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.

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

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