Tantalus was a king, and a son of Zeus, and he was invited to eat at the table of the gods, a rare honor. To test whether they were truly all-knowing, he killed his own son, cooked him, and served the body to them as a stew. They knew. For that, Tantalus was sent down to Tartarus, a place Homer describes as lying as far beneath Hades as heaven lies above the earth. A bunker underneath hell. There he stands forever in a pool of cool water, under a tree heavy with fruit. When he stoops to drink, the water drains away. When he reaches up, the branches lift out of reach. Eternal hunger, for the man who fed the gods his child.
It’s where we get the word tantalize.
That’s where we begin. Because this is the episode that asks a question we’ve been circling all season without saying out loud: what if the reaching is the problem? What if the morally correct thing to do is simply wind the whole operation down?
In the ninth episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, we sit with the most provocative idea we’ve encountered yet: that existence itself is a harm, and that the right response is not to build a successor, but to stop. Philosopher David Benatar, the world’s leading anti-natalist and author of Better Never to Have Been, makes his case with the cold precision of the analytic tradition: that there is a fundamental asymmetry between pleasure and suffering, that a person who is glad to be alive may simply be exhibiting an adaptive preference, and that having children to stave off the end is what he calls a procreational Ponzi scheme. David also, thoughtfully, sends a helpful book to Sean’s mother who is struggling to deal with her husband’s progressing Parkinson’s Disease.
Philosopher Nolen Gertz, author of Nihilism and Technology, then clarifies what nihilism actually is: not believing life is meaningless, but living life meaninglessly — and he traces a straight line from heaven to the cloud, arguing that Silicon Valley is still doing philosophy from the 1600s. Émile Torres returns to separate two kinds of pro-extinctionism that are quietly at war with each other, and to explain why the people building our successors and the people who want us to have none may be closer than either would admit.
Also with us: Dr. Michael Ferguson of the Harvard Neurospirituality Lab on what meaning looks like in the brain; Dr. Joel Gold on minds as meaning-making machines and the man who plants a tree whose shade he’ll never sit in; psychoanalyst Dr. Amy Levy, who thinks we’re complex rather than bad, and that we deserve to keep on keeping on; and Ian Gold, who happens to know David Benatar personally, and who says he hopes that on most days, he isn’t right.
Plus Friedrich Nietzsche, the accidental face of nihilism, who despised it, and discussing the possibility that the singularity has already quietly begun.
Tantalus is usually read as a story about appetite. But the water and the fruit were never really the punishment. The punishment was that he kept reaching. The question this episode leaves you with is whether that’s a curse, or the only thing we’ve got.
The Punishment of Tantalus is the ninth episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us, or something that’s already happening inside us.
We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com
NEW: Our full long-form expert interviews are now available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with Joel and Ian Gold, Émile Torres, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia
A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production
Agoric Media
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Wondermind
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Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady
https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/
https://seankingogrady.substack.com/
Guests:
David Benatar — Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Cape Town / Author, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence — https://amzn.to/3TqY1cz
Nolen Gertz — Associate Professor of Applied Philosophy, University of Twente / Author, Nihilism and Technology — https://amzn.to/4yVzNaq
Émile Torres — Philosopher - https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/
Dr. Michael Ferguson — Instructor in Neurology, Harvard Medical School / Director, Neurospirituality Research Lab — https://neuromichael.com/
Dr. Joel Gold — Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, NYU / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U
Ian Gold — Professor of Philosophy & Psychiatry, McGill University / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U
Dr. Amy Levy — Psychoanalyst / Co-Chair, American Psychoanalytic Association’s Council on Artificial Intelligence / Author - The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive - https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5
Other works and things mentioned:
The Myth of Tantalus — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalus
The Truman Show delusion — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Show_delusion
The Truman Show (1998) — https://amzn.to/3TAtnxr
David Benatar (ed.) — Living With Adversity — https://amzn.to/3S9JbXz
Friedrich Nietzsche — Thus Spoke Zarathustra (the Prologue, quoted in the episode) — https://amzn.to/4fBRh4e
Friedrich Nietzsche — The Gay Science (“God is dead — and we have killed him”) — https://amzn.to/457fEkg
René Descartes — Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) and mind-body dualism — https://amzn.to/4pZNDoi
The Epic of Gilgamesh — https://amzn.to/4wySgIm
The philosopher’s stone and the alchemists — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher%27s_stone
Dan Faggella — “The Worthy Successor” — https://danfaggella.com/successor/
Émile Torres & Timnit Gebru — “The TESCREAL Bundle” (First Monday) — https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13636
Benjamin Labatut — The MANIAC and When We Cease to Understand the World (recommended by a listener) — https://amzn.to/4z5jQPh and https://amzn.to/4wJlVyK
The Big Lebowski (1998) — “They were nihilists, man” — https://amzn.to/4fSCMYu
The Dark Knight (2008) — “Some men just want to watch the world burn” — https://amzn.to/4fTzlkk
Little Miss Sunshine (2006) — the vow of silence for Friedrich Nietzsche — https://amzn.to/4w5OyVy
Sam Altman on the singularity — https://youtu.be/Vv3CEAS_w34?si=du78sKE-PvOlKFE0&t=1006
Elon Musk interview with the editor of The Economist — https://youtube.com/shorts/8YEdm-ZTgT4?si=cOCynfLQ5yBdPspl
Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307
This episode was made by:
Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami
Produced by: Jesse Ford
Editor: David Justin Martin
Original Music: Shane Patrick Ford
Sound Mix: Mike Regan
Graphics: Semi:Formal
Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR
Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams, Shreya Sharma)
Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright
Additional Sound and Camera: Brandon Cruz, Brooklyn Podcast Studio, Archetype Studios, Montreal
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