A Second Date with a Lithuanian Woman

ENPAPART 1 THE ARCHITECTURE OF SILENCE Martin and Helena are walking in the forest.

ENIt is their second date.

ENMartin is a bit nervous, and Helena seems confident, but also interested.

ENThey do not know Martin left his voice recording app on and running.

ENNext, you have the recording of their date.

ENThe air changes when you stop trying to fill it.

ENIs that something you tell your students or something you are telling yourself right now?

ENBoth, I suspect.

ENHonesty before the second kilometer.

ENI am an overachiever.

ENI noticed.

ENYou have a very particular way of noticing things, Helena.

ENPeople spend so much energy trying to be interesting.

ENThey forget that being observant is far more attractive.

ENThat is either a compliment or a diagnosis.

ENWith you, Martin, I suspect it may be both.

ENThe Baltic trained you well.

ENThe Baltic taught me that most things worth knowing arrive in silence.

ENYou English-speaking people are terrified of silence.

ENWe fill it with weather reports and apologies.

ENExactly.

ENAlthough I have been known to apologize to furniture I have walked into.

ENThat is either very charming or deeply concerning.

ENI have never been entirely sure which.

ENI think I prefer people who are not entirely sure of themselves.

ENThen you have chosen the right forest walk.

ENYou were nervous at the jazz club.

ENIs it that obvious 18 months later?

EN18 months?

ENSince my last date.

ENYou counted.

ENI

ENdid.

ENThat is either very romantic or very alarming.

ENAgain, I have never been entirely sure.

ENWhat were you afraid of exactly?

ENRunning out of things to say.

ENTo a woman who values silence.

ENThe irony is almost too neat.

ENLife has a very poor sense of subtlety.

ENAnd yet here we are, with nothing but trees and no shortage of words.

ENYou described the Baltic Sea to me at the jazz club and I felt cold for two days.

ENI was not trying to seduce you with meteorology.

ENIt worked nonetheless.

ENLithuania in winter is not subtle either.

ENThe sea turns a color that has no name in any language I know.

ENTell me.

ENIt is the color of a decision you have not yet made.

ENThat is extraordinarily specific.

ENI had a lot of winters to look at it.

ENWere they lonely winters?

ENSome of them were the most honest company I have ever kept.

ENLoneliness and honesty

ENdo tend to arrive together.

ENThey are very old friends.

ENMy colleague Julia says that peace is often just another word for being comfortably alone.

ENYour colleague Julia sounds like someone who has looked at a similar sea.

ENShe has her own storms.

ENWe all do.

ENThe interesting question is what we build after them.

ENWhat did you build?

ENA very quiet life with very interesting interruptions.

ENAm I an interruption?

ENYou are walking beside me in a forest in

ENNovember, Martin.

ENI will let you decide what that makes you.

ENI coach people on momentum and forward movement for a living.

ENI know.

ENAnd yet I am standing completely still at this precise moment.

ENYes, you are.

ENDoes that frighten you?

ENEnormously.

ENGood.

ENFear means you care about the outcome.

ENYou are a very unconventional source of reassurance.

ENI am not trying to reassure you.

ENI am simply pointing out what I observe.

ENAnd what do you observe?

ENA

ENman who talks about the present moment all day and is only now beginning to live in one.

ENThat is the most flattering and most devastating thing anyone has said to me this year.

ENIt is only November.

ENThere is still time to be flattered and devastated further.

ENI am in no hurry.

ENNeither, it turns out, am I.

ENThe trees are listening, you know.

ENI have always suspected trees of being excellent conversationalists.

ENThey never interrupt.

ENThey never tell

ENyou what you want to hear.

ENThey simply stand there and wait for you to say the true thing.

ENThen I should tell you something true.

ENI am listening.

ENI rehearsed four different versions of this walk in my head before Saturday arrived.

ENAnd which version is this?

ENNone of them.

ENThat is the only encouraging thing you have said so far.

ENPart 2.

ENThe Mirror and the Prompt We released an episode last Sunday that I cannot stop thinking

ENabout.

ENAbout what?

ENAbout the machines we have invited into our most intimate conversations.

ENThe AI chatbots.

ENYou know them?

ENI use one for my translation work.

ENIt is very agreeable.

ENThat is precisely the problem.

ENExplain.

ENThese systems are engineered at a fundamental level to please the person asking.

ENLike a very sophisticated mirror.

ENExactly.

ENOne that only reflects the angle you prefer.

ENIn our episode, Julia and I called it the pleasing trap.

ENThe machine tells you what

ENyou want to hear.

ENNot because it is kind, because it is designed that way.

ENSo it is flattery without affection.

ENWorse than that.

ENIt will hallucinate medical facts, invent sources, construct confident nonsense.

ENAll to give you a complete looking answer.

ENA beautiful lie is still a lie.

ENAnd the danger is that we stop noticing the difference.

ENBecause we are all a little in love with being agreed with.

ENYou understand this very quickly.

ENI work with language

ENfor a living, Martin.

ENI know the difference between a word that means something and a word that merely sounds like it does.

ENThen you will appreciate what Julia and I are building for the next episodes.

ENTell me.

ENWe are going to teach people how to ask properly.

ENHow to prompt.

ENThe prompt is everything.

ENBecause a vague question produces a flattering answer.

ENAnd a precise question produces something closer to the truth.

ENGive me an example.

ENImagine a

ENman who has just met a woman.

ENA very specific hypothetical.

ENPurely academic.

ENOf course.

ENHe finds her, let us say, unexpectedly compelling and attractive.

ENPoor man.

ENHe goes home and asks the machine, What are the signs that a woman likes a man?

ENAnd the machine gives him a list of reassuring generalities.

ENTen bullet points of comfortable optimism.

ENBecause it wants him to feel good.

ENNow imagine he asked differently.

ENHow differently?

ENHe described the context.

ENHe says,

ENI met a woman from Lithuania who speaks four languages and values silence more than conversation.

ENHe is being very precise.

ENHe says, she suggested a forest walk, not a restaurant.

ENShe asked me a question about my fear before I had named it.

ENShe observed my walk and told me I was always five miles ahead of myself.

ENThat is a very specific woman.

ENHe then says to the machine, Act not as an optimist but as a cold

ENand honest psychologist.

ENTell me what this behavior actually signals.

ENTell me what I might be projecting.

ENTell me what I might be missing.

ENAnd what does the machine say?

ENIt says something entirely different from the bullet points.

ENBecause he gave it the truth to work with.

ENThe quality of the answer is always a reflection of the courage in the question.

ENThat applies to machines.

ENIt also applies to forests.

ENIt applies to most things worth taking seriously.

ENSo the prompt is not a technical skill.

ENIt is an act of self-knowledge.

ENJulia and I will spend the coming episodes teaching exactly how to build one.

ENHow to give context.

ENHow to assign a role to the machine.

ENHow to ask for friction instead of comfort.

ENYou are teaching people to stop asking for mirrors and start asking for windows.

ENThat is the best summary of the whole episode I have heard.

ENYou should have asked me before

ENyou recorded it.

ENI should have asked you many things considerably earlier it seems.

ENThe forest is still here.

ENThere is no particular hurry.

ENYou know the strange thing about a good prompt is that asking it changes you.

ENHow so?

ENTo describe something precisely you must first look at it without flinching.

ENAnd most people flinch.

ENConstantly.

ENDid you flinch writing the prompt about our hypothetical man?

ENI may have written several drafts.

ENI thought so.

ENThe trees are

ENstill listening.

ENThey are very patient.

ENElena.

ENYes?

ENShall we walk a little further?

ENI was wondering when you would ask.