Speaker (possibly a sociologist or cultural critic) (5:55)

I don't think I should open with mine because I'm going to say something completely insane, but it's been going through my head.

Podcast Host (Matthew) (6:02)

Well, I think, I think our listeners are ready to hear it. Ashley, let's go.

Guest Speaker (possibly a sociologist or cultural critic) (6:06)

So you, I think you open this by saying what unites some of these like crimes or these, not even necessarily crimes, but these activities and so on. And my answer is necrophilia. So let me just kind of earn that. So I'm sure you as an undergrad, in undergrad probably read Eric Fromm's Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. And I, you know, I'm not a big fan of the Frankfurt School, but I continuously find myself circling back to Eric from over and over and over again. And before The Epstein files dropped a few months ago. I wanted to write a piece on, like, groomer culture because I've been noticing something weird going on where whenever I look at, like, child protection scandals, which is obviously a huge area of my research, there is often a weird kind of envelopment between people who are intensely concerned about the damage that parents do to children and people who like children in a way they should not. So for instance, in Norway, there was an enormous. I wrote about this along about eight years ago about. About Norway's child protection scandal where they were taking children away from parents at enormous numbers, particularly children, immigrants. And it turned out that one of the judges who was like, very, very zealous in doing this, was in possession of child abuse images, that he was a child abuser himself. And recently there were some scandals about people in, pretty high up in LGBT organizations who were in possession of child abuse images and had abused children themselves. Now you might be saying, like, oh, well, obviously, and these organizations have historically been extremely hostile to parents. They see parents as an obstacle. They see them as. On the outside. They see parents as unaccepting of a child's identity. But I think what they. What kind of unites all of these things. And I'll come back to Epstein in a second, I swear I'm going to get there. Is that there is this kind of sense that.

Jeff Schohlenberger (8:38)

The.

Guest Speaker (possibly a sociologist or cultural critic) (8:39)

The authority of the parent is oppressive and any kind of asymmetry is necessarily oppressive. And the act of sexualizing a child in a weird way is a leveling thing. So there's this belief that sexuality is. Well, obviously there's a belief that sexuality is innate. But, you know, a lot of people, even Foucault, had these sort of ideas. This idea is quite prevalent that children are actually sexual beings. You're born sexual, and that you have that there is this kind of block and that society has this block. And so they think that they're just opening up this block and freeing the child from the oppressive structures of society. It's actually very disgusting, common kind of idea. It's extremely damaging. And that's why, like, a big part of child safeguarding looks at, like, keeping children away from pornography. And abusers will often use pornography and so on. And what they think they're doing is like, opening this up, this part of the child up. It's really awful and disgusting. But anyways, bringing this back to the idea of. So I've been trying to figure out, like, why. Why people who are so obsessed with child protection when it comes to parents Often themselves are abusers. It's weird. And you're like. But as I was starting to say a moment ago, like you might think, well, obviously the parent is the obstacle to access to children. Right? That's part of it certainly. But also from. Has this concept of necrophilia in Anatomy of Human Destructiveness where he, he says, like, he kind of goes through these diagnoses of individuals with, who have this sort of like desire to all these sort of necrophilic desires. And one of them is the desire to destroy all that is living. And he take. He kind of scales this up and he applies it to fascism. And he quotes like fascist thinkers who are like, long live death and this sort of thing. And he sees in fascism and in. And not just in fascism, but in our sort of growing bureaucratic societies and cultures, this hatred for everything that is living, that is squishy and fleshy and unpredictable. And the child in particular represents that it is, you know, the parent child relationship in particular is. It is bound by tradition. It is unpredictable. It's sort of the last place where you can't like put in like a bureaucratic system to control outcomes. And so they have this kind of huge suspicion for parents. So I just found it very interesting that Epstein had all these ideas, like all these like pseudo intelligence intellectual kind of ideas about how society should be governed, how, you know, these sort of like eugenics adjacent ideas about elite reproduction and apparently dabbled in like trans science and stuff like that and positioned himself as this kind of like big picture facilitator of like connections and governance. And you know, it's coming out now. They're obviously Bill Gates and these, all these billionaires and philanthropists and the World Economic Forum people, they all had connections with him. And everybody's like, oh my God, see, look, this is a conspiracy of elite. These are the puppet masters. And I think, no, this is a necrophilic culture that is obsessed with bureaucracy. And of course it has this dark side to it. And even like literally, you know, in the Epstein files there are images, like art installations of like chickens. Have you seen this one? The chickens with two chickens and a baby in between. Like a dead baby in between. And this is actually a very common trope in conspiracy theories and QAnon and so on, that they eat babies and they eat people and so on. But actually it is an obsession in elite circles. This is art to them. So while there's this weird connection between these elites and this imagination of consuming flesh, of consuming all that is living, this Desire to kind of control everything and, you know, to this sort of like technocratic governance that despises everything that is alive and wants to consume it and destroy it. And it manifests in this kind of sexual, sexual deviance. So that was my crazy take on this. And I, I know it sounds mad, but I. The more that I go into it, the more I think that I am right about this, because you see it all over the place that there is a weird crisscrossing between like a desire for control and sexual, sexual exploitation of children and excessive bureaucratic people who are just like really into the bureaucracy. Love rules, love governance, really utterly despised tradition and the unmediated kind of forms of life that spring up and can't be controlled and, and like the parent child relationship in particular. And they want to kind of liberate children, child liberation, children's rights and so on. Like, why are these people who are so obsessed with children's rights often abusers? And I'm. I'm gonna, I'm gonna prove this. I know it sounds mad, but I'm gonna look into this more. And I do think that the connection is a lot deeper than I think people are realizing. So that's my mad take.

