Dr. Hollis Robbins Leads a Group Discussion on Sam Bankman-Fried and The Emperor's New Clothes

We also discussed the Apple TV show "Severance", the terrifying return to the sacred, and the role mimesis plays in preventing anyone from calling a spade a spade.

The Anti-Mimetic Salon on Thursday, November 17, 2023, featured Dr. Hollis Robbins, Dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Utah and an eminent scholar of nineteenth-century American and African American literature, newspapers, film, and poetry. I was lucky to have had the opportunity to connect with Dr. Robbins in early 2021, before Wanting went to print. She was influential in helping shape my approach to public engagement.

In this week’s Salon, a small group of us gathered on Zoom to discuss Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in light of the recent scandal (and cult) of Sam Bankman-Fried, and much more—including a paper, “Satanas Ex Machina: Chance as a Value for Artificial Intelligence”, by Alexei Grinbaum, which implicitly applies some of Girard’s ideas to the problem of technological transparency. The audio of our conversation is below, for paying subscribers. Enjoy.