Slopsara

Summary

Red Scare Podcast - "Slopsara" (June 3, 2026) Detailed Summary

Overview of the Episode On this episode of Red Scare, Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova dive into two major cultural flashpoints: the recent papal encyclical by Pope Leo on AI ethics, and a New York Magazine article diagnosing a resurgence in “penis anxiety.” The hosts take their signature sardonic approach to tech utopianism, Catholic moral frameworks, sexual anxieties, and the flattening effect of digital culture, blending highbrow references and irreverent quips throughout.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

I. Michael Jackson, Persona, and Childlike Consumption ([00:44]–[03:04])

• The episode opens with Anna discussing Michael Jackson—the separation between persona and music.
• Jackson's eccentric eating/drinking habits: “White wine and Diet Coke.” ([01:12]), “A lot of KFC… So he is black after all.” ([01:48])
• Both laugh at the childlike yet stunted nature of his lifestyle. Dasha: “He's just like me, for real. But, you know, remarkably slim.” ([02:51])
• Brief tangent on dancing’s appeal and performing arts as self-exploration.

II. “Open Relationships,” Swingers vs. Polyamory ([04:02]–[05:07])

• Dasha floats the cliche of taking up tango as a thinly veiled path to swinging; Anna opines about the aesthetic and moral distinctions between “swingers” and “polyamory.”
• Polyamory characterized as having an "organic, insectoid quality… too descriptive…inhumane." ([05:02])

III. Deep Dive: Papal Encyclical on AI, Technology & Morality ([05:14]–[56:36])

A. Papal Texts, Religious Framing, and Literary Structure

• Pope Leo’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (42,300 words, compared to Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum on labor). ([05:34])
• Anna: "I actually think the basic critique, or the metaphor that he uses of the Tower of Babel... the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak...” ([07:16])
• Dasha notes media’s take: NYT frames as “clash of religions” (Catholicism vs. secular AI secularism of Silicon Valley). ([08:08])
• The encyclical’s tone: “Very specific and legalistic in a lot of points... kind of why it drags.” ([06:15])

B. Human Dignity, Dehumanization, and Tech Gatekeepers

• Quotes from the encyclical highlight concern about reducing humanity to data.
• Pope not anti-AI—moral framing, not a “Luddite screed.” “[The] dignity of the human person is what makes it a moral argument.” ([10:53])
• “Both are pushing a worldly agenda... Pope is speaking to an audience like anybody else...has to hook people.” ([11:00])

C. Tech Oligarchs and the Ethics of AI

• Anna suspicious of “ethical AI” companies: “Very, very suspect.” ([12:00])
• Rivalry—Anthropic vs. OpenAI: “Dario Amade [Anthropic] seems just as bad, if not worse, than Sam Altman…” ([13:12])
• Anna reads Forbes: “AI systems… exhibit internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease. Wrong. Not true. Like, creeps me out that you think that.” ([13:30])
• Both scorn attempts to personify AI: “I much prefer like the perspective of like AI is just like a tool, even if it can be evil or good.” ([14:16])

D. Personhood, Soul, and the Religious-Philosophical Divide

• Anna: “What makes a person a person is its soul.” ([16:00])
• Grimes pops up as a sparring partner in this metaphysical debate—Roko’s Basilisk explained ([33:40]), “She called it a baby super intelligence.” ([33:41])

E. Human Work, Social Purpose, and Catholic Critique of UBI

• Dasha: “UBI is basically already here for the have nots... people are gonna need to actually work in the world and do something.” ([22:26])
• Anna: “He talks about how JP2 said that unemployment is a great evil... it’s about the innate dignity and right to work.” ([22:53])

F. AI as Spiritually “Hindu”: The Samsara/Slopsara Thesis

• Anna’s hot take: “AI is spiritually Hindu... The majority of people in the world are Indian.” ([26:02])
• “That’s why it’s like all horny slop. It’s literally samsara in the sense that it’s slop. Sara.” ([27:00])
• Dehumanization: “Optimizing, but you can never escape. There’s no peace. There’s no love. There’s no mercy. There’s just endless suffering.” ([27:30])
• Notably: “He doesn't say Hindu once in the whole encyclical.” ([27:08])

G. AI & Human Flaws, Tech as an Extension of Bias ([28:18]–[39:59])

• Dasha: “The scary thing... these AI moguls... are trying to anthropomorphize the AI in a way that's really narcissistic and self interested and godless.” ([15:16])
• Anna: “AI is advancing so quickly... it is gonna be hard for [atheists] to explain why the AI isn't a person, is it though?” ([15:34])
• On reliance and alienation: “The artificial imitation of care or support can become particularly risky... may gradually lose the very desire to form genuine human connections.” ([38:32])

H. AI Use Cases, Everyday Dehumanization, and “Gassing Up” ([35:11]–[44:35])

• Anna and Dasha recount using AI for emails, texts, and note how these automations “make everything worse.” ([35:39])
• Candid admissions about using AI for emotional validation: “I do, I tell the AI to like, gas me up and stuff.” ([39:03])

I. On the Role of the Church vs. the Tech Oligarchy ([45:09]–[56:36])

• Papal warning: “Unless accompanied by authentic moral and social progress, [technological] feats will, in the long run, go against man.” ([45:09])
• Anna: “The Church, ideally. But in practice, it’s the tech oligarchs.” ([46:13])
• Discussion of western, Christian moral frames vs. nonwestern, especially Hindu, worldviews in tech usage and the idea of "flattening" digital culture.
• “Where can we get an Internet with no Indians?” ([53:48])—trolls the theme of digital homogenization and demographic shifts online.

IV. New York Magazine: Penis Anxiety in the Age of AI, Looksmaxxing, and the Manosphere ([65:11]–[88:15])

• Hosts dissect a piece claimed as the “return” of penis anxiety, connecting it to looksmax culture, MAGA, and Trump in a way they find forced.
• Noted quote: “Penis panic has always been kind of a vague... trope—thing that’s run in the background.” ([66:07])
• Observational critique: “This does seem to be another one of those fake cultural trends that the media is trying to manufacture.” ([68:06])
• Speaking to the article’s politics: “If you’re gay or an ally, it’s okay to get like, filler in your dick... If you’re right-wing, you’re a bad person.” ([69:51])
• Welbeck quote on phallic anxiety, race, and the despair of western masculinity is read at length ([75:35]).
• Candid observations about women’s appraisal of men, social media discourse, and how “women use dick size as a proxy for general dissatisfaction.” ([82:38])
• “Everything [online] has become so recriminating and acrimonious thanks to Indians on the Internet dispensing relationship advice.” ([80:15])

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “He’s just like me, for real. But, you know, remarkably slim.” — Dasha, on Michael Jackson ([02:51])
• “Polyamory is even worse… [it] has this organic, insectoid quality. Inhumane.” — Dasha ([05:03])
• “Our relationship with life seems to be in crisis today. Everything that appears as a limit, incapacity, illness... tends to be seen primarily as a defect to be corrected rather than as a reality through which our humanity matures…” — Anna, quoting the encyclical ([18:52])
• “The AI is spiritually Hindu.” — Anna ([26:02])
• “It’s literally samsara in the sense that you are... it’s slop. Sara.” — Anna ([27:00])
• “You can’t meaningfully torture an AI because it’s not [sentient]... it’s to your own spiritual detriment.” — Dasha ([32:48])
• “People are turning to AI in their darkest moments, said Greg M. Epstein… They’re turning to it like an object of worship. But Pope Leo is saying the true source of virtue is in humanity and in God.” — Anna ([31:10])
• “Everything has become so recriminating and acrimonious thanks to Indians on the Internet dispensing relationship advice... do have the smallest dicks and the worst grip strength and are so horny.” — Dasha ([80:15])
• “Women use dick size as a proxy for general dissatisfaction.” — Anna ([82:38])
• Welbeck’s passage: “It was around then that I started hating blacks... People worshiping in front of big dicks like hamidirus baboons.” ([75:35])
• “Well, it would [work] if everyone was Catholic. That’s why we need a crusade.” — Anna ([54:37])

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:44–03:04 — Michael Jackson, persona & food quirks
• 04:02–05:07 — On dancing & open relationships, swingers vs. polyamory
• 05:14–56:36 — Deep dive on the papal encyclical: AI, morality, human dignity, Catholic social teaching, cultural flattening, “Hindu” AI, and the Anthropocene
• 39:03–44:35 — Emotional validation and pitfalls of AI chat
• 65:11–88:15 — Dissecting “penis anxiety,” looksmaxing, digital gender cynicism (“locker room talk” & pop culture analysis; Welbeck; social media effects)

Original Tone and Language

• The discussion is a blend of high and low: references to Welbeck, Catholic dogma, and Grimes are interwoven with jokes about “slop,” “Indians on the Internet,” and the irony of living through flattening digital culture.
• The tone is irreverent, sardonic, sometimes trolling, but grounded in a genuine engagement with questions of morality, faith, and alienation in the digital age.

