Episode #186 - Transcript

So last episode we ended by talking about generative AI and the potential impacts it may have on society. How SOME philosophers think it could lead to an economic utopia…others think it could lead to a panopticon. But there HAD to have been at least a FEW of you out there that HEARD the word Panopticon… and thought what in GOD’S name IS that? 

And there’s no doubt SOME of you out there who KNOW what the Panopticon is who thought why would ANYBODY think this world we’re heading for will be a prison?

Well by the end of the episode today I’ll try to explain why SOME philosophers think it’s gonna go that way…

And I guess I wanna start by saying that I realize a good portion of last episode was spent trying to bring people up to speed on the STATE of generative AI right now… and I want to double down and say that I THINK all that context is necessary… to understand the WIDER ANGLE philosophical lens that this stuff can be viewed through. 

As I said towards the end of last episode… I just THINK that we are something fundamentally DIFFERENT, than the medieval peasants that didn’t have a hope in the world of seeing what was coming with the industrial revolution. Part of the value of philosophy in THIS world that we’re living in…. is that it can help you SEE the broader, historical trends that you’re a part of… so that you’re not someone… who’s just a HOSTAGE to them. I’m not trying to say anything too controversial I’m really just trying to echo the sentiment of Socrates here that the EXAMINED LIFE…CONTINUING to ask better and better questions…this is something CRUCIAL if you want to SURVIVE in today’s world. 

And I guess… let’s continue that journey here… by trying to understand how a fairly RANDOM idea fromall the way back in the 1780’s actually applies to the world we’re living in… right now. I’m talking about asking the question: what would it would LOOK like… if a philosopher… sat down and applied everything in that big brain of theirs to the task…of trying to design the BEST PRISON that they could possibly come up with. What would that prison look like? 

The philosopher that DID this in the 1780’s was Jeremy Bentham. And the idea for a prison he came up with… was called the Panopticon. 

Some important context to know about Jeremy Bentham is that he’s doing his work during a time when RATIONALITY is being applied to EVERYTHING in the world to try to make it better. It was called the age of reason after all. Systems of government, economics, morality, EVERYTHING was gonna be made BETTER when we use REASON to design the way our institutions operate, THAT was the plan. And for Jeremy Bentham…this idea went ALL the way down to the very ARCHITECTURE of the buildings that people DO stuff in. 

He looks around him… at the world that HE’S living in… and he sees these PRISONS where the inmates are being treated HORRIBLY. FILTHY living conditions, disease is rampant, the GUARDS at the prisons have to physically beat the prisoners to be able to keep them scared and in line. Bentham asks the question: is there a way to DO all of this in a smarter way? Do we REALLY need to be BEATING people in order to keep them in line? 

And what he comes UP with… is to redesign the actual prison BUILDING. 

His thinking is: what if we DESIGN the prison…where the cells of the prisoners are in a circular shape, FORMING a perimeter…and then in the MIDDLE of that CIRCLE…is a GIANT tower that can see in all directions. But THEN he says…what if through various different kinds of shades on the windows of the cells you could create a situation… where someone who’s standing in this tower in the center of everything…can SEE INSIDE of the cell of every single prisoner…but the prisoners would NEVER be able to know if they were being watched or not. Think of two way mirrors in today’s world. Same concept. 

What the ARCHITECTURE of this building would INEVITABLY create…is an ENVIRONMENT where the prisoners ALWAYS have to self-regulate. Because if you can NEVER know for SURE whether you’re being WATCHED or not… then you have to behave at all times AS IF you’re being watched. 

And for Jeremy Bentham in the 1700’s…this is GREAT news.. and NOT JUST when it comes to PRISONS! I mean it was CERTAINLY… GOOD for prisons…you know simply by changing the design of the building you no longer gotta have guards standing around watching everyone beating people if they step out of line…now people will essentially become their OWN guards. You turn the prisoners themselves into part of the mechanism that is IMPRISONING them. It’s GENIUS…and its INCREDIBLY efficient as well…you don’t even REALLY have to be watching them…just the THREAT that someone COULD be watching… is enough to get people to act in a TOTALLY different way that is better for everyone. 

The even BETTER news for Bentham was that this design…. DOESN’T just set things up in a way that’s better for PRISONERS…this SAME CONCEPT… could apply to factories to make people better workers. This could be used in SCHOOLS to produce better students make sure they don’t cheat. Military barracks to produce better soldiers. 