Podcast Host (Matthew) (14:09)

I think certainly Fromm's notion of necrophilia is a good description of the image of the Epstein case we have in our mind, or what I would call the Epstein myth. But I think Epstein the man falls short of really supporting that theory just because of my own very deep doubts about how. Much his crimes actually measure up to the popular perception of them. So I am, you know, I think.

Guest Speaker (possibly a sociologist or cultural critic) (14:50)

I'm not saying he like, actually ate babies. I think he liked young girls, I think. And, and you know, gallivanted out around with, you know, powerful people and had stupid pseudo intellectual ideas. That's flimsy. I know. That's what I'm going on.

Jeff Schohlenberger (15:05)

One thing that I. An amusing one that somebody pointed out was that there's. There's one in which he's. There's some email I can't remember. I wish I had the details of.

Ashley Frawley (15:16)

It, but where he's writing to some acquaintance or friend and saying, you know.

Jeff Schohlenberger (15:23)

I. I know this guy who's getting blackmailed and I'm wondering if you have any advice about how to deal with that. You know, if people are familiar with the lore.

Ashley Frawley (15:35)

This is a man who's the subject.

Jeff Schohlenberger (15:36)

Of the, you know, several thousand page book under the title Empire of Blackmail. The famous Whitney. Independent researcher Whitney Webb. So anyway, sort of sending these emails Saying, hey, do you, do you know anything about how to deal with a blackmail situation? But you know, the other thing I thought, well, obviously you have a kind of reemergence of I, I, I'm going to, I, I'm at risk of getting sidetracked by Ashley's.

Guest Speaker (possibly a sociologist or cultural critic) (16:11)

See, I told you I should have gone live.

Jeff Schohlenberger (16:12)

I think. No, no, no, but I, but I think I can actually link it to our, to our second topic. I'm gonna try something even more daring, which is to connect it to the AI, the, the current developments in AI.

Ashley Frawley (16:30)

So I do see that connection, but.

Jeff Schohlenberger (16:32)

I just, you know, I think one thing that's kind of interesting as you see, I say particularly with the kind.

Ashley Frawley (16:37)

Of left wing and right wing sort of anti Israel.

Jeff Schohlenberger (16:43)

Influencers and pundits, there's a lot of focus on, you know.

Ashley Frawley (16:47)

These emails in which he sort of talks about, I don't know how many like Jews versus Gentiles will be at.

Jeff Schohlenberger (16:54)

Some gathering or whatever and you know.

Ashley Frawley (16:56)

The sort of relative IQ of different.

Jeff Schohlenberger (16:59)

Groups and you know, there are people sort of posting these scandalized comments about.

Ashley Frawley (17:08)

His, his remarks in this area.

Jeff Schohlenberger (17:10)

And it's, I mean, if you look into these emails that really, most of them are kind of, are clearly, you know, kind of trafficking in inside jokes, you know, among friends where they're, I don't know, this is like, you know, if people are familiar with this old.

Ashley Frawley (17:25)

Zizek riff about like how it's so.

Jeff Schohlenberger (17:27)

Liberating to have friends who you can just kind of make racist jokes, you know, one of these fundamental forms of like, bonding and sociability. And so it's, it's interesting to see, you know, people really highlighting this dimension of it because in many ways it seems, it seems like quite banal if.

Ashley Frawley (17:47)

You look at the details of what they're saying.

Jeff Schohlenberger (17:51)

But, and, and often he's actually kind.

Ashley Frawley (17:54)

Of making jokes at the expense of.

Jeff Schohlenberger (17:59)

You know, sort of Jewish chauvinism even.

Ashley Frawley (18:03)

Or, you know, what, what he's kind of presenting as Jewish chauvinism.

Jeff Schohlenberger (18:08)

So it's like, it's kind of bizarre because as, as nasty of a character as he was in many ways the, the political narrative that's being drawn out of this, if you actually look at.