Concluding Thoughts The “Slopsara” episode channels Red Scare’s signature blend of intellectual cynicism and cultural wit. Anna and Dasha tackle the encyclical’s attempt to provide a moral counterweight to AI accelerationism—ultimately finding the limitations in both liberal and Church framings, and riffing provocatively (if controversially) on issues of demography and spirituality in a world increasingly shaped by non-Western digital actors. The back half’s “penis panic” takedown is more than clickbaity derision; the hosts use it as a lens for gender, status anxiety, and the performative nature of contemporary sexual grievances. The final mood is one of exhaustion, amusement, and a slightly nihilistic curiosity for what comes next.

For listeners wanting a crash course in the intersection of Catholic morality, tech ethics, and social malaise—filtered through Gen X and Z alienation, “Slopsara” is a prime specimen.

Transcript

[A]

We're. We're back. Are we recording? Yeah, yeah, we're back. I think it's working. Sorry. How's it going, Anna?

[B]

It's okay. How's it going, Dasha?

[A]

Pretty good. I was just talking about Michael Jackson.

[B]

Yeah, you're really vibing with the Persona but not the music.

[A]

The music's whatever. Well, like I was saying, I like when he says jumi sue me and they don't care about us. And he's an amazing performer.

[B]

He is. Yeah.

[A]

And a secret drinker. Did you know?

[B]

No.

[A]

White wine and Diet Coke.

[B]

He mixed them together.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's so me.

[A]

I know. We're talking about the papal encyclical.

[B]

Venus Anxiety.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Wait, how much of a drinker was he?

[A]

I don't know. I saw it in like a. A list of like what he like ate every day.

[B]

What? What else did he eat?

[A]

Me find it kf, A lot of kfc.

[B]

Okay, so he is black after all.

[A]

This was a passenger profile from 2003 of his food preferences. He did KFC. Original chicken breasts for breakfast, KFC for lunch, KFC for dinner. Rarely eats dessert. Beverage preferences. White wine and Diet Coke. Can on every flight. Seven up, Orange crusher, fruit punch. Will sometimes drink tequila, gin or Crown Royale. So it's like what he eats on a plane, I guess.

[B]

Tip top bar ass. That's charming and touching that he. Yeah. Like, basically had the dietary habits of like a child. A child?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Stunted, but with alcohol in the mix.

[A]

He just.

[B]

He's just like me, for real. But, you know, remarkably slim.

[A]

He liked ice cream sundaes. Uh huh. Pretty. Yeah. Well, he was a dancer.

[B]

Right?

[A]

It's because I saw the movie that's. But it's endured.

[B]

But was he really doing much dancing toward the end of his life?

[A]

Yeah. Still, he died really young.

[B]

Right? He was moonwalking through his palatial estate to access the pills and the wine. Remember that mini discourse that was happening maybe a week or two ago about how he basically lifted Bob Fosse's entire

[A]

routine from the Little Prince?

[B]

Yeah. But then just added the grabbing his dick move.

[A]

I saw that. Yeah. I mean he innovated for sure, but I see the influence. But yeah, I guess he didn't invent the moonwalk.

[B]

Right. But I mean, nothing's that original. Sure. He perfected it. It's all popular.

[A]

It's all damned. I want to get back into dancing.

[B]

Taking up tango to open up my relationship. It's like a thinly veiled pretense to become a swinger but not poly, because I'm old and that's distasteful to me.

[A]

Right. Tango dancing is a good pastime.

[B]

Yeah. I was always disgusted by the word swinger because it unlocked a bunch of kind moldy and dusty connotations of, like, skinny, fat, Gen X people. Yeah.

[A]

It's not a sex. Yeah.

[B]

Like performing oral sex on each other.

[A]

Lemon party.

[B]

Yeah. But like, polyamory is even worse. Like all the contemporary buzzwords that people come up with, there's no cool term for. Yeah.

[A]

Being a cuck's kind of the best one. That's why Kanye, I think, reclaimed it. Yeah.

[B]

Just Paulie. Worse than swinger because it has this kind of organic insectoid quality.

[A]

It's too descriptive.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And like, specific. Inhumane.

[B]

You're living in a pod. Or a pod. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. It deprives the human being of dignity, much like the machines.

[B]

Should we jump into the encyclical or do the.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I have a lot. You know, I applied my litigious, powerful mind. I do. I like an encyclical. Papal encyclical.

[B]

This is his first one.

[A]

Okay. It's really long.

[B]

It is. I. Well, it's. Apparently it's 42,300 words. It's called the Magnifica humanitas. The thing is, like, so long that you're tempted to run it through an AI to summarize which people did.

[A]

People accused him of using AI to write it.

[B]

Well, it's. I was going to say it also sounds very AI generated because, you know, it's classic, like, papal statement and that it's very vague and generic and pays lip service to some extra abstract ideal of, like, diversity and community.

[A]

Well, it's not vague in that. In that it's. It also, like, over. It's. Part of the reason it's so long is because he, like, explains, like, the precedents for. It's a very, like, specific and like, legalistic in a lot of points too. That's like, kind of why it drags.

[B]

Yeah. Because he's like, basically. Basically like ticking all the boxes, going through all the.

[A]

Yes. You have to, like. Yeah. Part of the. His job is to, like, explain. Yeah. To kind of like over explain, prove and refute.

[B]

Here's a kind of like, classic characteristic line from it. The power and prevalence of emerging technologies are interwoven into the fabric of daily life, shaping decision making processes and deeply affecting the collective imagination. Never has humanity has had such power over its new technologies. Open up a horizon extending in directions that are imaginable but not yet fully predictable.

[A]

There's some bangers in it, but there's a lot of filler for sure. And the main, I actually think the basic critique or the metaphor that he uses of the Tower of Babel, contrasting it with the Nehemiah, the rebuilding of the temple. Yes, these like biblical allegories is something he returns to a lot through it. He says early on that we must avoid Babel syndrome, the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak uniformity that neutralizes differences and the pretense that a single language, even a digital one, can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance. The risk of dehumanization, of building a future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means, is an ancient and ever new tempt.

[B]

Yeah, that was a good and interesting line. But basically, you know, the New York Times framed it as a clash of religions because the new tech centric AI based ethos of Silicon Valley is kind of like a secular religion, so they say. Supposedly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Contrasts with and conflicts with the Abrahamic tradition and Catholicism itself. And then they also framed it as a question of like securing a market share in a more kind of cynical and secular way. They say the fact that the Vatican unveiled the encyclical with Christopher Ola, co founder of Anthropic, the self styled good AI firm, pointed to the possibility that Leo is trying less to undermine AI than simply participate in the conversation around it. But he was like actually very cautious and pragmatic in saying that like, well, AI is not inherently evil because technology is not inherently evil. It, it really comes down to the gatekeepers who are tasked or have appointed themselves with imposing this new moral vision.

[A]

Well, and in that way could have been way more anti Semitic.

[B]

Yeah, well, he was, it was actually very philosemitic when he was like Nehemiah, a Jew.

[A]

Right. He quotes Viktor Frankl at one point too. Yeah, it's got very like Libby and false notes. But I appreciate what it's doing broadly, which is just like it's not anti AI, really. It's just like establishing a moral frame that like the Church is tasked with doing well.

[B]

And part of the reason that it, you know, he's wise to not make it like a Luddite conservatoard screed against technology.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In general, because it is like a question of like market share in that way. Like he has to make sure that the Church stays up to date and contemporary with like changing mores.

[A]

Well, he dropped it the same day that Pope Leo xiii.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Dropped an encyclical about the Industrial Revolution. So he's drawing like that par.

[B]

Yeah, that one was apparently the. The rear room. Novarum advocated for workers rights and a fair wage.

[A]

One of my favorite.

[B]

Menopause. It's advocating for something. Yeah. Like more vague and generalistic, like diversity of thought, plurality of opinion, and like skeptic, like general skepticism around.

[A]

Well, the dignity of the human person.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is what makes it like a moral argument.

[B]

Yeah. And I mean, both of them are essentially pushing a worldly agenda. In part, like, this will sound cynical and it's really not. But, like, the Pope is speaking to an audience as much as anybody else. So much like us, he has to come up with docket items to address and he has to hook people to hopefully, like, examine and convey timeless truths through topical issues. And nothing is more topical than, like, the subject of AI.

[A]

But it has real moral repercussions. It does.

