Why We No Longer Know What We Should Do with Jordan Hall, Guy Sengstock, and Christopher Mastropietro
About this episode
The episode explores the implications of technological power in society and the challenges of establishing a shared sense of purpose and morality in the context of artificial intelligence.
What happens when a society possesses extraordinary technological power but lacks a shared sense of what that power is for? John Vervaeke, Jordan Hall, Guy Sengstock, and Christopher Mastropietro reunite for a sustained inquiry into normativity: the structures by which human beings perceive direction, value, responsibility, and the difference between better and worse action. The question becomes urgent in the context of artificial intelligence, where increasingly consequential decisions are being made inside a culture that struggles to articulate a coherent basis for judgment. The conversation begins with Guy's encounters with the AI community and the fear that humanity may soon make decisions it cannot reverse. From there, the group investigates modernity's technological understanding of being, the reduction of creation to artifacts, and the modern self's attachment to sole authorship. John and Jordan propose that meaning is participatory: intelligibility is not manufactured by isolated selves but emerges through shared authorship with other people, traditions, practices, and reality itself. The dialogue then turns toward virtue. If the problem is not simply ignorance but…
More episodes of Dr. John Vervaeke
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