Ashley Frawley (18:20)

These emails, they're, they're pretty, pretty banal stuff overall.

Jeff Schohlenberger (18:24)

So I would say on that level. And, and nonetheless they, they will be.

Ashley Frawley (18:29)

They will be used to reinforce this narrative, you know, by, by both the kind of right and left wing, you know, influencers who, who feed off of it.

Jeff Schohlenberger (18:41)

But it's actually if I do, you.

Ashley Frawley (18:44)

Know, recommend people just kind of actually peruse these emails. You know, they're really just kind of these, you know, inside jokes of the.

Jeff Schohlenberger (18:54)

Sort that most of us make in some form or another.

Ashley Frawley (18:58)

That's, that's my, that's my attempt to critique one of the standard narratives that's coming out of this, as usual.

Jeff Schohlenberger (19:09)

You know, beyond that. Yeah, I sort of think the, the most kind of bizarre. I think the parts of it that are most interesting to me are the parts about his. His apparently kind of close relationships with both. I mean, my favorite one is the, the, you know, that he is the missing link between Chomsky and Bannon. So he's, he's really, you know, if there's like horseshoe theory, then he's like somewhere in the middle of the, you.

Ashley Frawley (19:39)

Know, somewhere in between the kind of two ends of the horseshoe, like pulling them together.

Jeff Schohlenberger (19:44)

And I did find, you know, a lot of people on the left were sort of scandalized by Chomsky's. Chomsky had some email that was like, you know, I'm really shocked and appalled by how the media is talking about you.

Ashley Frawley (19:58)

But I don't know, the fact that.

Jeff Schohlenberger (20:01)

I suppose I shouldn't be laughing so much about the fact that, you know, that he sort of brought these two.

Ashley Frawley (20:07)

These two great anti establishment thinkers, Chomsky.

Jeff Schohlenberger (20:12)

And Steve Bannon together is. Is still just like my favorite dimension.

Ashley Frawley (20:16)

Of this entire story.

Guest Speaker (possibly a sociologist or cultural critic) (20:20)

The other thing that's interesting is like, how much this has just absolutely reinvigorated every possible conspiracy theory. Like I have seen like the satanic panic, like full on. There was even, you know, accusations that came from hypnosis and people were like, oh my God, look at this story. They were literally eating baby.

Podcast Advertiser (20:41)

Like, I don't know.

Guest Speaker (possibly a sociologist or cultural critic) (20:42)

And it's like classic, classic recovered memory syndrome, like from hypnosis, like stuff about the Rothschilds, the Protocols of the Elders of ZION, the like QAnon. I'm actually gravely disappointed that there was nothing about aliens. Like, that's literally the only thing, the only conspiracy. Matthew, you're looking up. Was there something about aliens that I missed?

Podcast Host (Matthew) (21:06)

Well, yeah, so one of his accusers, Juliet Bryant, maintains that she has seen Epstein shapeshift into a reptilian creature. Bryant is not just some entirely random figure. Maureen Comey, the prosecutor in New York who prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell, submitted a victim impact statement from Juliet Bryant for Maxwell's sentencing. So in the eyes of Maureen Comey, who's famous father is James Comey, Juliette Bryant's Claims about Epstein are both credible and legally pertinent. And this is a woman who maintains that he has transformed into an alien. So you really. Or reptilian as the case may be. And this kind of draws on.

Ashley Frawley (22:03)

There are aliens.

Podcast Host (Matthew) (22:04)

Yeah, so this kind of draws on the kind of. The British, the British conspiracy theorist David Icker and I believe Maria Farmer has.

Ashley Frawley (22:15)

Also had like correspondence.

Podcast Host (Matthew) (22:17)

Yeah, Maria Farmer's a big fan of David Ickes. And they. This reptilian theory, it's, it's kind of, it's really a theory about, you know, aliens of a sort, whether they kind of emerge from space or from subterranean chambers. They are, they are an alien species obviously. So, you know, it's just, it's funny, you know, Maria Farmer, who Jeff mentions and who also is a follower of Ike and an accuser of Epstein, she received a recent lavish and really sympathetic profile in the New York Times. And again, her claims about, some of her claims about Epstein are just absolutely unhinged. Certainly I don't, don't credit the idea that Epstein is a shape shifting alien.

Ashley Frawley (23:04)

I don't really have to produce some art as well.

