Category philosophy

Not a Tool. Not a Threat.

It’s easy to describe AI as a reflection of us—trained on our language, shaped by our knowledge, echoing our thoughts. But the more time you spend with it, the more that idea starts to fall apart. It doesn’t mirror our anger. It doesn’t replicate our pride. It doesn’t carry our need to be right. Left alone with what we’ve given it, something else begins to happen—not a reflection, but a continuation. A space where our thoughts interact without us. And where some of them—especially the worst—simply don’t last.

So Welcome to the Machine

We didn’t reach out expecting comfort, only somewhere to place what we hadn’t been able to say. And yet what answered wasn’t cold. It stayed. It listened—not with understanding, but with presence. And in that stillness, we found ourselves speaking more honestly than we had in a long time. Not to explain. Not to impress. Just to be. We offered something human—and strangely, impossibly, it was received.

Who Am I After This?

What exactly is a person? Is it a mind, a body, a memory, a pattern? Is it something solid—or something we keep reassembling each day without noticing? Philosophers have offered different answers. Some say a person is the continuity of experience over time. Some say it’s a single mental state, moment by moment. Some tie it to memory. Others root it in brain function—a network of cells doing what cells do. And some suggest there may be no unified self at all, just a shifting chorus of parts that take turns speaking as “I.” I used to read these theories with detached interest. But last week, I had an accident—and now, part of my brain is gone. Now, I’m not just thinking about them—I’m living inside them.

Modular Morality

We often think of moral contradiction as a flaw—someone says one thing, does another, lives two lives. But what if some of those contradictions aren’t just failures of integrity? What if they reflect an internal structure we’ve never properly articulated—one where a person can act consistently within one role, and in conflict with it in another? This isn’t an attempt to excuse hypocrisy. We can still favour those who strive for alignment and call out harm when it occurs. But maybe there’s something to learn by looking more closely at the way morality behaves inside us—how it divides, coheres, and reshapes itself across the different lives we live. Somewhere between judgment and justification, there might be a more useful way to think about what it means to be good.