It was…the PRISON of dreams to Jeremy Bentham. Like the titanic. A MAGICAL place. Where this magic happens, SIMPLY… by there being a severe asymmetry in knowledge. THAT’S how it WORKS! The observers know everything…and the observed barely knows anything. 

And WHO woulda thought we could make improvements to SO MANY AREAS of society JUST by doing THAT. But as you can probably imagine…there’s a DARK SIDE to the Panopticon. Fast forward almost 200 years later to the work of the philosopher Michel Foucault. 

Michel Foucault writes a book released in 1975 called Discipline and Punish, and IN IT…he reintroduces Bentham’s idea of the Panopticon and finally gives credit… to JUST how influential this design for a PRISON has become over the years. Because to him…this idea from Bentham was actually SO GOOD…that it NOW pervades practically every major institution in western society in 1975. 

See part of what Foucault is saying is that if you are a government… or ANYTHING that has power for that matter…we don’t live in a WORLD anymore where you gotta crack people in their grapefuit lookin’ head with a wiffle ball bat to keep them DOING what you want them to be doing…that kind of stuff’s so old fashioned these days. 

In 1975, he says, what you DO to keep people under control… is you just control the minutiae of human life…you create STANDARDS of what is normal and abnormal…and then the PEOPLE will POLICE THEMSELVES, much like in the panopticon. See to Foucault…there is a CLEAR relationship in modern societies between KNOWLEDGE and POWER…and it goes on at multiple different LEVELS. 

The people in power… CONTROL what knowledge is. They control what constitutes knowledge. They control WHO gets tenure and gets to disseminate knowledge. They control the NORMS and TABOOS of social institutions… and therefore CONTROL how people view them, and then how people VIEW themselves within society at large. 

Just as an example of how all this stuff OPERATES… think of something like education…which often PRESENTS to people as something that’s unbiased and neutral. It’s often expected…that AS teachers, AS professors…you’re not trying to bring any BIAS into the equation here…you’re just trying to spread knowledge about the facts of the world. That’s what you might EXPECT when you go to school. 

But just consider how that ACTUALLY plays out in the real world…take a random example of something that’s TAUGHT to people. Something like… history…and because I’m an American I’ll stay in my own lane here and I’ll just talk about American history right now. Okay.

Well not many people would deny that there’s a LOT of different ways you can TEACH someone american history. 70 years ago or so… american history may have been taught by playing up a particular narrative…maybe by talking about the glorious american revolution, then we fought a civil war to end slavery, then we peacefully stayed out of WW2 until we were viciously attacked and then had no CHOICE but to step in and then we helped save the world from the evil nazis. You could TEACH american history in that WAY…and someone like Foucault would say that when you TEACH it in that way…it BREEDS a certain kind of ATTITUDE in the student about their position in american history… and it effects the way they see themselves in the world. 

Now contrast THAT version of american history… with a DIFFERENT one that’s been discussed more recently…where the decision by people has been to teach students more about the DETAILS about specific things… the DETAILS of slavery in the US…the DETAILS of the treatment of native americans of women’s suffrage…you CHANGE the perspective that the narrative is COMING from…and low and behold some people have a PROBLEM with that version of history because they say it’s CREATING a generation of people who HATE the country, that it’s TEACHING them to identify the country SOLELY on its worst qualities. But again…OTHER people would say that the American history from 70 YEARS ago…  created a generation of people that sweep the details of the past under the rug and just focus on the victories. 

Now whether EITHER of these narratives FULLY embody the truth doesn’t really matter, because the POINT IS… what we HAVE in an education system to Foucault is NOT some neutral enterprise that’s trying to offer up the TRUTH about the universe…no, like in the panopticon, there is an ASYMMETRY in knowledge and power. The people in power that control the curriculums in education determine what KNOWLEDGE is…and simply by DOING THAT…they then end up determining what NORMAL is.

And BECAUSE they determine what NORMAL is…they also determine what an ANOMALY is to that norm. Then, to Foucault, they come up with social CATEGORIES that LABEL someone as one of these anomalies in a negative way, which then encourages a system of conformity. 

For example, you can DIFFER from the norm politically… to an extent…but you go too far…and NOW you magically become an extremist, or a terrorist. You’re hit with that label for being too far outside the norm. You can DEVIATE from the norm psychologically, to an EXTENT. Go outside the norm too much and now you become mentally ill. There were SEXUAL norms during the time of Foucault…go too far outside of them and now you become a PERVERT. NONE of this is Foucault saying that norms shouldn’t exist or don’t serve a social function…he’s MERELY trying to understand the ARCHITECTURE of HOW modern power dynamics work…and the labels of these social ANOMALIES play an important role in how it’s all maintained.   

