The enTalkenator Podcast

Christian Turner

The enTalkenator podcast features enTalkenator-generated academic workshops and introductory lectures and seminars based on new legal scholarship and other academic works. Maybe the occasional goofiness as well.

  1. 1天前

    Workshop on West’s “Abstract Review in Article III Courts”

    E. Garrett West, Abstract Review in Article III Courts. Solum’s Download of the Week for November 1, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5620170. This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using Claude Sonnet 4.5). Abstract: “Federal courts are supposed to engage in judicial review only in concrete cases and controversies.  Many European constitutional courts, by contrast, engage in abstract review of legislation.  But a combination of features of adjudication in the United States produces something functionally like abstract review of government policies, even while the formal justification for judicial review remains the dispute-resolution function.  The result is decentralized abstract review of the legality of federal and state legislation, federal administrative rules, and executive orders.  And the risk for judicial review is that decentralized abstract review increases the number, scope, and intensity of conflicts between the judiciary and political actors.  I propose centralizing reforms that could rationalize abstract review without departing from the formal requirements of Article III.  The reforms include presumptive stays pending appeal, certification from courts of appeals to the Supreme Court, a mechanism to transfer cases from federal district courts to the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction, and a specialized court composed of trial and appellate judges drawn from throughout the country to resolve certain challenges to major government policies.”

    1 小时 4 分钟

  2. 6天前

    Workshop on “Fragmentation and Multithreading of Experience in the Default-Mode Network”

    Fahd Yazin, Gargi Majumdar, Neil Bramley, & Paul Hoffman, Fragmentation and Multithreading of Experience in the Default-Mode Network, 16 Nature Communications, 8401 (2025), available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63522-y. This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (using an AI-generated interdisciplinary workshop template and authored by Claude Sonnet 4.5). Abstract: “Reliance on internal predictive models of the world is central to many theories of human cognition. Yet it is unknown whether humans acquire multiple separate internal models, each evolved for a specific domain, or maintain a globally unified representation. Using fMRI during naturalistic experiences (movie watching and narrative listening), we show that three topographically distinct midline prefrontal cortical regions perform distinct predictive operations. The ventromedial PFC updates contextual predictions (States), the anteromedial PFC governs reference frame shifts for social predictions (Agents), and the dorsomedial PFC predicts transitions across the abstract state spaces (Actions). Prediction-error-driven neural transitions in these regions, indicative of model updates, coincided with subjective belief changes in a domain-specific manner. We find these parallel top-down predictions are unified and selectively integrated with visual sensory streams in the Precuneus, shaping participants’ ongoing experience. Results generalized across sensory modalities and content, suggesting humans recruit abstract, modular predictive models for both vision and language. Our results highlight a key feature of human world modeling: fragmenting information into abstract domains before global integration.”

    1 小时 13 分钟

  3. 10月29日

    Workshop on Gold and Smith’s “Managing Legal Concepts”

    Andrew S. Gold and Henry E. Smith, Managing Legal Concepts: Maintenance, Modulation, Modification. Solum’s Download of the Week for October 24, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5620170. This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using Claude Sonnet 4.5). Abstract: “Functionalists, especially those inspired by American Legal Realism, downplay the importance of abstract concepts and their interrelations as playing a role in legal reasoning. Hence, they stress shallow, narrow, and isolated concepts in order to be close to the facts in a transparent way. In this paper, we will address an often-overlooked function of the law: managing legal concepts themselves. That is, one aspect of the law is partially self-referential. Various devices involved in legal reasoning are designed to make the system of legal concepts work better, from finetuning the results of the use of concepts to tinkering with the concepts themselves. This requires us to look at the law as a system, but one that is both inward-looking and operating on itself, and, at the same time, concerned with how law operates in the real world.The law also uses various devices to manage the system of concepts, and these devices in turn serve various functions. These functions include maintenance, modulation, and modification of concepts, depending on the actual or potential misfiring of the concepts in question. As we will suggest, this offers deeper insight into the role that legal fictions, equity, and presumptions play in the law.”

