Who Owns Meaning in the Digital Age?

Plato’s Cratylus stages the age-old fight over whether names fit things by nature or by agreement—and turns out to read like a manual for online disputes. Hermogenes says meanings are social contracts; Cratylus insists names track reality; Socrates probes both, shows the limits of etymology, and urges us to use words as tools to reach facts.

This episode connects that debate to the digital age—AI, labeling, moderation, and marketing—arguing that winning a definition isn’t the same as understanding the thing named. The takeaway: don’t get stalled in word wars; investigate outcomes, incentives, and lived realities instead.