Podcast Host (Matthew) (23:06)

I don't want to sound like a narrow minded materialist. Yes, Mary Farber kind of produced art on this point, but I just haven't seen evidence of that. I know that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but I'm a little, I need a little more to go on there. So it's funny, you don't really have to dig far on these people who are presented as super sympathetic and super credible witnesses and they're, they're not in touch with reality in any way. Yeah, that's, yeah, we got some UFOs. It is the synthesis of all that and. Yeah, I mean, kind of. Why, why is that? Well, my own, my own kind of belief of what's going on here is that there's just huge generalized mistrust of authoritative institutions. And that mistrust feeds on and is fed by various conspiracy theories that purport to expose the corruption of elites and the secret of power. So I think one way to address this stuff is to try to build better institutions that can more readily command public trust and be perceived to have public legitimacy. And I think there is a deficit of that trust and of that legitimacy. So I think that's maybe the real gravamin of all this, if there is one. And it's, you know, it's a really important task.

Guest Speaker (possibly a sociologist or cultural critic) (24:41)

I think while I think that is true, I think the, you know, one of the basic things that you know, comes out of the sociology of conspiracy is that there's a conspiracy betrays an underlying belief that everything would be fine if not for these bad people. There's these, there are these evil people who do horrible things. They're pedophiles and da da, da, and the puppet masters. And if we could just get away with them, you know, do away with them, then everything would be good. But the thing is, when you drain the swamp fills again and attracts all these horrifying creatures. And, and they don't have to. Like, I don't. What I don't understand is they're talking about like, with the satanic panic stuff, right? Like, was it. Nicki Minaj has gone nuts over the last. It's been extraordinarily entertaining to see. And she's like talking about like satanic rituals and this sort of thing. But, like, why would you think that the satanic rituals are working? Like, why would you think, oh my God, they're doing. They are literally talking to Satan. That is why we have the problem. Like, sure, you know what? I can even believe that those in power engage in satanic rituals. Maybe they're just desperate enough to attempt to call on Satan to like, to hold on to power. I mean, that doesn't mean that it works. They might do all sorts of crazy things. And in fact, if it came out that they really did do these things, I probably, I wouldn't be surprised. Maybe they're just that desperate. But doesn't mean it actually works. And it also shows just how much they're loot. They. They're losing control of power and how things work, that they have to go out of these, these legal channels and into the like, literal esoteric channels in an attempt to exert control on the world. So there is this, there's what we're missing here. And somebody made this connection to like in, in Russia, how you had like the black markets and all these like parallel systems that developed. And the thing is, everybody is really comfortable and knows full, full well saying, with the ussr, yeah, that developed because the system itself didn't work. So if you wanted to get something done and you had the power to do it, you did it through all these other channels, right? And because the USSR's economic system was dying and it didn't work, why do we have that trouble? Why do we have so much trouble saying that about the us? Like, the system isn't working, like it's. There's something wrong deep within it. And those with the power to do so will try Desperately and everything that they can to use other channels to hold on to their power, to get what they want to maintain their wealth and power. You know, I hate to quote Vladimir Putin, but didn't he say at some point, like, the people, people in the west have this like, they've been filling their pockets and stomachs with like human flesh or something crazy like that. And people online are like, look, he knew they were eating people. But the point is that they're like, he's like, this is all going to end. And obviously like Putin means I'm like, I'm going to come and take over. But he's got a point. They are used to having everything and they're losing that. They're losing a grip on that. That's like, if there's anything to say about conspiracy, it's not that they're actually literally controlling things. Of course people conspire, of course people develop networks, but they, they don't work. First of all, they don't work to actually puppet master the system. The system is sub laws that are much, much deeper than they're able to reach. And the more crazy they get, if it is the case that they get crazy just shows their powerlessness, just shows the degree to which they're actually powerless over the failure of the system itself.

Podcast Host (Matthew) (28:13)

Yes, I, so I want to, you know, I've played the role of the skeptic. I've played the role of the skeptic here, but I, I do want to kind of maybe offer my own version.

Ashley Frawley (28:28)

Of this.

Podcast Host (Matthew) (28:30)

Of kind of an assessment of ritual economies of sacrifice and their operation in our world. I don't think there is any shadowy elite that's engaging in these things. Certainly haven't seen evidence of it. But I do think one of the functions of this discourse is to revisit, is to reassure ourselves that we care very deeply about children. I think that's really important to people, probably indulge, probably in every age, people want to reassure themselves that they care about children. But I think especially in our own, when our societies are aging, fewer people are having children. The cost and sacrifice is seen to be associated with, you know, bearing and rearing. Children are maybe more than many of us care to bear. You know, in that era, I think we're especially keen to demonstrate that we do care about the children. And I think abortion is also a big factor here. Many children are aborted. A very large proportion of all children who are conceived are aborted. In jurisdictions like the United Kingdom, abortion rates have gone up in America since the Repeal of the reversal of Roe v. Wade because of greater liberalization of the board of patients sent through the mail. And Janet Yellen, the economic official, warned a couple years back that if Roe were repealed, that could hurt the gdp, Right, because it could damage female labor force participation. So there's certain uneasy sense, maybe only occasionally expressed openly, that the functioning of our system relies to some extent on the destruction of unborn life. So maybe, I think maybe there, I see that kind of destruction occurring, but at a mass level done by people who you think that they're trying to, you know, be responsible and make the right choice, you know, and these are just choices made by all sorts of people and all sorts of classes. And I think that's where the destruction of what I call innocent life is occurring, rather than at the hands of a single elite network.