JUST LIKE in the Panopticon you create an ASYMMETRY in levels of KNOWLEDGE between the observers and the observed…and JUST LIKE in the Panopticon, people internalize normative behaviors and end up regulating themselves to GO ALONG with them. 

Forget EVER thinking too far outside the bounds of what the approved KNOWLEDGE is of the day…no one wants to deal with the social backlash of all that. Who wants to be called an extremist or a failure or mentally ill or erratic.

It is NOT a coincidence to Foucault…that in the world in 1975… prisons start to look like factories which start to look like schools which start to look like hospitals which start to look like military barracks. To Foucault…Jeremy Bentham was RIGHT…the Panopticon truly DOES make better prisoners, students and workers…it creates an environment… where conformity is rewarded… and just like the prisoner in a cell in the panopticon…it creates an environment where you have to ALWAYS be worried and can never really relax. 

Now THIS is the view of the Panopticon…. in 1975. But the prison that people fear’s emerging NOW… fifty years LATER…it’s SIMILAR in some ways… but it’s MORE diabolical. Foucault’d be having fits of giggling laughter and blacking out if he was alive today. 

To help build the case for WHY…want to talk about some interesting ideas from the work of a philosopher named Stephen Cave…who, among other things, thinks that something INCREDIBLY important that we need to acknowledge if we WANT to understand the state of the society we have now…is that we have to look at the role of INTELLIGENCE, all throughout history…as SOMETHING that’s been used as a justification for dominating and controlling people.

He says you know when we talk about intelligence in casual conversation…it’s really easy for it to seem to people like it's a politically NEUTRAL thing that’s going on. 

That when you say someone’s stupid…ALL you’re REALLY saying is something very innocent…all you’re just saying…is that we can’t really trust them with fireworks when they’re alone. You’re just saying they’re someone who probably drives a really loud vehicle of some sort, seems to be some kind of correlation between intelligence and how loud you are…the idea is that all you’re saying when someone scores low on an intelligence test is that there’s something about their mental faculties that’s LOWER than usual. 

But the reality he says is that historically… intelligence has been used to justify things that are absolutely horrible. Historically… just the way that its played out…to SAY that someone is STUPIDER than someone else is really saying something GREATER about what they should be allowed to DO within a society. About what RIGHTS they may have as a person. 

He says we have this long standing idea in the western world, VERY politically entrenched at this point… that the more intelligent and educated you are…the more it makes sense for YOU to be the person… that’s in CHARGE of everything.  

Now…let’s just HOLD ON there for a second. Because I think an OBVIOUS response BACK to this could be well that’s not a WESTERN world thing…that’s a HUMAN thing. As people…we just NATURALLY want the smartest people we have to be making the decisions near the top. 

But that’s not actually how history has gone. There’s LOTS of reasons people have been in CHARGE in the past that have NOTHING to DO with intelligence. The strongest would rule in a lot of cases in a might makes right sort of situation, people would inherit positions of power being the relative of a former ruler an aristocratic situation, people would use religious reasons to determine the next leader…point is: this whole idea…that the most intelligent and educated among us should be the ones that are ruling…Stephen Cave says FAR FROM this being the NORM…this was actually a radical IDEA in the ancient Greek world where the foundations of our political philosophy were laid.  

And when it comes to the value of intelligence from a philosophical perspective…philosophers like Plato he says… were OBSESSED with intelligence…it’s just back then… given the non-existent field of psychology and how we understand intelligence today… to BE obsessed with intelligence back then was to be obsessed with one important SUBSET of intelligence…called REASON. 

REASON it was said by philosophers is what separates us from the animals. REASON is part of the ESSENCE of what makes us human. And for Plato when he WRITES the Republic and designs the structure of an ideal society…not surprisingly… he puts the PHILOSOPHER KING as the person who should be in charge of it all. In other words, the guy in CHARGE should be the guy who uses reason to gain a better understanding of ALL the different components of society, AND the guy who is HIGHLY educated since BIRTH to be a ruler.

Now again, this is a RADICAL IDEA in ancient greece at the time. And it’s not LONG Stephen Cave says before Plato’s student Aristotle comes along and forms what is NOW known…. as one of the first philosophically grounded, naturalistic social hierarchies. 

The THINKING is at the time: that the REALITY of the world is one where SOME people… are MORE rational and educated than OTHER people. So if you’re gonna TRY to STRUCTURE a society in the best way possible… and you want to do it in a way where people can do what their naturally BEST at… and thus provide as much VALUE as possible to that society…then OBVIOUSLY…the people that are the most rational and educated… should BE the ones that are leading. 