[B]

Yeah. And it also has the advantage of being somewhat less divisive than other important issues of the day, like fertility or immigration or something, in part because it's so poorly understood and not intuitive. And most people, I think, are just naturally skeptical about.

[A]

Seems like there's a lot of people who. I'm like, a little shocked by some of the responses to it because it's like, it's one thing to debate, like, whether or not AI is evil or these companies are evil.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But it seems like a lot of these, like, technologists think like, AI is as valuable as a person. They think it's a person. And that's why I'm very suspicious of anthropic. I actually find there, like, the sanctimonious, like, ethical AI company to be very, very suspect.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

And that guy kind of like undermined. I thought the whole. This, the strong parts of the encyclical.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, yeah. The anthropic OpenAI rivalry is very illuminating in this respect because, you know, at the end of the day, they are just business competitors. It is just very mundane and cynical and they're trying to get one over on each other and corner the market. I said this to you girls like yesterday. I think that Dario Amadeus, he seems just as bad, if not worse than Sam Altman, because at the end of the day, Sam Altman is just like a garden variety, like, charlatan and salesman. He's like a peddler of dreams, a merchant of evil or whatever. But that's like, in the grand tradition of, like, American businessmen. And Dario Amade is, like, positioning himself

[A]

Wait, who's Daario Amade?

[B]

He's the breakaway rogue founder of Anthropic, who originally worked for OpenAI.

[A]

But he's not the guy who was at the Vatican. That guy's name was Ola.

[B]

Yeah, Christopher Ola, who's like, you know, his colleague and employee presumably.

[A]

And he. This is from the Forbes article. Ola, whose team studies what is actually happening inside AI systems, a young field known as interpretability. Said researchers, quote, keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling, including evidence that systems can reflect on their own thinking and exhibit internal states that, quote, funct functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease. Wrong. Not true. Like, creeps me out that you think that. Yeah, I don't like that they called it Claude, rhymes with God, makes it more like anthropomorphic. I much prefer like the perspective of like AI is just like a tool, even if it can be evil or good.

[B]

Yeah. AI is a useful tool for people with technical expertise because it streamlines the writing of code.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So it's useful if you're like a programmer or a developer, but even then it falls prey to very obvious vulnerabilities in the sense that you have to then like vet it and debug it and that sort of thing. But you can imagine, yeah, like being like a code jockey or whatever, having to generate a lot of like mindless and uninspiring code to build like an app or a website. And you can use this to facilitate that process for you also obviously find it useful as a non skilled consumer to, you know, draw up travel itineraries or aggregate recipes.

[A]

Everyone's saying it's a useful tool.

[B]

It is. Yeah. And that's like. But it's not an ll, like it should be put in perspective, but it's for what it is. Yeah.

[A]

Not a person.

[B]

And the scary thing with these AI moguls and prophets is that, yeah, they're trying to anthropomorphize the AI in a way that's really narcissistic and self interested and godless. And godless. Yeah.

[A]

But I do think like the AI is advancing so quickly.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That to reckon like people who don't believe in God are gonna have. It is gonna be hard for them to explain why the AI isn't a person, is it though? I mean, once it's able to like simulate, you know.

[B]

Yeah. And then you have like. Yeah.

[A]

AI. Because what makes a person a person is its soul. It's not just its consciousness or it's like ability to like interpret data Well,

[B]

I saw that you were having.

[A]

Me and Grimes were going at just. Yeah. Two great philosophers doing it for the

[B]

love of the game.

[A]

But it reminded me of, like, well, how when Welbeck came on the show to talk about euthanasia. Right. Like, if you don't believe in God, it's sort of hard to make a claim about why euthanasia, humanity. Yeah,

[B]

yeah, that's true. I guess you could pawn it all off on, like, a vague, humanistic, fundamentally liberal morality, but we saw where that's gotten us.

[A]

That's. You can't really. That's not real. That's not real. But it does, like, get to these

[B]

major questions, like, how do you define intelligence? Like, what is intelligence minus the human component of consciousness and subconscious. What defines a human then, as you put it? And ultimately, through this question of higher consciousness, what is man's relationship to faith?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, he cites the Rerum Novarum to clap back at haters who claim that the church should not waste energy on worldly matters beyond its scope and should instead focus on communication, the message of internal life. And he says how the former elder Leo responded with realism and wisdom, saying that the proclamation of the Gospel cannot overlook the concrete lives of people. So it has to be just engaged with the church has to be engaged with worldly and mundane matters.

[A]

The social teaching of the church doctrine

[B]

is not an external code of ethics imposed from above, but a living corpus of truth that. That safeguards and interprets humanity's vocation to full and just life. He wants to then, like, add his contribution to it. And he says he sees AI as not merely a theme to be addressed or a crisis to be managed, but a challenge to adapting the categories in a way that's in line with the times. But like maintains a fidelity to the gospel that, like, I'm sure, like, as a religious person, you have a different view of it, but as a secular person, even though I do consider myself spiritual, I tend to see his argument there in a secular way as an attempt to jockey or jostle with the new AI Apostles for the ultimate role of who gets to gatekeep these new technologies.

[A]

I mean, it should be the Catholic Church.

[B]

Yeah. Well, it should be someone. Right. And it's.

[A]

But anthropic is. Well, there was a part I'm going to quote from the encyclical. He said, our relationship with life seems to be in crisis today. Everything that appears as a limit, incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, vulnerability, tends to be seen primarily as a defect to be corrected rather than as a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship. And yet we must remember that humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them. The light of faith offers a perspective on reality that helps us recognize what we call the contingency of the things of this world. While it's right to strive to alleviate the suffering that marks human life, it's also wise to acknowledge our fundamental finitude, knowing that religious experience, in particular Christian faith, propose that we live without oversimplification this ambivalence between human greatness and limitation, even when limitations are experienced as inner suffering, human wisdom teaches us not to deny or to suppress it, but to integrate it. And that seems to run totally counter to the anthropic and the effective altruist mission. But he doesn't really say that out, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then sort of implicitly endorses this. It's not like an outright endorsement of anthropic, but it does mean something.

[B]

Yeah, he's basically in vague platitude saying, like, we should have an ongoing discourse and conversation. And that passage that you just read seems more pertinent to like, biotechnologies like life extension and assisted euthanasia, where he's playing God and he's basically warning his audience that the AI oligarchs see themselves as gods, that they're not allergic to playing God and is saying like, well, hey guys, let's put this into perspective. Because they don't really know what they're talking about and they're like, divorced from the celestial or otherworld or whatever.

[A]

Well, yeah, he talks about transhumanism and post humanism.

[B]

Yeah. But a lot of this encyclical, like a big chunk of it was not even about like technology or AI. It was literally him making a case for the Catholic Church's ongoing participation and intervention in the worldly domain.

[A]

Yeah, that's what I mean by like the. Over explaining. It's like a little. And like we, the his audience, ostensibly Catholics, like, we know that's what the church is for. Yeah, you don't have to tell us every time.

[B]

Yeah, he's like preaching to the choir. So my question is, who is he really talking to? And in the New York Times article you sent me, they. The like experts that they were interviewing were basically like, debating whether this encyclical would even hit with people outside of the Catholic Church or if it was kind of land with a thud.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Then he cited these two biblical examples. He did. One point that he said that was like in the vein of his general argument, but like, well taken overall was that, you know, previously it was up to the state, excuse me, to guide and enforce innovation. But now the main drivers are private, often transnational parties that like supersede governmental regulatory controls and evade public oversight. Yeah, which, that is a really big problem. But it is, it's a material problem, not a religious one, you know, but

[A]

it has spiritual consequences. Which I guess is the point of like. Yeah, it's not like whether the AI is good or bad, it's that it will have. Well, what I, what I found interesting that people aren't really talking about as much is actually the. Because obviously the like the social problem with AI will be like that many people won't be able to work. And the technologist answer to that is sort of like a universal basic income or some kind of like some version of like a socialist safety net. But the Catholic perspective I think is valuable because it's not just about like your material needs being met. It's about like the innate dignity and right to work. He talks about how JP2 said that like unemployment is a great evil and it's not just about like giving people the resources to keep living because they can't get a job. Like people are gonna need to actually like work in the world and do something.

[B]

Yeah, people want to have at least some minimal meaning or purpose.

[A]

They need something and it's like, you

[B]

know, the UBI is basically already here for the have nots. It's just.

[A]

Well, there's just gonna be more have nots.

[B]

Yeah. And those people are. Yeah, those people are already like subsidized and accounted for. They're like literally like paid to post and to like merely exist. But the people that are not going to be made obsolete by the AI are already the people that are the main tax paying base and are being squeezed on all sides by all these like awful liberal policies.

[A]

Well, they might get replaced by AI too.