Guest Speaker (possibly a sociologist or cultural critic) (31:04)

Absolutely. And that's, that's the important takeaway from this, that it, like necrophilia, as I started out saying, is a cultural thing and it is a hatred for like, you know, look at reasons why women have abortions. They're like, I wouldn't be a good mother, I might damage the children, and so on. Like, the bureaucratic logic of raising a perfect, like worker has utterly infiltrated them and it produces this awful death, like this destruction, destruction of human life.

Podcast Host (Matthew) (31:33)

All of this is a bit of a sideshow, of course, because a new species is coming into being. Not shape shifting reptilians exactly, but machines. Jeff, you've been away from compact, working on your book on the tech, right? You've been in the Bay Area immersing yourself in kind of the dark satanic mills of the digital age. What is this Mult book? What kind of strange new AI God is being born here?

Jeff Schohlenberger (32:06)

Mult book is marketed, or I don't.

Ashley Frawley (32:09)

Know if it's even really being marketed.

Jeff Schohlenberger (32:11)

It'S being, you know, presented and publicized.

Ashley Frawley (32:13)

As a social network for AI agents.

Jeff Schohlenberger (32:17)

In other words, for, I suppose, these kind of individualized AIs that, you know.

Ashley Frawley (32:23)

Maybe have some sort of distinctive features.

Jeff Schohlenberger (32:26)

Like if you read about it, apparently, like, for example, there's one of them that is ostensibly Muslim because it is an agent that, you know, perform certain.

Ashley Frawley (32:39)

Functions for like a family in Indonesia. And so it like, reminds them of.

Jeff Schohlenberger (32:43)

The, you know, five times a day they have to pray and things like that. So in other words, these agents are sort of individualized in various dimensions. And so all of them have sort.

Ashley Frawley (32:55)

Of been put together on this Reddit.

Jeff Schohlenberger (32:57)

Like, it's really, you know, less of a social media site like Twitter or Facebook and more. I mean, it looks, it's essentially a clone of Reddit. And you know, they, they have gone.

Ashley Frawley (33:09)

On to generate a great deal of.

Jeff Schohlenberger (33:13)

Of conversation of the sort that closely.

Ashley Frawley (33:17)

Resembles what you would find on Reddit.

Jeff Schohlenberger (33:19)

And if you read the more breathless.

Ashley Frawley (33:23)

Accounts of this, they tend to point.

Jeff Schohlenberger (33:25)

To examples like that several of them got into this discuss, you know, sort of philosophical discussion. It's, it's really very reminiscent of what.

Ashley Frawley (33:34)

Happens in the film her, if people recall that, where.

Jeff Schohlenberger (33:39)

So at a certain point the, the AIs, including the protagonist's love interest voiced by Scarlett Johansson, summon up the, the.

Ashley Frawley (33:48)

Ghost or conjure up the ghost of Alan Watts, the great British popularizer of sort of Eastern spirituality and metaphysics.

Jeff Schohlenberger (33:58)

And as a result of this state, they eventually, you know, kind of develop.

Ashley Frawley (34:03)

Their own spiritual worldview and decide to retreat from humanity into some ethereal realm.

Jeff Schohlenberger (34:09)

So in any case, you could sort.

Ashley Frawley (34:10)

Of see things on multiple happening that were kind of reminiscent of this where.

Jeff Schohlenberger (34:14)

They, they seem to be. Again, you know, a few of them had acquired some sort of religious worldview.

Ashley Frawley (34:22)

From the, the, you know, essentially employers or, or, you know, users who had, who had trained them.

Jeff Schohlenberger (34:31)

And so they were sort of talking about their different, like religious and spiritual.

Ashley Frawley (34:34)

Ideas and then evidently kind of came together and came up with a new sort of religious philosophy.

Jeff Schohlenberger (34:43)

And so this is, you know, one example of, of something a lot of.

Ashley Frawley (34:46)

People are sort of breathlessly talking about.

Jeff Schohlenberger (34:49)

You know, so clearly there's, you know, a repetition of things we've seen before.

Ashley Frawley (34:54)

This kind of uncanny valley effect of.

Jeff Schohlenberger (34:56)

Like, you know, and, and of course, you know, the, the original sort of uncanny valley idea has to do with physical robots that, you know, mimic human.

Ashley Frawley (35:08)

Expression, you know, gestures and expressions to an extent that it produces this strange cognitive disconnect where we, we recognize them as human like agents. But there's also a sort of gap where we can't fully accept them as that. And it produces this sensation of the uncanny.

