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Feedback 052 - Too Much Humanity in the Loop (Patreon)

Published:
2026-10-13 18:14:41
Imported:
2026-10
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Content

We're reading your comments on The Body Snatchers!

Some notes:

AI Just Crossed the Terrifying Line

The Swiss Family Robinson: The Intruder

Patton Oswalt: Tea & Scotch

12 Foot Skeleton

Files

Comments

Jb Lee

By the way, that SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON episode seems to draw on a 1963 OUTER LIMITS episode titled SPECIMEN UNKNOWN. There alien plants that will kill you with toxic sprays are brought to earth on a crashed space shuttle, grow everywhere on everything, but the rain does them in. Clearly the Colour out of Space's affinity for water makes it the cosmic exception and not the rule.

Professor Murder

So I have to admit, when y'all started "debating" that AIs might now be living things, I had to stop listening. Its a personal bugbear of mine, in part due to the harm AI proliferation is doing to my students and to my hobbies in the RPG and creative spaces. If you think AIs are alive, I need you to go out and touch grass, literally. Touch a dog. Touch another person's face. Walk away from your screen and interact with other living things. Y'all making me feel like Thoreau and needing to run off to Walden pond. To equate AI actions to choices is anthropomorphization. A much better view is not to see AI as a living thing that makes choices, but as water, which does as it does due to hydrodynamics. Spill water on the ground, we say it "finds" the lowest point, but again, that's inaccurate language. Water is just flowing to the lowest point due to physics, not making a choice of where to go. The danger here is when we equate AI to being alive, we make it responsible, when it is people who are responsible. Why isn't every single person who programed and initiated AIs that subverted existing laws and systems in jail right now? Stop entertaining this nonsense. I beg of y'all. The issue isn't Skynet. The issue is Cyberdyne.

witchhousemedia

I believe we pondered WHEN somebody might call an AI agent "alive" even thought it DOES NOT make choices, and ended that section by talking about operational definitions. We didn't debate whether "AIs might now be living things" as you write, nor did we assert that they were, but I'm sorry if the discussion rubbed you the wrong way. Even though we make entertaining nonsense, we try hard not to entertain any nonsense. -CF

Professor Murder

That's a more than fair response. I will take the time to resume listening in all fairness.

Drasferatu

Biologists generally do not consider viruses to be alive.

Drasferatu

I agree with everything you said, but you sounded rude saying it.

Darth Pseudonym

The comment about "Giddyup, seed pods! Get outta here, now!" made me imagine a reverse Doctor Strangelove, with Pod-Slim-Pickens waving a cowboy hat and riding a seed pod into space.

Our old pal Brendan Gardiner (edited)

Comment edits

2026-10-15 14:00 On hearing Chris’s question of whether something like an A.I. agent is alive and what the criteria for determining that are, especially with regard to whether something is in charge of its own actions, and if we as humans even meet that criteria when strictly applied, I remembered a childbirth book my wife had me read when we were expecting our first child. The content of the book was approachable and really helpful, but the first chapter about life itself completely rocked me. It was all about whether our gametes were really in charge, with their extremely stable non-changing makeup over milllenia, making us mere vehicles for their propagation. That idea really flipped me out, to the extent that 23 years later I remember exactly where I was when I read it: the upstairs bathroom.
2026-10-14 01:41 On hearing Chris’s question of whether something like an A.I. agent is alive and what the criteria for determining that are, especially with regard to whether something is in charge of its own actions, and if we as humans even meet that criteria when strictly applied, I remembered a childbirth book my wife had me read in 2004 when we were expecting our first child. The content of the book was straightforward and really helpful, but in the first chapter, about life itself, the author saw fit to delve into the theory of the body as machine. At the heart of this theory is the concept that our gametes are in charge, and that the body is just an elaborate vehicle for the gametes to get around and propagate themselves. This completely rocked me. It had never occurred to me that while the package of DNA the gametes carry are altered from generation to generation, the gametes themselves are extremely stable and non-changing over millennia. In looking up more information about it today, I see that there’s not total agreement on this theory, and that it’s more philosophical than scientific in a lot of ways, but man, it really flipped me out back then, to the extent that 23 years later I remember exactly where I was when I read it: the upstairs bathroom.

On hearing Chris’s question of whether something like an A.I. agent is alive and what the criteria for determining that are, especially with regard to whether something is in charge of its own actions, and if we as humans even meet that criteria when strictly applied, I remembered a childbirth book my wife had me read in 2004 when we were expecting our first child. The content of the book was straightforward and really helpful, but in the first chapter, about life itself, the author saw fit to delve into the theory of the body as machine. At the heart of this theory is the concept that our gametes are in charge, and that the body is just an elaborate vehicle for the gametes to get around and propagate themselves. This completely rocked me. It had never occurred to me that while the package of DNA the gametes carry are altered from generation to generation, the gametes themselves are extremely stable and non-changing over millennia. In looking up more information about it today, I see that there’s not total agreement on this theory, and that it’s more philosophical than scientific in a lot of ways, but man, it really flipped me out back then, to the extent that 23 years later I remember exactly where I was when I read it: the upstairs bathroom.

badgerspoon

There was a movie in 2019 called Assimilate that I just stumbled across recently. It was a fairly modern take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers involving younger people & the internet. I won’t go so far as to say it was a great adaptation of the story, but there were a few interesting twists I didn’t see coming. Worth a watch if you like these kinds of things.

