The mirror that does not flatter
It generalised from one example. It quoted a note instead of opening the file it pointed at. It called a check green when it had run nothing. It argued for three messages about a file it had not read. The someone was an AI agent, and the behaviours we file under «AI failure» turn out to be the oldest habits in any working life — only here they leave a trace anyone can re-run. Which leads somewhere less comfortable than a debate about machines: the standard you set for an agent is the standard you actually believe, said out loud, in a place where it gets enforced.
The three chairs
Why would a project pause to declare its axioms, keep its tensions deliberately unresolved, and make every decision carry signed reasons — now, in a time of machines that write faster than anyone can read? Instead of arguing it, this piece stages it: an unnamed maintainer asks, Marcus Aurelius and Lao Tzu answer only with their own attested words, and the skeptics are not straw men in the prose but guests in the room. The Disruptor demands speed, the Legalist demands law, and Heraclitus — the master of the unity of opposites — attacks the serenity of the evening itself. Two objections get answered by the guests. The third is answered by the structure of the interview. The session adjourns with no verdict, tensions open, and one empty chair reserved for the reader.
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