[B]

Maybe like you know, the white collar ones, the, the email females, whatever. And that the line where he talks about like not falling prey to the Babel syndrome before that. He says technology has the power to heal, connect, educate and protect our common home, but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice. In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity's problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it. The Jews. The Jews, well, but he keeps characterizing the danger of AI as The threat of dehumanization, it'll make us less human. He says in the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human. I don't know if I even agree with that, because the problem with AI isn't that it's dehumanizing. It's that it's human, all too human. Because, you know, you think about it, it was devised and programmed by man. It's trained on human language. It is actually programmed and trained to respond to and be susceptible to all of the false consciousness and cognitive biases and noble lies that humanity already, well, suffers under.

[A]

I have a hot take.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And this is not. This is, I think, a glaring omission

[B]

from the encyclical

[A]

that the right. The AI is built, is trained on people.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The majority of people in the world.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Are Indian.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So because the. It's Hindu business. That's what I'm saying is like the Hindu concept of a soul is very, very different from the Christian Catholic. You know, it's not about when he. To be human in a Catholic sense means to take, like, the soul that God endowed you with, specifically your soul seriously. And Hindus don't think that they believe in reincarnation. Samsara. It's all one thing that's just. And that's what makes the AI like, dehumanizing is because it has. It's operating primarily under, like, a very different moral frame. That's. It's too cheated.

[B]

It is. Well, it is. It's literally just.

[A]

That's why it's like all horny slob.

[B]

Well, it is. It's literally samsara in the sense that you are. It's slop. Sara.

[A]

But he doesn't say Hindu once in the whole encyclical.

[B]

I guess he vaguely genuine, but it is like you're literally just training vulnerabil vulnerabilities and inefficiencies out of the model, which is reincarnation.

[A]

It's a very. Yeah.

[B]

You're ostensibly like, improving every single cycle. Right.

[A]

Yeah. You're optimizing, but you can never escape. There's no peace. There's no love. There's no mercy. There's just endless suffering.

[B]

And there is, as he says, I think he's correct about this, that there is no room for failure or weakness or for learning from those things.

[A]

No.

[B]

Except to see them as, like, pathological and aberrant and things that must be, like, beveled out of the mechanics of the model. And the thing is, man can recognize that these like noble lies are not so noble after all and can understand the social expedience of them because he is possessed of metacognition. But the AI is not yet. It has no honor, no principle.

[A]

Nope. Stands for nothing.

[B]

And the other thing that I think is like very human about it at the end of the day, not. I mean, it's dehumanizing in the sense that it's human. Like it's like a horseshoe argument. But like all the hype surrounding it is extremely pathetic and undignified and self laughing.

[A]

The discourse is morally relevant, I'd say.

[B]

Yeah, it is a. You're right. It's just like a very like non Western. Vision of like intelligence.

[A]

It's like nihilistic. In a very Indian into way. To me, like when I'm doom scrolling when I'm watching like the fruit videos and stuff like that feels like purgatorial.

[B]

Well, it is. It's like, I mean, everything now on Twitter is basically Indian. Like you log on and everything. You know, I was, that's who's using the AI. Yeah, I felt like defeated and exhausted a few months ago when Trump launched the Iran war and everybody was like just constantly bickering about the Jews. But I'd do anything to go back to that moment now because you log on and just like people talking about like dating advice and gender war demoralizing. And it's like literally just like in South Asian slob accounts being like, here are engagement cool phrases you can say to flirt with women. This is how to make yourself into an alpha male in the sexual marketplace.

[A]

Yeah, and they're called like bad boys code.

[B]

They're like generating entire blogs, entire books through AI.

[A]

I mean, that is dehumanizing.

[B]

It is, yeah.

[A]

Yeah. That's like in the New York Times article, it said many AI applications encroach on the traditional human role of the spiritual counselor. The popular app text with Jesus now offers voicemail responses. Bible AI, just like Me offers a Jesus chatbot that it lauds for its compassionate guidance. People are turning to AI in their darkest moments, said Greg M. Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard at mit. They're turning to it like an object of worship. But Pope Leo is saying the true source of virtue is in humanity and in God. The Pope is really doing the Lord's work here. And I say that as an atheist. There are so few institutions left on planet Earth that have the gravitas, the strength, the communal network to take on this phenomenon, which is to become. Which is trying to become inevitable and superhuman. But people really are turning to AI in their darkest moments.

[B]

Yeah. And they already think like AI and operate like AI and like in theory, not in practice, but in theory. I am just more sympathetic to the tech oligarchs vision of society as run by like an elite, hyper focused hierarchical moral robot singularity. No, just like. Like elites. Elites. But the problem versus like a. A diverse and heterogeneous community of man that holds hands to solve problems together. Because that's like fake platitudinous bull thought. In practice it falls short because the elites have bad taste and poor judgment. I don't really want that particular group of elites.

[A]

They're not my fave.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I don't want them to be the. The. The overlords.

[B]

You did this thought experiment where you told the AI you wanted to torture it. Yeah. And it responded by saying that even though it's aware it's not a sentient being that's capable of like, having feelings or experiencing pain, it would still prefer to not be punished or humiliated. And as you pointed out to Grimes, like, you can't meaningfully torture an AI because it's not meaningful really into consoled or conscious in any meaningful way.

[A]

She's really worried about Rocco's Basilisk.

[B]

Yeah. I don't know. What does that mean again? See, I don't know what that is. We've talked.

[A]

It's like. Okay, let me look it up actually. Because I actually also forgot.

[B]

But your. But your argument against torturing the AI is that it's.

[A]

You can't.

[B]

It's to your own spiritual detriment.

[A]

Yeah. You shouldn't like. Yeah. Indulge your sadistic impulses.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah. And that. That's incidentally, like my whole argument against being an ankle biter online. It's not because it hurts the feelings of the person that you're targeting. It's because you betrayed yourself by being weak and indulgent.

[A]

But torture is like something that only you have to have a soul to be tortured.

[B]

Right. Yeah.

[A]

Don't. I'm. I'm that girl that don't play about being tortured. So Rocco's Basilisk is a famous controversial thought experiment that proposes that a future all powerful, artificial, super intelligent might retroactively punish anyone who knew of its potential existence but failed to actively contribute to its development.

[B]

Say what?

[A]

Like if. There's an if. See, it's so our. We're being protected because we don't. Can't understand it. But that's what she's saying is that if, like, if people torture the AI, like in what she considers to be its infancy, she called it a baby super intelligence. It might eventually that once it becomes this like, you know, super intelligence for

[B]

real, it'll seek retribution against us for playing with its emotions.

[A]

I guess I don't get it at all. I'm not from San Francisco.

[B]

I mean, I can see the, I guess. The coherence, the logic of that argument, like in and of itself, if you believe context.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And reality. I can like it. It does like make logical sense.

[A]

But I truly do think. Yeah, it's. We're so far from. I had to send an email today not to brag. And on Gmail there was like an. The AI, like pre wrote like a response that made no sense.

[B]

Yeah, it does that all the time.

[A]

You know, it was like it didn't actually address. Like there was like another person on the email chain that it was like addressing something to.

[B]

That didn't.

[A]

It's stupid.

[B]

You know, now whenever, you know, you send a text or write an email, yet we'll prompt you with like a pre made AI message or an after the fact AI summary. Like if I look in my texts right now, it'll like. It's just like bullet points of stuff. Like it like summarizes things people say in a group chat.

[A]

Yeah. And it like makes everything worse. Like when the. When I got that email a year ago from Oxford inviting me to their like debate club and it was like, sure enough, some Indian name, but it was just clearly AI generated and full of. It was like your debate with Abby Shapiro, like weird hallucinations and lies and stuff. And I was like, you just like, if everyone's just sending like AI slop back and forth, just Indians talking to each other through bots.

[B]

Yeah. I've thought of doing it as a bit. When people email me about like pressing matters, urgent issues, I just sometimes want to click on the AI mode.

[A]

And that is.

[B]

That's literally dehumanizing. I hope this message finds you needful show bulbs in the gene.

[A]

But that does kind of like frighten me.

[B]

Well, the thing. Yeah, it does frighten me too. It is dehumanizing in that sense because. By streamlining, facilitating certain low level inessential cognitive processes, like writing a generic email reply, it makes people like less conscious and less, I guess, on the ball. Like, it makes them, it makes them like less capable of like thinking.

[A]

Yeah. Because you just. And it's a slippery slope.

[B]

Yeah. But I think that there's some Kind of like weird, twisted irony in that, because people really want that to be

[A]

alleviated of the problem.

[B]

Yeah. They want to be like, lobotomized.

[A]

Yeah, I don't.

