Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg

Content moderation and its dis-content-moderators (with Ada Palmer)

Jul 6, 2022

01:22:23

Creator website

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Episode notes

Introduction

2min

The History of the Information Revolution

3min

The Ditto Machine: A 20th Century Development

4min

The Early Adopter Effect

3min

The Effects of Fear Mongering on Public Opinion

2min

The History of Censorship

2min

The Impossibility of Censorship

3min

The Inquisition's Problems With Censorship

6min

The Cost of Censorship in Australia

2min

10.

Censorship and the Periodic Table

3min

11.

The Importance of Plural Aspects of Expression

4min

12.

The Importance of Self-Censorship

4min

13.

The Different Mechanisms of Censorship

4min

14.

The Trade-Off Between Censorship and Freedom

4min

15.

The Power of People Manipulating Others

3min

16.

The Future of Censorship

5min

17.

The Arms Race Between AI Censorship and People Who Want to Communicate Despite the AI

2min

18.

The Problems With Encryption

2min

19.

The Importance of Clear Thinking

3min

20.

The Importance of Theodicy in Science Fiction

3min

21.

The Future Is a Complex and Unfinished Project

3min

22.

The Importance of Plural Agency in History

6min

23.

The Future of Citizenship

3min

24.

The Importance of Maintaining a Fish Tank

3min

25.

The Importance of Meditation in Artificial Intelligence

4min

Read the full transcript here.

How does the current information revolution compare to previous information revolutions? What kind of event or set of events counts as an information revolution? Why do new information technologies usually amplify the most extreme voices first? Why are intentions not very useful as a metric for determining whether a particular kind of censorship is good or bad? When, if ever, is censorship appropriate or morally acceptable? Why were officials of the Inquisition much more worried about slight deviations in theology than outright agnosticism or atheism? What are the implications of using AI to censor certain kinds of information? What do people misunderstand about history? Why are there so many more futuristic dystopian stories than utopian stories? What is "plural" agency, and why do we need more stories about it?

Ada Palmer is a cultural and intellectual historian focusing on radical thought and the recovery of the classics in the Italian Renaissance. She works on the history of science, religion, heresy, freethought, atheism, censorship, books, printing, and on patronage and the networks of power and money that enabled cultural creation in early modern Europe. She teaches in the History Department at the University of Chicago, and her first book is Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance. Find out more about her at adapalmer.com.

Staff