Episode #186 ... Are we heading for a digital prison? - Panopticon (Foucault, Bentham, Cave)

Philosophize This!

Stephen West

Education, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.8 • 16.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today we talk about Jeremy Bentham's concept of the Panopticon. Michel Foucault's comparison to society in 1975. The historical role of intelligence as a justification for dominance. The anatomy of free will, and how a digital world may systematically limit our free will without us knowing it.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is Philosophized This. Thank you for everyone who supports
0:05.2	the show on Patreon. For an ad free version of the show, go to patreon.com slash philosophize
0:09.6	this. Instagram at philosophize this podcast, all one word. So last episode, we ended by talking
0:15.2	about generative AI and the potential impacts it may have on society. How some philosophers think
0:20.0	this could lead to an economic utopia? Others think it could lead to a panopticon. But there had to
0:25.3	have been at least a few you out there that heard the word panopticon. And thought, what a God's name
0:30.4	is that? And there's no doubt somebody out there who know what the panopticon is, who thought,
0:34.8	why would anybody think this world we're heading for is going to be a prison? Well, by the end of
0:38.8	the episode today, I'll try to explain why some philosophers think it's going to go that way.
0:43.4	And I guess I want to start by saying that I realized a good portion of last episode was spent
0:47.0	trying to bring people up to speed on the state of generative AI right now. And I want to double down
0:51.7	and say that I think all that context is necessary to understand the wider angle philosophical
0:56.4	lens that this stuff can be viewed through. As I said towards the end of last episode, I just
1:00.8	think we're something fundamentally different than the medieval peasants that didn't have a hope
1:04.5	in the world of seeing what was coming with the Industrial Revolution. Part of the value of
1:08.7	philosophy and this world that we're living in is that it can help you see the broader historical
1:13.6	trends that you're a part of so that you're not someone who's just a hostage to them. I'm not
1:17.9	trying to say anything too controversial. I'm really just trying to echo the sentiment of
1:20.8	Socrates here that the examined life, you know, continuing to ask better and better questions,
1:26.2	this is something crucial if you want to survive in today's world. And I guess let's continue that
1:30.8	journey here by trying to understand how we fairly random idea from all the way back in the 1780s
1:36.0	actually applies to the world we're living in right now. I'm talking about asking the question,
	...

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