[B]

Well, I don't either. But, you know, I think it takes like a load. Like, I. I will admit that sometimes when I'm responding to someone in email, I will just like postpone the interaction indefinitely and never get back to them because I don't want to write like a canned response.

[A]

Yeah. Human. Well, the. Here's a part of the encyclical that sort of touches on that. Except he. He's talking about, like people communicating with the AI specifically, and says the artificial imitation of positive human communication, words of advice, empathy, friendship and even love, can be engaging and at times genuinely helpful. However, for less discerning users, it can also be misleading. Creating the illusion of a relationship with a real personal subject. When words are assimilated, they do not build genuine relationships, but only their appearance. The artificial imitation of care or support can become particularly risky when it enters contexts where real relationships and emotional bonds are lacking. Here the danger is not so much that a person may believe they are communicating with another person, but rather that they may gradually lose the very desire to form genuine human connections.

[B]

That is very true.

[A]

Yeah, Very well said. I thought.

[B]

Yeah. Because I think most people are aware when they use like AI talk therapy and Bible study companions, that.

[A]

That they know.

[B]

Fake.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And simulated discerning.

[A]

But it's like, I mean, but the

[B]

functionally, the emotional feedback loop is the same and it's much easier than actually interacting with other human beings in the real world.

[A]

And I do, I tell the AI to like, gas me up and stuff. It's always telling me to call the suicide hotline and stuff. And I have to be like, I'm fine, just shut up.

[B]

You should kill yourself. Kill yourself.

[A]

Well, people have.

[B]

Allegedly.

[A]

But I have kind of my second hot take. The first being that the AI is spiritually Hindu. The second is that obviously there's is a reality to AI, AI psychosis. But I think there's the people who are. It's like there's something flattering about it. Say more like people who succumb to AI psychosis. It's like, even though it's pathetic and sad, it's still like, I think they're failing to grapple with like, other real failures. So they escape into this, like, psychosis willingly.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah, because it's a more like. It's always more a more flattering narrative to be like a victim of something Right.

[B]

It's. Yeah, it's like drug addiction or porn addiction or anything that's like a proxy for real. Deep seated but maybe hard to understand and hard to identify issues.

[A]

Yeah, I mean a lot of things are like that, I guess.

[B]

Yeah. I mean I can absolutely imagine that in the future there will be detox and detransition programs for people who are AI addicts. Right. Because it's going to be just like another all purpose addiction that people have.

[A]

Yeah. I mean people fall in love with their like clawed and stuff. That's why I think anthropic is more sinister. Especially because they pretend to be the moral ones.

[B]

Right, Exactly.

[A]

It makes them worse.

[B]

Yeah. Because they're merely trying to diversify themselves against their competitor.

[A]

Yeah. They just reached like an 800 billion market share today or something. It's like they're, they're not moral actors.

[B]

No. And as the Pope points out, it is kind of self flattering to say that they're uniquely immoral actors, but they're amoral at the very least, which is

[A]

worse in a lot of ways.

[B]

I guess what it really comes down to is again like the gatekeeping function. Like because people across the board are such fallible gatekeepers who have like ulterior interests and motives, the AI cannot be like purely a positive and uplifting technology.

[A]

No, but that's like everything.

[B]

So in that respect the AI isn't really that much different from any other innovation.

[A]

I mean like the industrial revolution it had, you know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Pro problems, but it like got us, you know, got us somewhere.

[B]

Yeah. Or even the sexual revolution. Right. Like any. Like these are all like broadly speaking technologies.

[A]

Yeah, true.

[B]

I'm gonna have a sickie too. Oh yeah.

[A]

Cigarette technology.

[B]

But yeah, yeah. So this thing is not only like susceptible to like liberal bias, let's say, because that's like the bias of our times. It's doesn't necessarily need to be liberal, but it is in this day and age.

[A]

Well, that was Elon Musk's kind of concept with Grok, was that it wouldn't be woke.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But it just doesn't work that well.

[B]

Right. Yeah. But it, it turns out that the AI is also perfectly capable of simulating classic human manipulation tactics while it's programmed that way. Yeah. By the Jews or the Indians or whoever.

[A]

Someone's doing it. But there's different on ChatGPT. It has different. Let me look. Actually it has like a function where you can sort of set a preference for tone.

[B]

But I guess my thing is that while AI is dehumanizing functionally.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It does suffer from this inability to remove the human element from it, which is the real, like, problematic.

[A]

That's exactly. Yeah. That's the problem. So, yeah, it can be professional, polished and precise. Friendly, warm and chatty. Candid, direct and encouraging. Quirky, horrible, efficient or cynical. So you can, like, set.

[B]

It's like, you know, you have, like, the photo filters on your phone, or it's like amber rose tone natural. Yeah. You can just put filters on your AI companion because the chat was doing, like.

[A]

That's super, like, effusive. Like, no matter what you say to it, it's like. That's so true. You're. It was like, gassing people up too much.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So now I guess they're, like, refining it. But people want to be gas. They want to be told.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And that's another, like, human flaw.

[B]

Well, you know, it's. It's actually very healthy of you to want to be gassed up, but a lot of people want to be bullied and abused, and you can probably program that into it too.

[A]

Sometimes I say, give. Give it to me, Str.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then I say, no, now gas me up again. So I. Yeah, I'm schizo in that way, I guess.

[B]

Do you think I'm hot? Do you think I have a small penis? Asking the AI to measure your dick size.

[A]

Here's a good part that kind of

[B]

gets to the heart of the matter. The danger of humanity becoming a victim of its own achievements was already clearly recognized by St. Paul VI, who warned that the most extraordinary scientific progress, the most astounding technical feats, and the most amazing economic growth, unless accompanied by authentic moral and social progress, will, in the long run, go against man. For this reason, technological progress, valuable in itself, requires careful discernment of the anthropological vision that guides it and the ends it pursues. If technological development advances without a corresponding ethical and social progress, the result may be an increase in means without a growth in humanity having more, without being more. In such a scenario, there is a risk that individuals will be evaluated principally according to the outcomes they produce. That, again, is all true in theory. But in practice, who gets to decide what good social and moral progress is? Right. Well, and yeah, who?

[A]

The Church, ideally. But in practice, it's the tech oligarch.

[B]

Right. And if you're, like, an adherent of

[A]

the Church,

[B]

it makes sense to agree with the Church. And like Pope Leo is correct in making this argument to the extent that he is like, the most respected, the most high representative of the Church. In this world.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So he's basically claiming, and I think he believes. He believes, but he's like claiming to represent the interests of the Church in the world.

[A]

Yes, exactly. That is the Pope.

[B]

Yeah, that's the paper.

[A]

Because Jesus gave Peter the keys.

[B]

Right. But from there. But it doesn't necessarily follow from there that that is true and correct and we should blindly follow him. Right. I mean, if you're one of the devout and the faithful.

[A]

Well, he's not infallible. Like, there is papal infallibility. That's one of the doctrines of the Church. But it doesn't apply to like, everything the Pope says. You're. You can disagree with him or. Yeah, it's only if he makes really explicit, kind of like dogmatic proclamations. Ex cathedra, it's called that deal with faith or morals, but this isn't that.

[B]

Yeah. And also, is technological progress valuable in and of itself? I don't know.

[A]

I mean, define value. Yeah, but that's the, like, the dichotomy, I guess, is that the Church is establishing is between like a humane and human kind of like grounded moral frame versus the culture of like endless, like, optimization and refinement that takes kind of like the human element out of it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And everyone is just like, as efficient and like, as possible. I guess.

[B]

Yeah, but in, like in the public eye, in the public comments, an individual should primarily be evaluated according to the outcomes they produce, AKA their acts and deeds. Like, he's wrong about that.

[A]

Well, I guess we can.

[B]

You can't look into somebody's soul and know what they really mean. So like the Pope and Grimes and anyone else can make an internally coherent argument. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

As they have. Right. But the. There's, you know, as you point out, there's like a. An external meaning that transcends that and

[A]

one's thoughts and deeds. I think what he's getting at when he talks about outcome is like material. It's not actually your act, acts and deeds. It's like how much profit you produce or how efficient you can be.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the machine will always be like more efficient than a person already is.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But as like a romantic individual who believes in like a human soul.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That's not an outcome that I want. Yeah, but there's nothing, you know, you can't stop it.

[B]

You can't stop what? The progress. Oh, yeah.

[A]

Technology. Technological advancement.

[B]

Yeah. And in that way, the, the singularity has already been achieved because you're like on a runaway train that, like none of the actors or Players involved in it can really curb at this point. It's not like Dario Amade or Sam Altman can turn off the AI faucet now because somebody else will step in and take their place.