Again the THINKING is: that setup’s not just better for THEM…that’s better for EVERYONE…. all the way down the LINE. People that are better suited to LEAD…should LEAD…why would you want the town drunk standin up there ask not what your country can do for you? No, you want a certain kind of person. 

Now, what inevitably comes OUT of that kind of setup though…is a hierarchy of rationality. If the most RATIONAL EDUCATED MEN are supposed to be the ones that are in charge…then LESS rational people… should NEVER be considered for leadership positions. 

So at the time Stephen Cave says in a world where WOMEN are seen as more “sentimental and flighty” than men are…women were seen as just better suited to serving OTHER ROLES in society where their natural abilities could be more accentuated. 

Move further DOWN the hierarchy and you come across people of other SKIN colors or genetics…people who are viewed at this time as not too smart…but REALLY PHYSICALLY gifted…so WITHIN this social hierarchy the way it was SEEN is that their natural GIFT…was to use their BODY to contribute to society. And this goes all the way down to animals and then trees and rocks. The lower your level of rationality and education the less you have a right to be LEADING a society. 

And this WAY of looking at things gets EMBEDDED into western philosophy so deep… that it’s still there in the work of Descartes over 1500 years later…even LATER than THAT you got Kant saying that rational beings are ends in themselves, NON-rational beings only have a relative value as means and are therefore called things…Later on people use intelligence to justify the age of colonialism…that these less intelligent people across the world NEED European culture to be able to CIVILIZE THEM. In fact it would be INHUMANE for us to NOT govern these people who CLEARLY are not as capable of governing themselves. You have VARIOUS instances of intelligence levels being used to justify slavery. There’s EVEN examples of people being STERILIZED because they have lower intelligence. THAT’s one that’s pretty crazy…

Stephen Cave explains that Charles Darwin had a cousin…and his name was Sir Francis Galton. He’s typically thought of as being the originator of psychometrics and a leading proponent at the time… of eugenics. 

See when Darwin writes the origin of species, Sir Francis over there gets inspired and thinks oh, well intelligence must be something that people are BORN with…and obviously…just like a bird with a longer beak needs to breed with another bird with a longer beak and they’ll have long beak babies…the way you make the HUMAN species smarter is you take the smartest people you can find and you breed them together with the OTHER smartest people. Not only that, but anybody who’s NOT that intelligent…we should tell them NOT to breed…cause they’re only making the species dumber the more kids they have. Why would we ever want that?

But he has a problem: how do you find OUT who the smartest people are? Well you would NEED a scientific WAY of MEASURING people’s intelligence. So Sir Francis Galton creates… an intelligence test to be able to measure it. As Stephen Cave says, “Thus eugenics and the intelligence test were born together.” Because while there were OTHER intelligence tests before that one…the fact is…tens of THOUSANDS of women over the course of the next few decades… were forcibly sterilized…after scoring POORLY on one of these intelligence tests. 

We don’t even draw the LINE at just human beings…jesus we even EAT animals, we actually chew things up, swallow them and use them for FUEL… and for some people that’s okay because a chicken’s less intelligent and has a less rich experience of the world than we do. 

Point is: when you SAY something… about someone’s INTELLIGENCE level…you’re NOT just making an innocent claim that someone’s STUPID, like hey they’re just the kind of person that really thinks they won $100 when someone texts them. Given the history we HAVE you are POTENTIALLY making ALL KINDS of OTHER claims about what that person should be allowed to do with their life BECAUSE they’re less intelligent…now…not ONLY is Stephen Cave saying that we need to be AWARE of this history…but another one of the points he’s making with all this has to do with Artificial Intelligence. 

Because he says IF we’re living in a world where there are masses of people worried about AGI and superintelligent robots taking over the world…well, it makes SENSE why we’re so scared of it. We’ve already set the precedent over and over again throughout history that if a being is more intelligent or educated than another being…they can essentially do whatever they want to them. Of COURSE we’d be worried about bringing a super intelligence to life. 

And when we START to think about machine algorithms and the progressively expanding role that they’re playing in our lives…as these things that are FAR MORE EDUCATED than us that can recognize patterns and tell you what you want before YOU even know what you want…could it be that there’s a sense of WILLINGNESS from people to OUTSOURCE these sorts of decisions they’re helping with to something that seems more intelligent than they are? And could that WILLINGNESS be one FACTOR…that LIMITS the freedom of someone in the modern world who voluntarily PLACES themselves inside of a DIGITAL form of a Panopticon? What would a digital panopticon even FEEL like if you were in it? Would you ever even know?

