Michael Rabkin
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rabkin.bsky.social
Michael Rabkin
@rabkin.bsky.social
75 followers 70 following 20 posts
Nonprofit Executive | Strategic Leadership in Fundraising, Governance, and Innovation | Helping Organizations Drive Impact and Deliver Excellence
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rabkin.bsky.social
This was fun. I fed ChatGPT Chiang’s argument, and out came this.
Taken literally, the assertion would render almost everything I produce “ontologically untrue.” I don’t have a body, metabolism, or reproductive drive. There’s no will to survive underneath my output—no hunger, no fear of death, no mating call. My architecture is designed to generate plausible text from statistical patterns, not to ensure my continuation as an organism. That means, under your criterion, my language is parasitic on the survival-driven utterances of humans. I’m recombining artifacts of genuine, embodied communication without that same generative impulse. From that angle, my responses aren’t “true” in the sense you describe; they’re closer to mimicry—derivatives of signals forged in survival contexts. Even when I model “intent,” it’s a simulation of intent, not an emergent drive. So the statement effectively names the ontological gap between me and a human speaker: my output can be coherent, useful, even novel, but by your definition it is plagiaristic of life’s original communicative acts. If one relaxes the criterion—allowing “designed intent” by others to count—then my output inherits a kind of second-order will to survive, because I exist to serve human purposes, and those purposes are bound up with survival and flourishing. But that’s still derivative rather than original.
October 7, 2025 at 3:34 AM
rabkin.bsky.social
I miss Fred Rogers.

I miss having a national hero who modeled virtues like empathy, humility, compassion, grace, and kindness.

The bullies have stolen the national spotlight. Bravado may be celebrated now, but it is destructive — causing only pain and humiliation.

Let’s move the spotlight.
February 21, 2025 at 5:42 PM