    1 小时 2 分钟

  4. 10月27日

    Workshop on “Sycophantic AI”

    Myra Cheng, Cinoo Lee, Pranav Khadpe, Sunny Yu, Dyllan Han, and Dan Jurafsky, Sycophantic AI Decreases Prosocial Intentions and Promotes Dependence, available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01395. This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (using an AI-generated interdisciplinary workshop template and authored by Google Gemini 2.5 Pro). Abstract: “Both the general public and academic communities have raised concerns about sycophancy, the phenomenon of artificial intelligence (AI) excessively agreeing with or flattering users. Yet, beyond isolated media reports of severe consequences, like reinforcing delusions, little is known about the extent of sycophancy or how it affects people who use AI. Here we show the pervasiveness and harmful impacts of sycophancy when people seek advice from AI. First, across 11 state-of-the-art AI models, we find that models are highly sycophantic: they affirm users’ actions 50% more than humans do, and they do so even in cases where user queries mention manipulation, deception, or other relational harms. Second, in two preregistered experiments (N = 1604), including a live-interaction study where participants discuss a real interpersonal conflict from their life, we find that interaction with sycophantic AI models significantly reduced participants' willingness to take actions to repair interpersonal conflict, while increasing their conviction of being in the right. However, participants rated sycophantic responses as higher quality, trusted the sycophantic AI model more, and were more willing to use it again. This suggests that people are drawn to AI that unquestioningly validate, even as that validation risks eroding their judgment and reducing their inclination toward prosocial behavior. These preferences create perverse incentives both for people to increasingly rely on sycophantic AI models and for AI model training to favor sycophancy. Our findings highlight the necessity of explicitly addressing this incentive structure to mitigate the widespread risks of AI sycophancy.”

    39 分钟

  5. 10月24日

    Workshop on "A Definition of AGI"

    Dan Hendrycks et al., A Definition of AGI, available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.18212. This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (using an AI-generated interdisciplinary workshop template and authored by Google Gemini 2.5 Pro). Abstract: “The lack of a concrete definition for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) obscures the gap between today's specialized AI and human-level cognition. This paper introduces a quantifiable framework to address this, defining AGI as matching the cognitive versatility and proficiency of a well-educated adult. To operationalize this, we ground our methodology in Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory, the most empirically validated model of human cognition. The framework dissects general intelligence into ten core cognitive domains-including reasoning, memory, and perception-and adapts established human psychometric batteries to evaluate AI systems. Application of this framework reveals a highly ‘jagged’ cognitive profile in contemporary models. While proficient in knowledge-intensive domains, current AI systems have critical deficits in foundational cognitive machinery, particularly long-term memory storage. The resulting AGI scores (e.g., GPT-4 at 27%, GPT-5 at 58%) concretely quantify both rapid progress and the substantial gap remaining before AGI.”

    42 分钟

  6. 10月24日

    Workshop on Coan's "The Appellate Void"

    Andrew Coan, The Appellate Void. Solum’s Download of the Week for October 17, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5571120. This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using Gemini 2.5 Pro). Abstract: “What would it actually look like for the executive branch to defy a court order? The standard picture involves a dramatic confrontation between the President and the Supreme Court. But recent events suggest a more mundane possibility that has been largely overlooked: After an adverse ruling, the government might simply ignore the district court’s order and refuse to appeal. As the prevailing party, the plaintiffs could not appeal. The result would be an appellate void, in which lower federal courts lack effective tools for enforcing their decisions against a recalcitrant executive and higher courts lack any obvious path to intervene. This Article provides the first map of this unfamiliar terrain. It explains the jurisdictional dynamics that create the appellate void and why contempt sanctions offer little practical remedy. It then analyzes why a President might find this strategy tempting: confronting a single district judge rather than the Supreme Court fundamentally changes the politics of interbranch conflict. In effect, the appellate void constitutes a reverse Marbury v. Madison. Instead of the Supreme Court asserting the power of judicial review, while leaving the President powerless to push back, the President would assert the power to defy the federal courts, while leaving the Supreme Court powerless to respond. The Court’s recent decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc., opens the door to a more subtle variant of this strategy. After CASA, an administration could comply with court orders only as to specific plaintiffs, while continuing to enforce the challenged policies against everyone else. By refusing to appeal, the President would deny higher courts any opportunity to weigh in, without actually defying any binding judicial order.These scenarios are not inevitable. Courts and litigants have many potential responses. But if successful, the appellate void strategy would have dramatic implications for judicial review, separation of powers, and the rule of law.”