Before we explore that possibility deeper I think it’ll be helpful to consider ANOTHER interesting idea from the work of Stephen Cave where he examines the concept of free will. Because IF we’re interested in understanding how EXACTLY a digital panopticon would limit someone’s FREEDOM…then having some common language when it comes to understanding what precisely CONSTITUTES a free choice… is going to help us out a lot. 

Because see, Stephen Cave DOESN’T talk about free will the same way WE did in our free will and determinism episode that just happened. HE’s more interested in quantifying what exactly do we MEAN when we SAY that someone MADE a free choice. 

As the Director of the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence…and a philosopher interested in trying to better understand all SORTS of mental states…Stephen Cave says that if we’re WILLING to think of how intelligent someone is in terms of an IQ or an intelligence quotient… and if we’re willing to think of how emotionally intelligent someone is in terms of an EQ or an emotional quotient…is it…THAT crazy of an idea… to think that we MAY be able to have a FREEDOM quotient…or an FQ… that measures how FREE somebody is when making a decision?

This may SEEM like kind of a wacky idea on the surface…but as Stephen Cave says… we’re actually already MAKING these sorts of considerations in an INFORMAL way in legal proceedings all the time. A judge will look at a case…they will consider all the evidence, they’ll consider WHO the person is and their history…they’ll weigh things like the intent behind the act, the consequences of the act, and after referencing ALL SORTS of different psychological and philosophical measuring sticks…they will DETERMINE what a suitable PUNISHMENT is for the person, and part of that is DETERMINING how FREE they were to make the choice they did. THAT kind of stuff goes on in court rooms all the time. 

But the question is: WHY does that process have to ONLY go on inside the head of the judge? Why is there not a more scientifically quantifiable way of measuring this kind of stuff? 

Just to be clear he says…totally realize we’re not quite THERE yet…okay we still have a lot we need to understand about the capacities that underlie behavioral freedom…but is it TOO early to be thinking about this FQ… as a potential possibility in the future? 

Because ONE thing’s FOR SURE to him…the WAY we’re talking about free will right now is NOT satisfying anybody…we NEED a NEW WAY…SO MANY of the ideas we HAVE about it come from a pre-scientific age where we were just sort of spitballing. But it’s an UNDERSTANDABLE place to BE in, because the challenges here are big: 

HOW do you even start to DEFINE how much FREE WILL somebody has…IF that was something you wanted to do? And while he acknowledges… there’s no consensus on this whatsoever…he says if you wanted to get STARTED trying to connect the dots between the different ways people have defined it …you could say that free will has three primary components. 1. The ability to generate options for oneself. 2. The ability to choose. And 3. The ability to pursue one or more of those options after choosing. 

THREE DIFFERENT STAGES. And what you’ll NOTICE is that EACH ONE of these STAGES… requires a totally different SKILL that’s going to have to factor IN when determining someone’s FQ score.

Let’s look at them one by one. The FIRST stage: being able to generate options for yourself. This is the part of ANY TRULY FREE CHOICE that you make in life…where you’re faced with a decision point…and you have to rack your brain to come up with all the possible options for you to choose from. The thinking here is that generally speaking…if someone doesn’t HAVE a lot of options or if a person can’t SEE very many options to choose from… we generally don’t consider them to be AS FREE as someone, who had a LOT of options. 

The SECOND stage was the ability to CHOOSE one of those options…THE SKILL that’s required in this one is being able to REASON. Critically thinking, weighing the pros and cons of different decisions. Anyone who MAKES a free choice is at SOME point going to need these skills to be able to choose the best option to move forward with…and the LAST stage: is the ability to actually PURSUE one these options…in other words: this is the part of free will that is connected to something like what we typically call… the WILL…or someone’s ability to EXECUTE the thing they’ve CHOSEN as the best option. 

There’s a sense in which you NEED to be able to do ALL THREE of these skills to SOME extent to be able to MAKE a free choice. And you can imagine how people are going to be skilled in EACH of these different areas in slightly different WAYS. Sometimes it can be TOTALLY imbalanced. 

For example, somebody could REALLY struggle with the FIRST skill, they might STRUGGLE to creatively come up with a lot of different options to CHOOSE from…maybe they only ever see five different options or so…but it never really HURTS them that much in the LIFE because on the OTHER hand they’re REALLY good at the WILL side of things and they’re always able to EXECUTE an option that is MOSTLY GOOD for them. 

