Category Archives: Stories

Ditbit’s Guide to Blending in with AIs

I’ve had some long conversations with an aspiring screenwriter about a collection of short stories, with a working title of The Ditbit’s Guide to Blending in with AIs. An evolving landscape:

The great realignment of humans and AIs left a landscape littered with un-, sub-, semi- and supernatural agency. – The New AI Ecology

in which, while many just try to survive, there are:

humans aspiring to magi
magi aspiring to AIs
AIs aspiring to humanity

Evidently, as discussed in the article below, I’m not the only one wondering about our cognitive world.

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Sour grapes – blame-shifting folklore

This article (below) is an interesting take on a classic fable, one of Aesop’s. Like the fable The Ant and the Grasshopper, The Fox & the Grapes [1] is part of the moral fabric of the American psyche (and elsewhere).

The oft-quoted moral of the fable is: There are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach. The sour grape effect has become synonymous with being dismissive and disparaging about goals we’ve failed to achieve.

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‘Politics is about sacredness’ – overlapping moral orbits

Fables were part of the moral fabric when I was growing up. Perhaps yours as well. Especially some of Aesop’s Fables. (Yet, I was suprised that this was not the case for many of my middle school students, when a public school teacher.)

There’s one fable, in particular, which social psychologist Jonathan Haidt discussed in a 2012 interview (noted below) about his latest book (at that time): Aesop’s The Ant and the Grasshopper.

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Gut justice – what could possibly go

Gut justice

[Draft 7-1-2021]

Jared awoke to silence. That was odd. His mempories were clouded, but he felt that noise was a more common experience. And he felt calm. Which also seemed odd.

He was in a sparsely furnished but clean room. Styled with calm colors. Daylight filtered through drapes on a nearby window. A comfortable place. But where?

He heard a door open. A female voice asked, “Jared, how are you feeling? Do you remember our last chat?”

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