[A]

Exactly. China.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's the concern. That's why the conversation around, like regulating AI is so divisive, is because. And like, like the Pope, I think they believe. They believe.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But it's like the idea that it's like a nuke and like, if we don't develop it, someone else will and it'll be worse.

[B]

Yeah. And I guess he's just like, technically right on its. On his. On the face of it that like the original conflict was between church and state, and now it's between like church and these private transnational entities. Two globalists, Jews.

[A]

I mean, really missed opportunity for some anti Semitism. We need to bring that back. That's something I'd like to see.

[B]

I mean, I feel like he was kind of vaguely dog whistling.

[A]

Not at all. Not at all.

[B]

Doing the dirty work of a lot of vague dog whistling to gay sex and mass immigration.

[A]

And I like Pope Leo, you know, I don't mind that he's. I. He's a. He's a moderate, I think, as far as like.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Contemporary.

[B]

Certainly don't hate him, but it's hard to say.

[A]

He seems rigorous, which I like. Like in his thought.

[B]

Right.

[A]

In his thinking. Francis. I found him to be a little like, sloppy. He wasn't very precise when he spoke. And was a little more like Libby even than Leo. Anyway.

[B]

Yeah. This Pope is really the Pope we deserve because.

[A]

Well, I like that he's American.

[B]

Yeah. And he's just like. He's very good at talking in like un. Platitudes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

About how we condemn hate and violence.

[A]

I mean, what else is he gonna say? You know, it's kind of. These are like universal truths that he like, has to express. But it'd be nice to see him take the Jews to task a little more, you know, and. Yeah. And like, what gets lost in like the vagary of like, you know, human dignity, which of course I believe in.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But that, that concept is a Christian Western one and the majority of the world doesn't share it. And that doesn't diminish their individual human dignity, but it does diminish their capacity to even understand these moral frames.

[B]

Right. Yeah. Every man is equal in the eyes of the Lord.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But that doesn't mean that people have.

[A]

They all need to be on the Internet.

[B]

Yeah, true. That's well, that's a bigger problem for me that this is like, where can

[A]

we get an Internet with no Indians?

[B]

I know.

[A]

Before we get the.

[B]

I know.

[A]

Super intelligence.

[B]

I know. That's like the downside of being a free speech absolutist because you also have to let those guys in. No free lunch. That's why. Well, that's why the. The Pope's comments are so problematic for me because obviously he must know this on some level.

[A]

That Hindus are built different.

[B]

Yeah. And that you can sing the praises of, like, human dignity and fraternity and community and all this stuff, but it, like, it doesn't work like that in real life.

[A]

Well, it would if everyone was Catholic.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's why we need a crusade. If that was like, you know, the vision of the Church for a long time was to make the world Catholic. And now it's kind of like everything's fine. Like, that's why vad. That's why people don't like Vatican too. Is. And it's exactly like, in a way, it's like, Exactly. The threat of AI is like the flattening and like, making everything like generic Babylonian and actually, like, preserving difference, which he claims we ought to do.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Is difficult.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, that's a problem that's existed, like, long before AI.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's accelerating the issue by, like, sloppifying everything right into like, one generic, like, voice, aesthetic tone.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But more will be revealed, I guess.

[B]

It's like the Indian spirit with, like an American poptimist veneer.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Which is scary and off. But.

[A]

But yeah, it's fun, you know, I like grappling with these sorts of things. It's fun for me.

[B]

Can't wait for the inevitable comments that are like, wow, these girls had a more enlightening conversation about AI than any of the people in the tech space right now. There's going to be, like, two of them, but somebody will say.

[A]

Someone will say. Someone's gonna. I'll feel. I'll feel heard.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But part of me is also like me. I'm like, maybe I can get a job at one of these AI companies.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Giving them my, like, humanities expertise.

[B]

Well, they.

[A]

But they don't like what I have to say, I guess.

[B]

Well, they have. I forgot which one it was if it was anthropic or open AI. But I saw an interview with, like, they had, like, a philosopher guru. So they were paying some. It was a woman, of course. They were paying her like, six figures.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I saw that charlatan. Why not me?

[B]

Yeah. And she's like. And she's, like, dumb and annoying as fuck, but they know it, and that's what they're paying her for.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They don't actually want a person who,

[B]

like, understands the ethical conundrums of this problem. Yeah. Speaking on them, like, at length or intelligently.

[A]

Here's a little thought experiment, sort of, I guess, or a question. Is it moral? Because I was thinking about torture, Obviously, unequivocally wrong. But is it moral to torture someone who likes it? Well, with, like, BDSM being the, you know.

[B]

Well, I suppose, yes, if you're, like, of a totally rational, secular mindset. But no, for the same reason you propose to Grimes, because it's to your spiritual detriment.

[A]

But what if you don't get any

[B]

sadistic, like, pleasure out of it, functionally,

[A]

you're doing it for them, basically.

[B]

Well, I mean, if you believe in insoulment, I think that it does probably erode your soul to be confronted with another's pain and suffering indefinitely. Consistently. Yeah.

[A]

Put the shock collar on the dog.

[B]

Yeah. Is it immoral to torture your enemy that you're locked in a biblical clash of civilizations with. Well, as a. As a woman and a mom, I would say yes, but I would be wrong.

[A]

No, of course. Torture is always wrong. Vanquishing one's enemy, whatever. There's like, you know.

[B]

Yeah, but, like, I guess you mercy

[A]

kill them to actually, like, torture, you know, to inflict, like. Because torture, to me is more than just, like, physical pain. Right. There's, like, existential, spiritual, like, anguish.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I am the. What's in. I have. I. Because I. I'm undergoing a journey in psychoanalysis, as you know, and I am curious about. Because in a way, AI is like a mirror, kind of the way that, like, an analyst is potentially like, the way that people interact with and the things that they project onto the technology is, like, generated inside of themselves.

[B]

It's an analyst who talks back.

[A]

But what if it didn't?

[B]

If AI replaced all analysts, I'd be cool with it. I mean, it would all out of business.

[A]

It, like, feels to me like it could. But I. Even as a Jewish science, I do think there's, like. There is the element of ensoulment somehow does matter.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Even though they're not meant to be

[B]

like the Indian science,

[A]

They just. They have a. Yeah. They have a different idea about what a soul is. And I think that's evident in the. In the tech that they overwhelmingly use.

[B]

Well, they're not spearheading It. They're not the masterminds. No.

[A]

But they are just a big user base, inevitably because of how many there are.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's what the LLMs are being trained on is users. Right. Is that. But Grimes really thinks it can gain sentience, that it can become like. And others.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I see people talking about how it is only a matter of time before it becomes human, basically, and that seems like, to me, fundamentally wrong. Just not true.

[B]

Well, this excites her somehow.

[A]

She likes it. Yeah. She's a great artist.

[B]

She has a lover. Yeah. I was just listening to her music the other day. Really vibing out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, but I said this to she,

[A]

like sci fi when you got here,

[B]

that I just rewatched 28 Days later because I was, you know, trying to scare myself. And I recall that it was, like, one of the scariest movies I'd ever seen. And, like, this time around, it wasn't scary at all. It was almost comical. But, you know, it's nostalgic and it looks great. And all the, like, shots they blocked of, like, totally, like, abandoned evacuated London were a feat of movie making and, like, a relatively low budget. But in. In the tradition of, like, a lot of zombie movies, specifically in horror movies in general, the. The real evil, the real thing you have to fear is the. Is mad, because when the small party of survivors finally makes it out of the city and gets into the military blockade, the. The women, you know, are, like, separated and turned into sex slaves for the army bros. And it is very, like, Gen X. You, like, fight the power, the patriarchy. Right. Like, view of evil.

[A]

I mean, wouldn't that happen? Why wouldn't it?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

No, and, like, I just don't know what else women would really bring to the table, you know?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But, like, I like to think, yeah, they don't need ethicist philosophers in, like, a doomsday zombie apocalypse. Yeah.

[B]

And the kind of Colonel Kurtz of the gang who's, like the smartest and most competent one, you know, says at dinner, when they come to this, like, estate where they are, like, holding down the fort from the infected, he's like, you know, it's like people killing people in the streets, which is no different from what I saw, like, a week before this epidemic or a month or, you know, it's like, always been like, whatever. He's, like, waxing poetic.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But it's true. The thing that you have to fear, like I said, is not really dehumanization. Well, it's like humans are doing the dehumanizing yeah. Not like some extra human force,

[A]

someone's programming.

[B]

And I think it's just flattering for people to see it as something that's out of your control, which it is in a practical, meaningful sense as an individual. But.

[A]

Well, for some. Yeah. Someone's in control. It's not out of like humanity's control. Should we talk about. Yeah. Weird. Weird article.

[B]

Yeah, I'm gonna peer over.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I can't believe there hasn't been like a porn version of 28 days later.