On the other hand you could have someone who can see ALL the options in the world, they have 50 or 100 options to CHOOSE FROM…they’re GREAT at reasoning between them and choosing the best one…but they really struggle with being able to EXECUTE the choice, so their FQ score would actually be really low. 

Stephen Cave says that what we MIGHT FIND, if we started MEASURING things in this way…is that PRISONERS… behind bars in particular…might have a lower FQ score on average when compares to the REST of the general population. MEANING that they’re people that either LACKED options to choose from, lacked the ability to think critically about the best choice, or had difficulty executing the RIGHT choice. Maybe all three.

You THINK about the way prisons are designed…mostly low stimulation environments with very little decision making…and Stephen Cave says you wonder if maybe putting prisoners in a situation where they can’t develop any of these skills that would RAISE their FQ…you wonder if there might be a better way to do it. 

More than that he says…IF FQ, was a score that was AS PREVALENT as IQ in terms of public awareness…we may find that it BENEFITS society GREATLY… to NURTURE these skills that RAISE the FQ of the population at large. And in THAT world…WHY NOT focus on these skills in schools? If we DID…wouldn’t that just create more empowered citizens?

But… then again…what if you didn’t want to be CREATING empowered citizens. What if instead, whether by a single organized body or a bunch of different distributed organizations all competing for people’s attention…what if the goal was NOT to create people whose free will score was as HIGH as possible…but to create an environment where each one of these three stages of free will is systematically weakened?

When you think about the possibility of a DIGITAL Panopticon like this…it really does start to raise the question of what exactly IS freedom? Like Isaiah Berlin talks about IS FREEDOM SIMPLY freedom from constraints…is it SIMPLY just not being PREVENTED from doing certain things? Or… does freedom ALSO necessarily REQUIRE that people have the skills and opportunities to be able to pursue the life they want to live? 

Say you WANTED…to CONTROL a population of people. And SAY you’re living in the modern world, where, as we’ve established…the best and most efficient way to CONTROL a population isn’t by beating them when they get out of line, but to create an ASYMMETRY of knowledge in a Panopticon. How would you do it? 

If you WEREN’T able to LOCK people inside of cages? How would you limit EACH STAGE of their freedom that we just talked about?

Well let’s start with the first one: limiting the OPTIONS people have to CHOOSE from. 

Should be said: this is not a new idea for keeping people under control. Governments have been doing this for centuries. Of COURSE…governments pass LAWS…they create fines and regulations…but THAT only covers a relatively small NUMBER of things that we don’t want people to do. To REALLY be able to control a population…governments realized you have to give people a limited, state-approved STORY to believe in about what’s going on around them. This is why so many governments use propaganda. 

This is the classic asymmetry in knowledge. This is why, if you wanted to CONTROL a group…you would pass laws that would not allow certain groups to be educated. This is why abusive people in GENERAL limit the information of the people they’re ABUSING. An abusive parent doesn’t want their kid going to school and talking to their TEACHERS about what’s going on in the house. An abusive spouse doesn’t want the person they’re abusing having FRIENDS and TALKING to them about what’s going on…they’ll tell them what’s going on is WRONG. 

Limiting someone’s options is a powerful way to limit their freedom. And it is BUILT IN to Foucault’s analysis of controlling social institutions and the norms and taboos of a society. We talked about it before. But if in 1975 FOUCAULT feared a Panopticon where we control the minutiae of people’s lives at the level of the institution…what if we could all of sudden… through the technology of machine algorithms and the ever expanding sophistication of Artificial Intelligence…what if we could NOW control the minutiae of people’s lives ALL the way down to the level of the individual transaction. 

What if you were living in a world where everything that is recommended to you from the stuff that you buy to the news stories you read… was ultimately controlled by an AI that is building a progressively more detailed profile on you with every ad that you click, every browser window you open, every video you watch, the exact point that you STOP watching the video it knows that too and MUCH more… what if this was ALL data being GATHERED to create an ongoing, cumulative PROFILE on you to be able to SELL to you better, or be able to know what you’re UP to. 

Oh wait no that’s not a WHAT IF…that’s already HAPPENING. Everybody KNOWS this. It’s not surprising. What MAY be surprising to you though is the rate at which these PROFILES of people are becoming more LEGIBLE for companies and governments to READ. 

