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Plutopia News Network
Hosted by Plutopia News Network · EN
We talk to interesting people via podcast and weekly livestream.
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Living Philosophy
Jan 1201:00:07Tap to summarizeIn this Plutopia News Network podcast, Charles Herrman interviews philosopher Randall Auxier about his unconventional academic path, process philosophy, and personalism, exploring how his early struggles with formal instruction led him to self-directed study and original interpretations of thinkers like Peirce, Whitehead, Bergson, Dewey, and Royce. Auxier critiques mainstream academia for discouraging originality and enforcing conformity, argues that philosophy is a way of life rather than a profession, and explains his view of “process personalism,” in which personhood is relational, dynamic, and present throughout reality in varying degrees. He challenges individualism, defends communities as primary moral persons, critiques corporate personhood as sociopathic, and aligns his thought with pragmatism, radical empiricism, and process traditions that emphasize becoming, value, and shared meaning over static doctrines or institutional authority. Randall Auxier: From the very beginning, I had difficulty finding teachers, and so kind of had to teach myself this stuff… and most people regard it as enormously difficult stuff. And so, in a way, it was a challenge to not have a teacher, and in a way, it was a blessing. Because if I had a teacher, I might have fallen into whatever that teacher thought about this material. Because that’s the natural thing to do, is to pay attention to your mentors and the people you respect. As it turned out, since I had no one to teach me this stuff — I mean, my professors were perfectly content for me to study it, but they said, you know, we don’t read this stuff. We don’t know what you’re talking about. And so I ended up having to sort of make it up, in the sense of make up my own interpretations of these people’s very difficult ideas. And that ended up being pretty good, actually, for me, because I don’t think that I would have been satisfied with anyone else’s version of this stuff.
Transcribe →Cory Doctorow: Enshittification
Dec 29Tap to summarizeIn this excerpt from the Plutopia News Network, Cory Doctorow discusses his book Enshittification and the broader forces behind why digital platforms (and other industries) have “suddenly gotten worse.” He explains the term’s now-famous three-stage cycle: platforms lure users with quality, pivot to serving business customers at users’ expense, then squeeze both sides for maximum profit. Cory argues that this isn’t just greed, but the result of an “enshittogenic” policy environment shaped by weakened antitrust, captured regulators, and diminished worker power. Cory Doctorow: All of these policies that are antithetical to the interests of billionaires keep cropping up all over the world. And I think that’s best understood as an effect and not a cause, right? That there is a giant tailwind for smashing corporate power. And it has many manifestations: environmental law, opposition to genocide in Gaza, the anti-poverty campaigns, anti-corruption campaigns. Many other aspects of the fight about corporate power are all kind of reflecting, I think, this popular sentiment that, like the wind, is invisible and can only be understood by what it propels. And I think we’re all really angry with corporate power, we’re all fucking done with it. And there is this maxim out of finance, Stein’s Law: that anything that can’t go on forever eventually stops. And I think that we’re reaching the stopping point for corporate corruption. Links A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet: video of Cory’s December 28 talk. Pluralistic: Daily Links from Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow’s Craphound Cory’s latest books “Enshittification” in Wikipedia Cory at EFF Video version on YouTube: Photo copyright Julia Galdo and Cody Cloud (JUCO), www.jucophoto.com/, licensed via Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0
Transcribe →Jaye Robinson: Practical AI
Nov 19, 2024Tap to summarizeIn this episode of the Plutopia podcast, Jaye Robinson, a multifaceted professional with experience as an attorney, navy diver, and AI specialist, joins Jon and Scoop to explore the societal and ethical impacts of artificial intelligence. The conversation considers the challenges of copyright law in the age of Large Language Models, the mechanics and limitations of AI systems, and the broader implications of generative AI on labor, privacy, and propaganda. Robinson also shares his unique career journey from law to AI, offering insights into how AI tools are reshaping various industries, including healthcare and transportation. The discussion is peppered with philosophical musings, anecdotes about technology’s evolution, and humor, making for an engaging exploration of AI’s place in our increasingly interconnected world. Jaye Robinson: You collect a lot of text that is relevant to what you want this large language model to understand and these general purpose large language models basically just want a lot of things that people have written. Ideally things that people have written well and ideally things that are – yeah copyright is spun there. Ideally every original work of authorship is covered by copyright as soon as it’s committed to a tangible medium. But what those copyrights are varies from work to work and how long they last. It depends on whether you’re Disney in which case they last forever or just a person in which case they last until Disney can steal it. So copyright applies to everything people have written. Copyright is untested waters as compared to what machines have written.
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