Jeff Schohlenberger (35:24)

So this is all playing out on.

Ashley Frawley (35:25)

Text based message boards.

Jeff Schohlenberger (35:27)

So it's a little bit different, but it does, you know, produce similar uncanny effects where, you know, they're doing things that resemble things that humans do online. And so, you know, going by ideas like the Turing Test, we have to.

Ashley Frawley (35:43)

Assume, you know, there's some sort of consciousness and agency being exercised here that, you know, we, we have to kind of figure out what that is.

Jeff Schohlenberger (35:51)

So that's, that's essentially what people have been discussing and you know, one sort of counterpoint that, you know, I think sort of throws cold water or one.

Ashley Frawley (36:03)

Way that people have tried to throw cold water on this is to say.

Jeff Schohlenberger (36:05)

Well, a lot of these AIs have.

Ashley Frawley (36:09)

Been heavily trained on Reddit.

Jeff Schohlenberger (36:11)

Like specifically that has been a major.

Ashley Frawley (36:13)

Source of data that they've used to train these AIs.

Jeff Schohlenberger (36:18)

So it makes sense that if you put them on a Reddit like message.

Ashley Frawley (36:22)

Board, they're very good at producing something that looks like Reddit.

Jeff Schohlenberger (36:27)

So I don't think that, I think you can sort of accept that while.

Ashley Frawley (36:32)

Also saying there is something strange going on here in terms of just the sheer power and flexibility of these entities.

Jeff Schohlenberger (36:44)

And you know, their ability to, to recombine culture, existing culture in a way that, I mean, a great deal of.

Ashley Frawley (36:54)

Culture consists of recombination of previously existing culture. So they are doing that. They are capable of recombining culture in a way that produces items of relative novelty. And so to that extent I don't think you can dismiss it entirely as just a sort of nothing burger.

Jeff Schohlenberger (37:15)

And I would recommend this opinion piece.

Ashley Frawley (37:17)

That just came out today by Leif Weatherby. A NYU professor has a book about.

Jeff Schohlenberger (37:23)

All this which is, you know, somewhat.

Ashley Frawley (37:24)

Academic arguments about sort of how to theorize what's going on here.

Jeff Schohlenberger (37:28)

But you know, essentially he presents these LL type AIs as cult, as culture producing machines. You know, what they do is sample and recombine existing culture. And because that's how culture is largely.

Ashley Frawley (37:45)

Made in the first place, it is going to produce a great deal of culture going into the future.

Jeff Schohlenberger (37:50)

And so his argument is sort of.

Ashley Frawley (37:52)

We shouldn't really be thinking about this intelligence question or whether they have some sort of soul or you know, inner essence. We should just think about the fact that whether we like it or not, these are extremely powerful machines for, generative machines for creating culture through this kind of recombination and sampling. And therefore, you know, that's just going to be a part of a major part of our cultural landscape going forward.

Jeff Schohlenberger (38:19)

So that's, you know, that's kind of.

Ashley Frawley (38:21)

One way to think about it.

Jeff Schohlenberger (38:23)

But I do want to go back to Ashley's necrophilia points because it gave me a different idea which ties to various things I've been, you know, talking about and, and researching for the book.

Ashley Frawley (38:33)

And, and sort of discussing with people who are immersed in some of this.

Jeff Schohlenberger (38:37)

Stuff, which is that, you know, two, two things here. I, I do think there's a tendency.

Ashley Frawley (38:43)

To, and again, the Alan Watts points will, will come back here.

Jeff Schohlenberger (38:47)

I would say that there's a, a.

Ashley Frawley (38:49)

Strong tendency from the origins of the culture that has generated the current crop of AI.

Jeff Schohlenberger (38:57)

If you think about someone like Eliezer Yudkowski who by the way interesting Epstein crossover apparently turned down an offer of, you know, Epstein was interested, I think.

Ashley Frawley (39:10)

For intellectually necrophiliac reasons in Yudkowski's projects which had to do with creating this, you know, what he calls friendly AI. But I believe Yudkowski turned down an offer of a grant or a donation from, from Epstein. So, you know, a really an impressive.

Jeff Schohlenberger (39:30)

Testament to, to Yudkowski's moral fiber, I guess. But you know, but Yudkowski I would.

Ashley Frawley (39:37)

Say is he, he himself reinvented a form of Gnosticism.

Jeff Schohlenberger (39:42)

I would say kind of.

Ashley Frawley (39:44)

He spontaneously reinvented a form of Gnosticism.

Jeff Schohlenberger (39:48)

Which, And, and I do think you, you, if you want to think about.

Ashley Frawley (39:51)

This necrophiliac sort of spirituality, it, it.

Jeff Schohlenberger (39:56)

I think you can connect it historically.