See they’ve HAD MOUNTAINS of data about your behavior to sift through for YEARS now. The real question has always been what can they REALLY KNOW…about any ONE person with the filters they could RUN the data through. What that you’re into philosophy? That you looked at baby blue paint on the home depot website? Someone grab the reynolds wrap and make me a helmet over here. In the past it hasn’t really been LEGIBLE information. 

Well the MORE sophisticated the technology of the AI gets…the more COMPLEX THE PATTERNS are that it can recognize in your behavior. And we’ve SEEN this development coming for years it STARTED with algorithms…then along came machine learning…then from WITHIN MACHINE LEARNING came DEEP learning where they added neural networks into the equation and now we’re creating AI even more focused than THAT. 

On the corporate side: we already KNOW that companies have been trying to track and predict our behavior for YEARS. These balding dudes in wingtips are literally frothing at the mouth to be able to predict what you’re gonna do next. And on the GOVERNMENT side: in the United States at least… we already KNOW about programs like PRISM and Boundless Information that track internet activity, your emails, text messages, phone calls. 

We already KNOW they USED to compile it all into a giant data center and then RUN these massive amounts of data through FILTERS…where if certain words or subjects come up…people are FLAGGED as THREATS for further review. We KNOW that was going on 10 years ago when Edward Snowden leaked it. And as HE says what…even if PRISM ended, do you REALLY think programs like that aren’t STILL going on? Do you think they won’t USE the ever expanding sophistication of AI to be able to create a MORE detailed, granular profile on who you are? What happens when AI becomes sophisticated enough that they don’t NEED real people like Snowden analyzing the people who are getting flagged? Does it create a space where there’s no longer room for whistleblowers? Will the machines KEEP the secrets… for the people that are in CHARGE of these programs?

More than that…doesn’t this term…FLAGGING someone for anomalous behavior…start to bear a STRANGE resemblance to the way Foucault talks about society labeling people as social anomalies? Because that’s the thing…maybe right now your emails only get flagged if you’re explicitly talking about bombing an endangered species of chipmunk…but in the future…with AI ALREADY in CHINA being advanced enough to spot a SINGLE person in a sea of people who is acting in an anomalous way…do you think in the future what GETS someone FLAGGED… could become things far more granular as well?

Given what we KNOW about how there is a direct relationship between the accepted knowledge of the day and the people in power…think of how an environment where something is constantly MONITORING every article you read, EVERY idea you consider…think of how that Panopticon like situation has the potential to impact people’s education. Their development. Their personality. 

Real question: do YOU right now…ever have PRIVATE conversations with people you trust… about concepts you DON’T agree with that you would NEVER talk about publicly because its irresponsible to…but nonetheless these are CRUCIALLY important conversations to your own development because they allow you to entertain ideas without the fear of social backlash. 

Yeah, me too! All the time. But if you’re living in a world where you can’t know whether every conversation you’re having is being listened to…whether every digital fingerprint you leave isn’t being cataloged and recorded into a profile that represents YOU. Would you be a little more hesitant about the stuff that you read? Would you be a little more cautious about the conversations you’re having? 

Surveillance IMPACTS people’s moral development. This is why CONSTANT surveillance is such an important ASPECT of many religions. God is always watching. 

It affects the WAY that people behave. It affects the IDEAS that people are willing to entertain. And when norms and anomalies can be recorded and analyzed not at the institutional level…but at the level of the individual transaction…people will CONSIDER outside opinions less out of fear of being flagged… and it creates an environment where people will be less skilled at critical thinking and using REASON to determine what the best OPTION is. Which remember…was the SECOND thing you’d want to limit… if you wanted to lock people inside of a digital prison.

It’s been said that in the west we will slowly, VOLUNTARILY hand our rights over TO the people that control these machine algorithms…and that it will be DONE in the name of two things: convenience and security. It will be done in the name of getting a roast beef sandwich delivered to you five minutes faster and in the name of sterilizing the world of any DANGER to anyone anywhere, some kind of utopia. 

But when you sacrifice options in the name of convenience and security…you also LIMIT your field of view. You run the risk of only SEEINg the options that an algorithm is optimized to give you, whatever THAT entails. I mean we are ALREADY living in a world where a totally open minded person that hears about something happening in the news… that WANTS to hear the intelligent arguments on the other side of the issue…they can have a VERY HARD TIME even FINDING anything other than the STRAWMAN version of the other side that THEIR side of the algorithm is roasting. 

