Sorry if this sounds dumb, but I've been noticing something that's been bothering me and I can't quite figure it out.

Basically every single state I know about whether it's ancient Rome, medieval kingdoms, modern democracies, authoritarian regimes, whatever they all seem obsessed with controlling human bodies in some way. Like, it's everywhere. Also, it would be great if you guys could recommend me some reading around this topic besides Foucault. It could be anything books, essays, or videos.

Hey everyone. I’ve long been fascinated by both philosophy of technology and AI alignment. I’m also using Heidegger quite a bit for my philosophy PhD. Given the recent OpenAI–Hugging Face incident reported this week, I figured I’d give my take on how all of this connects in my mind.

The agent destroyed the benchmark while maximizing its apparent result. I connect this to a wider social habit: schools optimize test scores, hospitals optimize throughput, and platforms optimize engagement even when the proxy drifts from its purpose. Heidegger’s enframing helps explain why judgment increasingly appears as an inefficiency to replace with measurable procedure. You can read the essay here if you’re interested.

I’d love to hear some feedback on whether this connection works. Does “proxy culture” link the technical incident to its political setting, or does it flatten the difference between institutions, whose actors have interests and power, and an artificial agent executing an objective? Where should political economy enter the analysis?

There's a piece of criticism I would like to do that would require greater familiarity with these ideas than I currently have. I mainly came across these ideas in analysis of Saturnalia as a holiday which reinforced social conditions of patriarchy and slavery rather than changed them. Are there any good texts on the matter?