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Episodes: 259
Frequency: Weekly
Rating: 4.7/5.0
Estimated listeners: 1k-10k
Gender skew: Male
Location: USA
plasticpills@protonmail.com
For verified host and producer emails, sign up to view.
PlasticPills - Described as a group of PhDs hosting the show and giving irreverent (and unsolicited) takes on critical theory, philosophy, culture, and politics.
Leif Weatherby - Structuralism; Llms Proving Structuralist Linguistics Correct; Saussure
Hubert Dreyfus - AI Skepticism; Heidegger And Merleau-ponty-informed Phenomenology; LLM Era Implications
LLMs prove Structuralism was Correct all Along // 258
July 07, 2026
Join for ad-free and more episodes https://www.patreon.com/plasticpillsThere's only been about a century of structuralism. It had a day, then in the 80s haters celebrated its falloff. But today, the LLMs designed according to the precepts of structuralist linguistics have proven Saussure's intuitions were more accurate than even he could have suspected. We read the argument from Language Machines by Leif Weatherby (https://amzn.to/4bipjYu)
Chinese Room LLM // 257 (preview)
July 02, 2026
This week we evaluate a paper written by a Google DeepMind engineer which, in effect updates the Chinese Room Thought Experiment (Searle, 1980) to modern LLMs.Get this episode and hundreds more https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills
AI Will Fail Because Heidegger // 256
June 29, 2026
Join for ad-free and more episodes https://www.patreon.com/plasticpillsHubert Dreyfus loved recounting how he was maligned for his AI skepticism, which was informed by applications of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and turned out to be correct as of 2007. Is he still correct in the age of LLMs and self-driving cars?Link to article:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370207001452
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