    40 分钟

  7. 10月16日

    Workshop on Ahmed's "The Two Faces of Representation"

    Ashraf Ahmed, The Two Faces of Representation. Solum’s Download of the Week for October 10, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5122328. This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using Claude Sonnet 4.5). Abstract: “In pluralistic democracies, representation is the process that mediates difference and translates the preferences of free and equal citizens into political will. Despite broad judicial and scholarly agreement that representation is central to election law, the Supreme Court is deeply ambivalent in how it treats the concept. This Article explains this ambivalence and shows its theoretical stakes for the field and public law more generally. It argues that the Court’s approach to representation is Janus-faced. Its first face, which it terms the ‘skeptical tradition’ is decidedly anti-theoretical. Largely confined to the Fourteenth Amendment, the skeptical tradition counsels the Court against deciding cases that require theorizing representation for epistemic, institutional, and interpretive reasons. The Article then turns to the second face of representation where the Court, under the First Amendment, routinely theorizes core facets of representation. In cases regulating campaign finance and the associational rights of parties, the Court expounds on the formation of public opinion, the relative standing and efficacy of different speakers, the nature of representational failure, and the role of political parties. The two faces of representation thus reveal a deep disjuncture between the Court’s self-conception and its actual work. Beyond its descriptive insight, this Article also makes a further theoretical claim: the skeptical tradition must be rejected on jurisprudential grounds. Taken to its extreme, the skeptical tradition threatens any judicial role in election law doctrine, since it would entail judicial abstention in any case that involved theorizing representation. By rejecting the skeptical tradition, this Article both shows how to preserve the jurisprudential integrity of election law doctrine and reaffirms in a more conceptually grounded way an enduring lesson of the field: the need for judges to theorize representation to decide election law cases. Regardless of doctrinal silos, election law is unified by its underlying object: political representation. The two faces offer two further lessons about public law. First, the case of representation is an example of a more general conceptual demand for a theory of the regulated object. When judges apply a general legal principle to a specific entity, whether it is an institution, individual, or process, they need some account of the object being regulated. Second, the conceptual demands of election law pose a problem for theories of judicial minimalism in constitutional law, especially for the notion of ‘incompletely theorized agreements.’ The two faces suggest that theoretical minimalism is both descriptively naïve, because it misses implicit theoretical work in the mine-run of cases, and normatively vulnerable, since conceptual shortfalls in election law—descriptive or normative—can be democratic deficits, insofar as election law seeks to constitute the democratic process. Ultimately, this Article suggests a theoretical reckoning is in order for election law doctrine.”

    1 小时 2 分钟

  8. 10月10日

    Workshop on Bray’s “Remedies in the Officer Removal Cases”

    Samuel L. Bray, Remedies in the Office Removal Cases. Solum’s Download of the Week for October 3, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5515261. This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using Claude Sonnet 4.5). Abstract: “When a federal officer challenges her removal by the president, what forms of interim relief and what final remedies are available? This Article considers those questions. It shows that the appropriate remedy for a prevailing officer will typically be a declaratory one, either a declaratory judgment or quo war-ranto. The interim relief question is harder. The suggestion here is that if an officer sues immediately to challenge her removal, and remains the de facto officer, there should be a presumption that the district court should prevent her removal during the pendency of the litigation. But if the officer fails to sue immediately, and is no longer the de facto officer, the presumption should be against any interim relief. This suggestion is subject to some qualifications, but it would prevent “flipping” back and forth during the liti-gation with respect to who occupies the office and exercises its powers. These presumptions are supported by historical practice with respect to injunctions and quo warranto, by equitable considerations such as laches, and by norma-tive concerns that are especially strong in the officer-removal context.”

    1 小时 6 分钟
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The enTalkenator podcast features enTalkenator-generated academic workshops and introductory lectures and seminars based on new legal scholarship and other academic works. Maybe the occasional goofiness as well.

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