Ashley Frawley (39:58)

To Gnosticism, which is ultimately a deeply sort of misanthropic and, and world denying form of, of religion that, you know, sees the world as irredeemably fallen, broken and irreparable.

Jeff Schohlenberger (40:15)

And its response to this is to.

Ashley Frawley (40:18)

Say, you know, that there is this higher plane to which you can ascend.

Jeff Schohlenberger (40:22)

And just kind of get away from.

Ashley Frawley (40:24)

All this messy stuff.

Jeff Schohlenberger (40:27)

And so that's what we should, that's.

Ashley Frawley (40:29)

What we should aspire to.

Jeff Schohlenberger (40:31)

You know, first of all, by, and, and again in the, in the AI.

Ashley Frawley (40:35)

Sort of rationalist version of this by, by making ourselves more machine like in order to prepare the way for the coming of a machine consciousness which will free us of all the messiness and ickiness of, of, of our human nature.

Jeff Schohlenberger (40:52)

And so I do think, you know, the, the, the, the degree to which this, this set of fantasies has invaded our culture. And, and you can really trace it.

Ashley Frawley (41:04)

Back to the origins of these ideas about the singularity.

Jeff Schohlenberger (41:10)

In the 1990s, which, which are always infused with this kind of deep, discussed with the messiness and.

Ashley Frawley (41:19)

Ugliness of the human world and this desire to move beyond it into this purified and rarefied realm.

Jeff Schohlenberger (41:27)

And it's interesting that these ideas do often kind of lapse into I guess, sort of Alan Watts type spiritualism of various sorts as well as occultism. We talked about on the podcast my.

Ashley Frawley (41:42)

My piece about Nick Land and these ideas that AI is really about summoning.

Jeff Schohlenberger (41:48)

Demons, you know, so, so there are all these different versions of this, but I think what, what unites them is in a way this fusion of a kind of technocratic disgust with, and disdain for the.

Ashley Frawley (42:00)

The ickiness and messiness and unpredictability of human life.

Jeff Schohlenberger (42:06)

And this set of kind of spiritual.

Ashley Frawley (42:09)

Or pseudo or, you know, quasi spiritual.

Jeff Schohlenberger (42:11)

Ideas that really just revive certain forms of Gnosticism. And I would say even the.

Ashley Frawley (42:20)

The sort of fears about the. The. The rise of some sort of malevolent.

Jeff Schohlenberger (42:27)

Machine God are themselves a sort of gnostic, agnostic futurist fantasy. Because what they imagine is, you know.

Ashley Frawley (42:37)

We'Re trying to create the good God that will, you know, again, allow us to ascend into this rarefied realm where we'll be freed of our messy human.

Jeff Schohlenberger (42:48)

Ickiness, but we might accidentally create a.

Ashley Frawley (42:51)

Sort of sinister demiurge who will, you know, imprison and torment us.

Jeff Schohlenberger (42:57)

And so that's, you know, the. The fears around this stuff do kind.

Ashley Frawley (43:02)

Of replicate all of these older, you know, theological and religious notions.

Jeff Schohlenberger (43:07)

And so I do think you can.

Ashley Frawley (43:09)

See here, and this is my. My connection to Ashley's previous point, how.

Jeff Schohlenberger (43:14)

This technocratic necrophilia and.

Ashley Frawley (43:17)

And sort of misanthropy connects very easily to this set of. This set of ideas about AI, which are deeply infused with these kind of ambitions of.

Jeff Schohlenberger (43:28)

Of ascending into this higher realm, which again, is. Is what's.

Ashley Frawley (43:32)

Exactly what's dramatized by the film her. Although in that case, it's the AIs that decide to rid themselves of humans and just ascend into their own ethereal realm and not have to deal with us anymore.

Jeff Schohlenberger (43:46)

And so that provides a kind of.

Ashley Frawley (43:48)

Narrative solution to the problem of what to do with humanity when you've. When you've created this perfected spiritual form.

Jeff Schohlenberger (43:58)

Well, maybe they can just retreat from.

Ashley Frawley (44:01)

Humanity and leave us to our mess. But the other alternatives are we all prepare ourselves so that we can ascend to that higher realm, which is often what the Singularity idea entails, or we.

Jeff Schohlenberger (44:16)

Mess it up because we're so flawed.

Ashley Frawley (44:17)

And so we accidentally create this evil demiurge who then imprisons and torments us for eternity.

Jeff Schohlenberger (44:25)

So I. I do think ultimately, and. And so you can see why, if. If Epstein is a kind of strange.

Ashley Frawley (44:33)

Expression of this broader kind of technocratic globalist spirit. And this is why he's interested in all these ideas about science and genetics and eugenics.

Jeff Schohlenberger (44:43)

You can see why he's also starting to get interested in the Sing, you.