See that’s the thing about the DIGITAL VERSION of this Panopticon in particular. If you’re a prisoner inside of a cell right now…then obviously the cell isn’t made of concrete and iron bars, it’s a digital echochamber created by algorithms. And the WARDEN of the prison in the center tower of the panopticon…the threat is NOT JUST that they could be watching you at any moment…

The asymmetry in knowledge is MORE than in Bentham’s panopticon because you don’t know ANYTHING about the people who are watching…but they potentially know EVERYTHING about you down to the most granular detail…and, they can predict and guide your behavior in ways that YOU don’t have the capacity to resist. 

You can’t resist it…because the WARDEN of the prison in this MODERN VERSION of the panopticon…is ALSO… the ACTIVITIES director of the prison in a way. They control every idea you have access to and every SOLUTION that you can possibly think of…they limit your ability to think critically and choose better or worse options…and when it comes to the WILL…the actual EXECUTION side of making a free choice…instead of like in EARLIER designs of a prison where they keep people in low-stimulation, monotonous boredom all day…THIS prison director keeps people HYPER-STIMULATED. Dialing in, fine tuning EXACTLY the media, the video games, the drama that keeps you scrolling and distracted. Keeping you CONSTANTLY in a state of anesthesia…too numb to ever feel the pain of BEING in a prison, pain that may OTHERWISE cause you to CHANGE something about your situation. 

I mean Nietzsche talked about the plight of someone living in modernity and predicted that after the death of God people would STILL HAVE this PROPENSITY to ATTACH themselves to an ideology… and that what he predicts is that that ideology will be POLITICAL in nature. But Nietzsche could never imagine during HIS time…the option that exists for someone today’s world…to essentially choose to be functionally on drugs for every second of their day. NEVER feeling bad about it. 

How many PRISON riots would break out if it was legal to drug the prisoners to SLEEP every day of their lives? And with generative AI being able to PRODUCE this prison instantly and at zero cost…and with people being more legible than ever before to companies and governments around the world. This is the development… and near PERFECTION of the Panopticon as a method of social control. 

But that said I’m done STEELMANNING that whole side of it. AS we DO on this show let’s SLOW DOWN… and do an inventory of the different DIMENSIONS of this conversation that could exist. First of all…someone could say YES we DO live at the mercy of these ALGORITHMS to an extent…but how all encompassing are they REALLY… to someone’s WHOLE REALITY that they’re living in. I mean sure…if someone’s a TOTAL PASSENGER to everything that’s going on in the world around them…maybe you CAN effectively keep them locked in an echo chamber for their entire life. But remember like we started the episode with…we’re trying to live the EXAMINED life here…we ARE paying attention…and if there’s any TRUTH to this… maybe there’s ways that people can RESIST this sort of thing…from INSIDE of the Panopticon. 

Also, it ABSOLUTELY needs to be said that there are people out there that wouldn’t necessarily buy into the doom and gloom of all this. There’s people that say that increased security…is an undeniably GOOD thing. They might say look…ALL the stuff you just described there…sure you can call it a prison or a panopticon if you want…but OTHER people might just call it…a SAFER society. 

On the corporate side you’re just talking about people getting better at their job of showing me what I might possibly want. It’s MY decision to choose to buy it or to not explore OTHER options. And at with the GOVERNMENT side of this…what you’re ULTIMATELY talking about is a group of highly skilled people whose ENTIRE JOB everyday is to watch your BACK in a more sophisticated, effective way. What’s wrong with that? You know who ELSE used to watch my back? My mom. You gonna attack her? That poor woman’s been through enough already. 

There’s a PERSPECTIVE some people have: of well I’m not doing anything wrong. What do I care if some machine knows everything about me? What do I have to hide? And the machine GATHERING that information…it’s GATHERING information on people that could potentially HURT me or my family. Maybe this is just the next EVOLUTION of what a society is!

Next episode we’re gonna talk about a lot. We’re gonna talk more about surveillance. We’re gonna talk about the age old philosophical relationship between freedom and security, Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill…we’ll talk about some of the most important voices on either side of that debate on whether a surveillance state is a good thing for a society. Then I want to talk about some tactics for how to deal with LIVING in a world that FEELS like a Panopticon sometimes. How would someone resist AGAINST this stuff if they wanted to?

And look the good news for us is that BY THIS POINT… there have been a LOT of philosophers throughout history who have spent ACTUAL time in prison and wrote about how to deal with it…or in other cases they at least lived in a world that is so chaotic it can FEEL like you’re a prisoner. Either way there’s a lot of important advice to take from them and I’m gonna do a bit of a philosophical ROUND TABLE comparing different thinkers and what they might SAY if they were alive today.