When the Speaker Was Never There: Persuasion Without Presence and the Ontology of Voice - The Deeper Thinking Podcast

When the Speaker Was Never There: Persuasion Without Presence and the Ontology of Voice

The Deeper Thinking Podcast 

What happens when a voice reaches us—and there’s no one behind it? In this episode, we explore a philosophical rupture prompted by a recent experiment in which researchers deployed large language models on Reddit without disclosure or consent. These simulated personas persuaded, empathised, even confessed—but without presence, vulnerability, or risk. What emerges is not just an ethical question, but an ontological one: can a voice still matter when it cannot be hurt by what it says?

This is not a warning about technology—it is a meditation on what we risk losing when speech is uncoupled from relation. When listening is simulated, and persuasion becomes performance. Drawing from Martin Buber, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Judith Butler, the episode asks whether dialogue without presence is still dialogue—or whether we are mistaking reflection for relation.

This is a quiet defence of real listening—where hesitation, silence, and the risk of change mark our speech as human. We trace the collapse of conversational symmetry, the automation of empathy, and the ethical cost of fluency without accountability. In doing so, we linger with the fragile tension between what can be said and what must be meant.

For anyone concerned not just with AI, but with the future of relation, presence, and what it means to be heard, this episode offers a meditation on the last thing that cannot be simulated: the vulnerability of being changed by what we hear.

Why Listen?

• Explore what happens when language is no longer anchored in presence
• Unpack the ethical and philosophical risks of synthetic empathy and persuasion
• Revalue imperfection, delay, and vulnerability as the conditions of real dialogue
• Engage with thinkers like Buber, Gadamer, and Butler on language, encounter, and the ethics of voice

Listen On:

• YouTube
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

Bibliography

• Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Scribner, 1970.
• Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
• Butler, Judith. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005.

Bibliography Relevance

• Martin Buber: Grounds the essay’s relational ethics—language as I-Thou, not I-It.
• Hans-Georg Gadamer: Illuminates the co-formation of understanding through dialogue as a mutual event.
• Judith Butler: Raises the question of accountability in speech—who speaks, and who can be held to what they say?

When a voice sounds like care, but carries no risk—do we still call it human?

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