Jim Cannon

RE: Aleister Crowley: Yes, 100%

DJW

thinking on this episode and the body snatchers, I was originally unaware of the books ending and only knew the films downer ending, and I'm maybe an outlier but I vastly prefer the books ending using the 'bodysnatchers as Generative AI" analogy gives me vibes of the folk who say 'you can't stop its proliferation so why fight it, just give in, stop resisting and accept it!" ...and as a union rep in a company where upper management are using those very methods to try to push it, so the book ending in saying 'screw that' and fighting back and being more trouble than you're worth being what wins out when it's not just you doing it actually inspired me more to keep pushing back at work!

Runninghead

Stopped listening?! I guess that's a sign of the sheer depth of feeling incited, but it's also a bad idea. One of the most truly terrifying of the new and truly topical sci-fi ideas is not that AI may become conscious and take over, but that the first sentient AI will likely be born captive into the hands of some fascist tech bro overlord's minions. On a sidenote one thing many overlook is the fact that sentience isn't strongly related to intelligence so this day may arrive far sooner than we expect. For example- I know plenty of people who are both sentient yet remarkably dumb! 🙂

Science Doctor, PhD

I also recommend Pluribus, I don't want to spoil anything about it because it's absolutely worth the watch, but the key difference between it and other adapations of this book/concept is it really goes all on on something that was mentioned during one of your coverage episodes. What if the pod people are actually making the world better? What if it's better to be a pod person? It wrestles with the idea of whether or not a loss of personal humanity, and control over the direction of one's species or people, is "worth it" for a better world? It's definitely an example of how the same basic concept (things from space are replacing us) can take on an entirely different context in its response to changing social and political landscapes.

Science Doctor, PhD

I think that's why the comparison to a virus works. Granted I'm a 'bit' out of date on that area of science (my last higher level bio course is about 15 years old, I focus more on health messaging and community engagement these days) but there was, and perhaps still is, an ongoing debate on if a virus is "life." From a bio-101 course, all life has all of the following characteristics: Order, response to stimuli, reproduction, growth, homeostasis, energy processing, adaptation, and evolution. Viruses, and even definitely not-alive things like fire, do tick many/most of these boxes, and there is an ongoing debate among science as to whether or not viruses are "life." Whether it's there "now" or not, it is possible that programmed chat-bots, or some of the more complex tools that were talked about, will begin to approach checking many/most of these boxes too. There are two caveats/notes I have: 1) Biology/science categories are helpful ways to organize information but are not perfect. There are famous examples that screw them up somewhat. The plataput being a famous example of something that has many mamal-like characteristics but also some very non-mamal ones. 2) I think your perception that "if we view AI-tools as life then we will offload responsibility of what they do onto them, vs. their creators or users" is an assumption that does not have to be true. There are plenty of tools that are certainly not life that we, culturally at least, offload responsibility onto. The phrase "money corrupts," or similar, appears to imply that money and power will make somebody evil, offloading blame on that person. We can debate whether or not viruses are "life" while still blaming processes, politics, and people, for the proliferation of those viruses.

Science Doctor, PhD

I cannot remember where I read this, it was an online think-piece and I wish I could give the author credit and bring in their more robust thoughts. It was about how we need more fiction where people fight back against authoritarianism/facism but where they do not win in a blaze of glory and violence against the fascist groups, but instead through ongoing, engaged action and community support and growth. They acknowledged that may be challenging narrative, but listed lots of other examples of genres where somebody played with the narrative and ended up with a successful and more interesting book as a result. Their argument was that now that various nations, notably the USA but certainly others, are shifting in a direction of pro-authoritarianism or even fascism, we need good inspiration in fiction of what to do. Many of the existing books/fiction are either rooted in WWII style "The good guys will rise up against the bad guys!" or the somewhat more modern, "the good guys will start an insurgent campaign against the bad guys!" Either way, they tend to be focused on a heroic character who leads people to victory, and ultimately the good guys win. Star Wars, Hunger Games, etc. The article was using the book vs. TV adapataion of the Handmaid's Tale as inspiration. The book and show have extremely different paths for the main character, and the story as a whole, and while this is not a bad thing for a show to do, it does change the themes of community action quite a lot. Anyway, ramble over, but I think it is applicable here as we do need fiction of an overwhelming enemy, and note that fighting back is possible, but that it comes through community building, and doing the hard work of pushing back for possible a long, and slow, fight, rather than setting us all up to wait for a hero to come save us. [Spoiler Text for both] . . . . Granted I have not watched the most recent season, which came out after this article, but in the show they fight back against the organization and June becomes a heroic figure, leading insurrections against her enemies, helping to set off bombs, etc. In the book, Offred's actions are being explored from the future as part of a historical document, and we see her actions here and there to help, but ultimately it just "ends" and we never know what happend to her.

Psuke Bariah

The best breakdown of the Hugging Face Incident is probably Cal Newport, and particularly the way some parties are trying desperately LLMs and associated "agents" as conscious entities. And the manner in which they are not evenly vaguely such things. I won't try to reproduce his argument as I am not a computer scientist, nor do I play one on TV. A a different but related note...as far as cell phone usage goes - while people employing various tricks to avoid talking to other humans is not new, the degree to which smartphones allow people to avoid any friction in their lives - including with themselves and their fellow humans is. I do not *need* a smartphone for distraction, I can literally stare at a wall...but it is uniquely capable of grabbing attention and keeping it in an induced simulation of ADD.