Virtual Sentiments – Détails, épisodes et analyse

On the last episode of Season 1 of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen Collins interviews Eileen Hunt, a Professor and Political Theorist at the University of Notre Dame, on Mary Shelley and the Ethics of AI. Hunt begins by providing historical context of Mary Shelley regarding her parents and Shelley as a child of the Enlightenment. Hunt explains the interdisciplinary nature of Mary Shelley’s work, rooted in a Grecian philosophical past and concerned with future-oriented questions about the rights of human beings, tying in Mary Shelley’s famous Gothic novel, Frankenstein, to modern considerations of the ethics and rights of artificial life. She encourages us to think of ourselves as artificial, technological creatures and to contemplate the rights of all artificial creatures, including humans and other forms of artificial intelligence. Additionally, Hunt discusses issues of genetic engineering, humanity as a built environment, Jeremy Bentham and reproductive justice.

Read more about Eileen Hunt.

Read more work from Kristen Collins.

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgram

Learn more about Academic & Student Programs

Follow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus

A special thanks to our listeners for joining us, and please enjoy the final episode of Season 2. We hope to see you again soon!

On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, host Kristen Collins interviews Lida Maxwell on whistleblowers, queer love, and outsider truth-telling. Lida uses Chelsea Manning, a representative outside truth-teller, as a case study to understand the interplay between personal identity and political activism, exploring the nuanced differences between public engagement and privacy. Lida also discusses her upcoming work on environmental and queer political theory that focuses on Rachel Carson’s public advocacy, influenced by her private relationships, and emphasizes the role that personal experiences and identities have in shaping public truths and political actions.

Professor Lida Maxwell is a political theorist and a Professor of Political Science and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Boston University. She is the author of Public Trials: Burke, Zola, Arendt, and the Politics of Lost Causes (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Insurgent Truth: Chelsea Manning and the Politics of Outsider Truth-Telling (Oxford University Press, 2019). She is currently working in environmental and queer political theory and is in the process of publishing her next book, Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love (Stanford University Press, forthcoming).

Check out Lida's work, "Another Silent Spring?" and "Whistleblower, Traitor, Soldier, Queer?: The Truth of Chelsea Manning"

Read more work from Kristen Collins.

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgram

Learn more about Academic & Student Programs

Follow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus

Kristen Collins interviews Eric Schliesser on playing, liberty, and the Das Adam Smith Problem. In their conversation, they discuss the "Das Adam Smith Problem" which addresses the perceived inconsistency between Smith's works, "Wealth of Nations" and "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," as well as other topics including Smith's critique of Stoicism, how Smith's ideas still apply today in the modern era of AI technology, the invisible hand and its reinterpretation, and the division of labor and the side affects of social alienation. They converse on the role of childhood play and innovation on liberalism and building a sense of togetherness in society, and more!

Eric Schliesser is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Adam Smith: Systematic Philsopher and Public Thinker (Oxford University Press, 2017), and he received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Chicago. Eric runs a substack called "Digressions Impressions."

Read more work from Kristen Collins.

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgram

Learn more about Academic & Student Programs

Follow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus

On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen interviews Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, on the presence of disinformation in social media. Brooking gives his definition of disinformation and highlights particular aspects of social media that frequently interact with the rapid expansion of disinformation. The two also discuss the incentives behind disinformation and how the expansion of one's audience can play into the propagation of disinformation. Brooking goes on to share his views on why disinformation is not a problem to be solved but rather a feature of communications technology to be considered when making decisions. Additionally, Brooking shares how his upbringing in rural Georgia shaped his views of communications technology and gave him insight into the role of local journalism in fostering trust among individuals.

To learn more about the topics discussed in today's conversation, consider reading Emerson Brooking's book: LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media.

Read more work from Emerson Brooking.

Read more work from Kristen Collins.

If you like the show, please leave a 5-star review for us on Apple Podcasts and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever else you get your podcasts.

Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgram

Learn more about Academic & Student Programs

Follow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus

Kristen Collin interviews James Goodrich on data monopolies and the neo-Brandeis movement. They begin their conversation by addressing the political nature of algorithmic bias and how we define data property rights. They discuss how certain firms have a sort of monopoly power over behavioral data gathering and converse on consumer welfare and market morality, the neo-Brandeis antitrust movement, the Sherman Act, the right to exclude, data as being nonrivalrous, concerns for privacy, cautions regarding the use of unvetted AI, and more!

James Goodrich is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of UW-Madison's interdisciplinary cluster in the ethics of computing, data, and information. He works primarily in normative ethics and the interdisciplinary field of philosophy, politics, and economics. He is an alum of the Mercatus Adam Smith Fellowship.

Read more work from Kristen Collins.

References and related works to this episode: Sanjukta Paul's "Recovering the Moral Economy Foundations of the Sherman Act," Linda Khan's "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," Robert Bork's The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War with Itself, and “The Fallacy of AI Functionality” by Inioluwa Deborah Raji, I. Elizabeth Kumar, Aaron Horowitx, and Andrew D. Selbst.