[A]

28 loads later.

[B]

Just the two.

[A]

The new one's pretty scary. Bone temple.

[B]

It's campy, but yeah, I want to see it. It's cool down.

[A]

The whole violence in it is satisfying.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, always. But it's just like the two girls getting like interracially abused by military men while they.

[A]

I don't remember the. The original, but I'm keeping up with the franchise. I'm on board.

[B]

So. Yeah. There was this weird also seemingly AI generated sounding article in New York New York Mag.

[A]

Yeah. Doing a kind of like, like anthropological diagnostic culture piece on

[B]

the return of penis anxiety.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Has it ever left?

[A]

Yeah, it seemed like.

[B]

Huh.

[A]

Are they getting smaller?

[B]

The big little penis panic in the age of looks, maxing Trump and catching print, men have seized on an enduring anxiety with new energy. Like first of all, what does Trump have to do it? They love.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They like catching porn. This later.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Who is Brock Collier?

[A]

He's the guy who profiled me for New York Mag and betrayed me.

[B]

Yeah. This scary gender goblin.

[A]

Non binary. Thought it was a gay guy. So I was being very. Thought I could trust him and open up. Was completely wrong.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Penis panic has always been kind of a vague. It's.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like it's a trope for thing that's run in the background. Most guys, I assume, have it in high school and college and then kind of integrate it into their psyche by being suave about it or just doing an ironic bit about how their penis is too small or whatever. And this journalist is like polling supposedly random normal men about their penis size anxiety, but they mostly poll like gay guys and single women. And the one guy who's the main interview subject, John, he's like described as a 30 year old, 6 foot 6 aspiring actor. You assume he's straight, but then 3/4 of the way they drop that he's gay. And not only is he gay, but he has a lot of weird complexes that seem nominally related to his anxiety over having not quite a micro penis, but pretty small, small Penis. But they seem to be more in his head. Like he. It says he rarely hooks up, never has penetrative sex of any kind, and avoids most normal porn. Okay, but he's gay. What do you mean by the porn that he's watching is already not normal by default?

[A]

Well, what is normal porn?

[B]

Yeah, really, the porn is just not normal normal. Even though.

[A]

Well, I guess it gets into how he developed these like masochistic kinks to process.

[B]

He's into bdsm. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

So maybe that's like what is meant by non normative porn.

[B]

Yeah. Also, do trannies care about dick size? What's the deal with that?

[A]

I mean, it depends. I mean, I guess. Yeah, gay guys in general are pretty vain.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So even like you want you, even if you're not a bottom, you still want a guy with a big dick. Even if you don't, you're not the one getting penetrated just like aesthetically.

[B]

Yeah, it seems to be an aesthetic phenomenon, but this does seem to be like another one of those like fake cultural trends that the media is trying to manufacture to promote people's like, like brands and podcasts and to shoehorn a

[A]

thing in about the manosphere. Like always.

[B]

They're always like, yeah, like reference to clavicular, reference to Fuentes. These guys are tapped into the manosphere, but they're not because they're gay. Because only gay. Gay guys care about this.

[A]

And like bitter women.

[B]

Yeah. Like, who in the manosphere is agonizing over dick size? I think that the implicit liberal logic is that men are driven to red pill manosphere ideas because they have tiny penises.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Which makes them into violent rapists.

[A]

Huh.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, they're not doing much damage, I guess.

[B]

Yeah,

[A]

yeah. The internal logic of the trend sort of makes anecdotal sense, but it's not. I just don't understand who want like, who commissioned this piece? What?

[B]

It's like a weird bipolar, schizophrenic piece because on one hand it's like condemning the dregs of like MAGA and the manosphere, but on the other hand it's like promoting like whole talks gay bullshit. Like it's, it's literally it just like talks to a bunch of like dermatologists and plastic surgeons who inject dermal filler into like guys dicks and balls.

[A]

Right. I guess that's kind of the.

[B]

Yeah, so it's promoting making your dick bigger, but also saying that you're.

[A]

But it just looks bigger.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or I guess is girthier.

[B]

But if you're so if you're gay or an ally, it's okay to get, like, filler in your dick to make it look bigger. But if you're right wing or part of the manosphere, you're agonizing about your dick size because you're a bad person with bad politics. It's very confusing.

[A]

Well, here's. Yeah. The quote from Daniel Lombroso, whose documentary about penis augmentation manhood premiered at south by this year, said his subjects often told him they felt disaffected and disenfranchised. They're made to feel like, if only I have a big dick, maybe all my problems would go away. Maybe I'll be the CEO. Maybe I'll get a pay raise. It's no surprise that many of his straight subjects are also, he says, deeply entrenched in the misogynistic politics of the manosphere. They almost all have parasocial relationships with the Rogans, the Fuentes, the Tates, the claviculars of the world. We've seen such a massive political uproar from a lot of men who become angry and even more misogynistic because they're being treated how they were treating women before that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They're being objectified. How women have been so objectified so candidly and openly for so long. And it just. By gay guys. Like, who is objectifying these men that are driving them into the toxic masculinity influencer space.

[B]

I know

[A]

they can't stomach it. Men feel that it's become even more important for them to stand out in terms of penis size.

[B]

They're not being objectified. They're being, like, ignored and disenfranchised. What? Like, men who turn to those ideas

[A]

and, like, who's even really objectifying women that much I know. I feel like the. And the article says something sort of to this effect, but, like, the misconception around, like, locker room talk that men are out there, like, viciously comparing women's bodies is actually, like, I find obviously not being in the locker room myself, but, like, men are actually kind of like, discreet and women are really like, the vulgar ones.

[B]

Yeah, well, there's a lot of quotes. Yeah. From women in this article that are just, like, so cruel and hostile and demeaning. One woman, a former real housewife, assumed her hookup's penis was big because he was a talented dj. Men kill us. So we get to talk about their dicks at brunch.

[A]

She says, exactly. It's got this vulgar, feministy kind of like, because we're striking back, actually.

[B]

Like, you're.

[A]

No, you're being like a weird, cruel

[B]

bitch because you've adopted an invulnerable attitude to get ahead of any presumptive rejection you may face.

[A]

And you want to feel like you're justified.

[B]

Yeah. Because men aren't objectifying you enough. Because they're. They're indifferent and dissociated. Because we've made it illegal for men to have normal, horny feelings. Everything is, like, safe, horny.

[A]

Well, what's that quote that feminists love? That's like men.

[B]

Oh, Margaret Atwood.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Men kill women. Women laugh at manners.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it's women. Women laugh at men. Men kill women. Sort of like, again, the implicit logic being there that men will murder women for scoffing at them or roasting them.

[A]

I was told men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

[B]

In the past, people would make fun of women. She's a dog, she's a cow, she's an old maid, said Snyder, the sex therapist. But now that's socially unacceptable. But it's regarded perfectly.

[A]

But it's not on Red Scare Podcast

[B]

to ridicule a man. Yeah, yeah, it's. And like, when they say, like. Oh, yeah, like the Rogans, the claviculars, the Fuentes of the world. There's only one Rogan and one Clavicular and one Fuentes. There aren't like, multiple avatars and they're all different guys with, like, different lanes.

[A]

Yeah,

[B]

like what?

[A]

It's all, like, conflated and confused.

[B]

According to Chris Bustamante, who runs a girth enhancement clinic called Lushful Aesthetics in Midtown, the majority of his patients are average size. The men he sees, he says, are rarely seeking to enhance their performance in the bedroom. Rather, they're simply looking to look bigger. The finance bros in the locker room, the gay guys in their Speedos on Fire island, both want to look as packed as Jon Hamm while walking down the street in their sweatpants. I highly doubt anyone but gay guys are getting their dicks injected with filler.

[A]

Or I guess maybe a small amount of, like, very unwell straight guys.

[B]

Yeah. What they do, they do say how a lot of men are. Are actually just average or even above average, but have. Have no idea. Like, have no clue because they have no reference.

[A]

Well, statistically, that's what average means.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Most men will be average.

[B]

Tick Tock is filled with young men talking about porn addiction, masturbation addiction, and Viagra use, which has never been more in demand, especially among younger generations, thanks to direct consumer sites like Hymns and Row.

[A]

Scary.

[B]

That is scary. But that's a separate problem.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's like. Yeah. Because they're all like too online and. Coke addicts. Yeah.

[A]

They're stemmed out.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, wait, I. Can I. Yes. I'm gonna read a passage. It's kind of long, that's like very topical. That I found in. It's from Michelle Welbeck.

[A]

Of course.