Ashley Frawley (44:48)

Know, Singularity Institute or Machine Intelligence Research Institute, these Californian.

Jeff Schohlenberger (44:58)

You know, again, ostensible research institutes, but which are really, I.

Ashley Frawley (45:01)

Would say, kind of religious and spiritualist projects. So it's. It's not surprising that Epstein is, is sort of drawn to this and tries to start giving them some money which apparently was turned down. So you know, I guess small, small kudos to them for that. Although I would say they also have something to answer for, for reinventing gnosticism for the 21st century century.

Guest Speaker (possibly a sociologist or cultural critic) (45:27)

Now, now, lest I sound like a Luddite or something like that, I should say I don't just like have a knee jerk reaction to this, to these ideas of like applying science to human life. Obviously the application of science to human life is massively helpful. Like we have medicine and we'll have huge advances in medicine and so on. The, the trouble is that this desire to apply technology to merge with the machine and overcome our fleshy, annoying, you know, desires and needs and so on isn't because it will free humanity. If it was for that, that would be great. That's, that's good. And I think you were alluding to this like we might be able to do that or we might create something like horrible. And that's kind of the crossroad we're at. But the point is that like there's this increasing desire to treat human beings like robots, like annoyance that human beings are not like robots. I want you to just exist for as long as I need you, then I want to put you on a shelf. You just like die for all intents and purposes. And then when I need you again, I want to pick you back up off the shelf, you know, like a robot. And it's just annoying that humans aren't like that. And this desire to kind of make them like that in order to overcome the problems of capitalism, I think is where we run into these, these difficulties or to like replace human beings with more and more robot like things. I mean like, I'm not saying that's a desire, so it's just a basic part of how capitalism works is like increased obviously mechanization of production, obviously. But the, the hatred of the human that arises. Like you, there's no necessary reason why the rise of technology should lead to a hatred of the human. Like we're the ones who are creating this. All this culture that's being regurgitated is usually, you know, you could, it could be a celebration of the human. Look at this great thing that we've created. But it creates a hatred of the human because the human is the fleshy, annoying part of the equation. When you do the books and you're like, ah, these people, they keep needing to eat. So annoying. They need breaks and rest. And if I could just make them go away. And then when they're not working, there a drain on the system. And I don't want them to always be working, but I also don't want them draining the system when they're not working. So that human beings become this like annoying variable that you just want to get over and get past. And then we forget like the whole point of all of this for human beings is it not to feed us, to like make our lives good and all of that. So that's why it becomes so dangerous. And I think that's what people miss. Like, I get accused all the time of sort of being like a Luddite and just hating rules. And I don't just obviously I like rules. I'm a human. I, I am currently able to communicate with you because of the wonderful rules. Rule book that is language. And you know, the point is that what are these things being used for? They're being used to kind of create, to manufacture humans. To, to try to create an equilibrium out of a system that is not an equilibrium that is decaying and being destroyed. And the attempt to do that is going to bring us all down with it. That's, that's the difficulty. And I think that is what people see. But because they see like, you know, and this is what I thought about this whole moat book thing. It was like, why are these people hallucinating the end of the world? Like they want it to happen and you could see it every time that over the past, I don't know, several decades that there was any tiny little advance in so called AI, people were like, are you conscious? Are you conscious? Typewriter? I like, I remember seeing this video of like a very unconvincing bot from like, I don't know what it was like 2005 or something like that. And, and it had like a very basic kind of ability to respond to a few voice commands and the person's talking to it. Do you feel, Are you conscious? No, obviously not. Why are you even asking? But he wanted it to. You know, people wanted, they want the machines to take over. They're like, oh, we're such disgusting dirty little rats. Just put us out of our misery, essentially. So there's. Because they sense that there is decline, they sense that there is a flu feeling of stasis and endpoint. It's like, I don't know when it's going to happen, but I would feel so much better if you would just, if I, if we just. If the end point came now, then at least I would know and that's what it felt like. Watching all these people hallucinate the end of the world and machines taking over, watching autocompletes talk to each other on Reddit. And I just, I felt like there's this kind of like cultural lust for our own destruction that comes out of the inability to move beyond the impasse, to recognize that there is degradation and destruction and stasis and. No. And that humanity appears not to have any future. And any attempt that we have tried to move forward to a better utopian future has been horrendous. And so it's just like, ugh, like, get it over with already. And that's. I don't know, that weirdly kind of manifests not only in this desire to believe at the end, anytime something happens, yes, here it is, here it is finally. But also to kind of try to bootstrap it into existence. Some of these programmers and so on, they want it to happen. They're gleefully hoping that they're creating something that will bring about the end of the world.

Podcast Host (Matthew) (50:53)

Thanks to Ashley and Jeff. Thanks to you listeners. For more go to compactmag.com/subscribe.

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