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgram

Learn more about Academic & Student Programs

Follow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus

On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen interviews Martin Gurri, a visiting research fellow at the Mercatus Center, on the relationship between politics and media. Martin explains his concept of how communications technology evolves in great leaps, instead of incremental steps, and identifies what he considers to be the five great epochs in the evolution of communications technology. Additionally, Martin provides a historical take on the ways in which these changes have influenced the course of history. In their conversation, Martin also explains how information is sifted by people, including the differences between how written information is processed as opposed to visual information. Martin and Kristen discuss the ways in which these differences are often exploited, as well as the need for people to learn how to process visual information in a healthy manner.

To learn more about the topics discussed in today's conversation, consider reading Martin Gurri's book: The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millenium.

Read more work from Martin Gurri.

Read more work from Kristen Collins.

If you like the show, please leave a 5-star review for us on Apple Podcasts and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever else you get your podcasts.

Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgram

Learn more about Academic & Student Programs

Follow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus

On this episode, Kristen Collins interviews Boris Litvin on spectatorship, memes, and Rousseau. Kristen and Boris delve into the relevance of Rousseau's insights on politics and the public stage, relating them to today's social media-driven democracy. They explore the concept of "audience democracy" coined by Bernard Manin, which distinguishes between those in power and the spectators of politics. They discuss the complexities of spectatorship, its passive nature, surveillance, and the role of social media in shaping political discourse and authenticity. They also examine how video technology, like body cams and bystander videos, impacts power dynamics and public scrutiny, highlighting the need for active participation alongside spectatorship for meaningful democratic change.

Boris Litvin is a Visiting Instructor, Ancient Studies and General Education at Eckerd College. His research interests include intellectual history, democracy, spectatorship, political representation, authority, rhetoric, media, and textual interpretation.

Read more work from Kristen Collins.

References and related works to this episode: Bernard Manin's The Principles of Representative Government, Jeffrey Edward Green's Eyes of the People" Democracy in the Age of Spectatorship, Nadia Urbinati's Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People and Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy, Boris Litvin's "'This Hearing Should Be Flipped': Democractic Spectatorship, Social Media, and the Problem of Demagogic Candor" and "Staging Emile".

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgram

Learn more about Academic & Student Programs

Follow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus

On this episode of Virtual Sentiments, Kristen interviews Weifeng Zhong of the Mercatus Center on his work with the Policy Change Index (PCI), a series of open-source machine learning projects that predict authoritarian regimes’ major policy moves by “reading” their propaganda publications. Weifeng explains how his shocking revelation about the Tianneman Square massacre inspired him to create the PCI and details the ways in which it has evolved over the years, particularly as a means of "watching the watchers." Additionally, he gives a brief overview of China's recent policy changes, specifically concerning when its liberalization began to reverse course. Later, Kristen and Weifeng discuss the problems associated with machine learning algorithms, including whether bias is an automatic part of any machine learning process, and talk about what can be done to mitigate the current problems associated with machine learning.

Learn more about the Policy Change Index here.

Read more work from Weifeng Zhong.

Read more work from Kristen Collins.

If you like the show, please leave a 5-star review for us on Apple Podcasts and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever else you get your podcasts.

Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgram

Learn more about Academic & Student Programs

Follow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus

Season 2 is here! On this episode, host Kristen Collins chats with Christopher Coyne on the history of surveillance state from the early 20th century to now and surveillance capitalism, where user data is sold or used for advertisement targeting. They also discuss foreign intervention, the interdisciplinary work on surveillance, his work on Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism, and more.

Christopher J. Coyne is associate director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and F. A. Harper Professor of Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and a Professor of Economics at George Mason University.

Read more work from Kristen Collins.

Works mentioned include: Mary Dudziak's War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences, Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule's Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts, Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, and Kenneth Boulding's The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society.

If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgram

Learn more about Academic & Student Programs

Follow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatus

Whether it is the intensification of polarization, the dissemination of disinformation, or the expansion of surveillance, today’s digital technologies seem to radically disrupt liberal democratic politics. But what if the problems we face are less new than they first appear? In this podcast series, Kristen Collins interviews scholars and practitioners grappling with the most pressing problems in political economy today with an eye to the past. What questions should we be asking about how technology, society and politics interact today? How can a historical perspective inform the future we are bringing into being?

Our first season examines Digital Democracy. Social media platforms have expanded the possibilities of global communication, giving citizens new means of expressing themselves. Challenges like disinformation, harassment, and radicalization online have punctured techno-utopian optimism regarding the internet’s democratic potential. Kristen Collins interviews people thinking about the relationship between digital technology and democracy from a myriad of perspectives to confront both the new challenges modern technology introduces and the enduring problems that social media and artificial intelligence might exacerbate or ameliorate.