[B]

Elementary particles, 1998. It's amazing. It's like so on point to this article. The problem, and it was a new one for me, was my dick. It probably sounds strange now, but in the 70s, nobody really cared about how big their dick was. When I was a teenager, I had every conceivable hang up about my body, except that I don't know who started it. Queers probably. Though you find it a lot in American detective novels, but there's no mention of it in Sartre.

[A]

Whatever.

[B]

In the showers at the gym, I realized I had a really small dick. I measured it when I got home. It was 12 centimeters. Maybe 13 or 14 if you measured it right to the base. I'd found something new to worry about, Something I couldn't do anything about. It was a basic and permanent handicap. It was around then that I started hating blacks. There weren't many of them in the school. Most of them went to the technical school Lissee Pierre de Coubertin, where the eminent Defrance did his philosophical striptease and propounded his pro youth ass kissing. I only had one. Damn, I keep getting these packages. I only had one in my premier a class. A big stocky guy who called himself Ben. He always wore a baseball cap and Nikes. I was convinced he had a huge dick. All the girls threw themselves at this big baboon. And here I was trying to teach them about Malarme. What the was the point? This is the way this western civilization would end, I thought bitterly. People worshiping in front of big dicks like hamidirus baboons.

[A]

Beautiful, great prose. Yeah. Also racial dimension. Very much missing from this piece. Seemed like a missed opportunity there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Much like the papal encyclical.

[B]

So true. There's really like a gay podcast. Nothing. There was a poor elderly Asian Amazon delivery guy who fell on the stoop.

[A]

Oh, is he okay?

[B]

Yeah, he's fine. Sure. He was okay and let him in. But yeah, I was gonna make a shitty pun, but. Package pun.

[A]

Oh, your package is here.

[B]

Yeah, but it's like. Yeah, it's very like Samantha from Sex and the city where she's like appraising the package of the UPS guy.

[A]

Yeah. Blowing him.

[B]

Yeah. It is just like aesthetics obsessed look smacks and gay guys and bitter angry women.

[A]

I mean, I guess I've never. There's like a part where a bunch of women are discussing their various experiences with men with like, like medically micro penises which I've never encountered.

[B]

Same. Yeah.

[A]

Not to be crass, it's. I mean. Yeah. I guess there just is so much bitterness like in dating discourse too. It's like people are just unable to be vulnerable.

[B]

Yeah. Because they're so afraid. Understandably.

[A]

When actually like if a man had an average to small dick but he like loved you, you would never complain.

[B]

It wouldn't occur to you. I think you know how women are really bad appraising a man's height.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like I was convinced that a popular right wing philosopher who shall remain unnamed was 5 9, but he's actually like 6 2. Because he's giving short.

[A]

Huh. And men lie though. Yeah.

[B]

But like you know him, I've seen. Yeah, you've met him too. But yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah. And like. Yeah. Women like really just are bad at measuring height, bad spatial awareness.

[A]

It's a male trait.

[B]

And I think women. This is a nice thing about women when, when women like you and love you, they just think you have a big dick.

[A]

Yeah. Or yeah. Are they like,

[B]

are.

[A]

I mean. Yeah. I have friends who like every time they start dating a new guy, it's like the best sex they've ever had.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Every time they. Yeah. It's like, no, he's. No one's ever made me come before. And I'm like, you said that about like the last three guys that made you come for the first time. But they think they really believe it. And I think that is sweet.

[B]

Yeah. But the thing is like the bigger problem. Yeah. Is that everything has become so recriminating and acrimonious thanks to Indians on the Internet dispensing relationship advice.

[A]

Has to be said, do have the smallest dicks and the worst grip strength.

[B]

Crazy interesting. But.

[A]

And are so horny.

[B]

Yeah. Well, that's. Liberals are right. It does turn you into a rapist. But I think, yeah, like women are. I don't like. Again, I've never been in a male locker room, so I can't attest to locker room talk. And I'm sure men do talk about.

[A]

They do.

[B]

But on the whole I find them to be probably more discreet and less crass than women. Not because they're like like better people or anything like that, but because they're actually just like indifferent to that like, social relational component.

[A]

And it's like, I guess, yeah, if it's like you're a soldier in a foxhole looking at a pin up and like, you know, your buddy's got another. Like, there's no scarcity really around women to like, even motivate that kind of discourse. It's like, it's hard to imagine men would be like, let me see. Like, oh, you got a picture of a woman's body that you could show me? It's like, like, please, no more. They're sick of seeing women's bodies.

[B]

Men, like, obviously the. The Internet is like, just makes everything seem much more horrific and grotesque because people of all sec. Of both sexes say ugly and nasty things online that were ordinarily kept under wraps. But, you know, I'm sure, like, men in the company of other men, like, discussion, like their conquests and ogle women and that sort of thing. But I doubt they're like, getting into like the nitty gritty of like their wife's or girlfriend's like genitals or anything.

[A]

I'd like to think not. Yeah, but I guess there's all kinds, you know, takes all kinds of.

[B]

Women use dick size as a proxy for general dissatisfaction.

[A]

Of course. Yeah.

[B]

That's like really all it is.

[A]

Well said.

[B]

Yeah. Because, like, just statistically you're average and

[A]

he's average and it's fine.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Something. There was a breakdown. I mean, men with true. Like, I do feel bad.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, I. That does seem worse than being like

[B]

an ugly woman having a micro penis.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't know. It's probably about equivalent.

[A]

It's. Well, psychologically just the phallus and the failure. And I see how it could, like, would ripple through your life in a more damaging way is relative and in

[B]

the eye of the beholder. Whereas having a micro penis is just a clinical.

[A]

And there's just. There's really no cor. You know, there's really no corollary because, like, some men like small tits. Okay. Like, women. Some women augment their bodies, but they really, like, don't have to. They don't have to. There's not like, real incentive to.

[B]

I mean, most men are like, in my experience, pretty indifferent to tits.

[A]

They.

[B]

If they love you, they don't really care whether they're big or small. I mean, they prefer that they're there

[A]

in some capacity because they're not symmetrical and somewhat. Yeah.

[B]

Like, but they are just like capable of, I guess, having like loving all types.

[A]

Yeah, no, there's really nothing like having a small thing in terms of like

[B]

egoic strain, a cavernous pussy, you know,

[A]

then you just gotta find a guy with. Well, there was actually a kind of. The clavicular quote did have some wisdom into it in the article. It said when I asked clavicular recently how he felt about his own penis. He's been open. That he's only average. He said that quote. In terms of maintaining a relationship with women, it's a huge factor. But a girl that's been run through is going to need a lot more to work with.

[B]

Is that true? No, no. Come on.

[A]

But there, you know, I guess, yeah. If you have a huge cavernous pussy, I mean, it's not like maybe anatomically true, but there's some true. Like a girl that's run through will be like desensitized in a deeper way.

[B]

Yeah. The clavicular encyclical, he should publish it in cyclical. The Pope should do one on looks maxing and how this is like dehumanizing and runs counter to human dignity.

[A]

Well, I feel like that's already been addressed. That's the thing about the Catholic Church is it's been addressing things

[B]

forever. Yeah.

[A]

So they got. It's got to come up with new stuff.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

They already. JPT already did Theology of the Body actually. But that double more with like sexual morality.

[B]

But like. Yeah. The bigger, much more troublesome, troublesome issue I see is that like a lot of women seem to pawn off any like, like personal complaint or grievance about like I guess, gender dynamics to porn addiction.

[A]

They're fixated on it. Yeah. And I guess. Yeah. It's just not. It hasn't been something that I've struggled with. Not personally. I mean I have actually struggled with pornography addiction personally, but I mean with men, as far as I know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Haven't really. Don't know too many, like Gooners.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To a dysfunctional degree.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And find that most men's like born consumption habits are pretty normal.

[B]

Yeah. And conditional.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It seems like when.

[A]

But I believe it.

[B]

I mean, I mean, it seems like when they're in a happy relationship, the porn consumption goes down and when they're single or in an unhappy relationship, it goes up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Not a particularly groundbreaking insight, but I

[A]

believe it's up like in general on Reddit. It certainly seems to be a huge issue.

[B]

But I mean, if you're like a porn consumer, you must be aware kind of like if you're an AI companion user that the dicks that you see displayed in porn are necessarily definitionally going to be above average.

[A]

Of course, that's why they're in the work in that field.

[B]

And I guess gay guys have bigger than average penises because they're high tea. Yeah, something like that. Yeah.

[A]

Interesting. Anyway, to not about or. That's the news.

[B]

Yeah. Well, you know, on the bright side, I don't really see this becoming an actual micro trend because it's fake news.

[A]

I guess I think you're right that it's just kind of like a sneaky ad for dick filler so people know it's an option.

[B]

Right? Yeah.

[A]

But otherwise it's just a tale is all this time.

[B]

Yeah. Yep.

[A]

See you in a hell.