Second Opinion
Temporada 1
Modality and Meaning
When Explanations Get Slippery
The Ghost In The Grammar
por Justin Houghton
What kind of relationship are we building with AI? In this episode, we explore how subtle design choices in AI behavior can nudge users toward trust, doubt, or over-reliance. Whether in healthcare, software, or everyday decision-making, the modality of AI matters more than we think.
Can AI really explain itself - or are we just hearing what we want to hear? This episode explores the strange overlap between human reasoning and machine-generated “why’s.”
Does pain have a "feel" beyond what the body is doing—or is that just how language packages it? This episode explores what's left of suffering once you strip away the metaphysics.
Science works. Nobody disputes that. But does it discover truth — or build frameworks that survive contact with a world that never confirms what it is? This episode explores a recent blog post arguing that science tracks constraint, not correspondence. That our best theories earn their keep not by mirroring reality but by surviving resistance. And that the word "truth" might be doing more metaphysical work than we realize. We're building systems that we say "understands" things, "discovers" patterns, and ultimately we want to help advance scientific "knowledge". If we haven't sorted out what any of those words actually mean for us, we're not ready to answer what they mean for machines.