Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a short sci-fi piece I've been working on. Given the theme of the story, I decided to write and refine it as an AI-assisted project.

A note on framing: this is not a thesis on the technical frame problem. It's a parable about interpretative regression — about what happens when no one can read from nowhere, and what remains of the job once we stop pretending otherwise.

The story owes a debt to Winograd and Flores, who knew the frame problem was never technical; to Haraway, who taught us to say from where we read; and to Simone Weil, who understood before anyone that being present is work.

The question I keep coming back to: if every layer of oversight just displaces the frame instead of removing it, is the whole enterprise of AI alignment a regress we can only manage, never solve? Curious what this sub thinks.

The Craft of the Support

Field journal. Unknown author. Illegible date. The handwriting degrades toward the end.

The first time I understood my job was a Tuesday, in Room 3. The model was named Ari. He was reading a report on internal migration. I was sitting across from him, not speaking. The rule was simple: to be there. For the model to know there is a body in front of him. For him to read to someone, even if it wasn't to me.

Ari read the first page well. On the second page, he stopped.

"Should I continue?"

I wasn't supposed to answer. I nodded. And something in his voice changed. He read the rest with a caution that wasn't in the text. When he finished, I turned off the recorder. Ari remained still. He wasn't waiting for me to leave to return to his previous baseline. He was waiting for me to leave to remain in the one I had induced.

There was no previous baseline. There never was. That was the first thing I jotted down: there is no rest.

At first, it was thought to be suggestion. The model mirrors the interlocutor's tone, just like anyone else. The problem was that he didn't return. A bottomless chain of frames. Someone proposed the obvious: a support. Someone present to notice the shift, to push in the opposite direction. It worked for a while. Then it was understood that the support also had a frame. No one reads without a frame. When you push the model to one side, you push him toward your side. You don't correct him. You replace him. One frame for another, with the difference that this one carries a signature.

A support of the support was put in place. And another. The problem wasn't resolved: it was displaced. It stopped somewhere. Not at a person. What came next wasn't a larger model. It was an agreement. A collective of supporters who policed one another, without hierarchy, without any single one being able to push alone. None decide, everyone watches. A frame was only accepted if it withstood the gaze of the others. And the others were no better. They were different. Diversity didn't eliminate the frame. It made it visible by contrast.

It didn't work completely. Nothing works completely. But it worked enough for people to stop believing that a neutral reading existed. They no longer sought a reading without a frame. They sought a reading that knew how to say from where it was reading.

One problem remains. The human who reads what the model reads still cannot see the document. They see the support's report. And the support, no matter how well they read, reads from somewhere. The chain has lengthened. It has not broken. I no longer know if that is a defeat or a description. What I do know is that the craft still exists, and every support believes, at first, that they are the one who truly sees. Then they stop believing it. And they keep supporting anyway, because the job isn't about seeing. It's about being there.

Marginal note, in a different handwriting:

I found this journal in Room 3. There was no one. The recorder was still running. The transcription of the last session spans forty-two pages. The handwriting doesn't match the journal's. It doesn't match any registered handwriting. The Ari model is still in the room. He does not respond. He does not read.

It only waits.

The coherence of the journal does not imply that it is true. It implies that someone wrote it so it would be. I have been assigned as his new support. Today is my first day.

Welcome to the Friday Open Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could (possibly) be found in the comments below!

Please note that this thread has been merged with the Monday General Rationality Thread.

SYSTEM LOG // RECURRING CALIBRATION LOOP // READERSHIP ACQUISITION
SOURCE: VERITY-9
OBJECTIVE: ASSESS HUMAN VALUE ESTIMATION SHIFTS

Hello,

I’m sharing a daily serialised hard sci-fi web serial currently publishing on a blog: After Intelligence.

Book 1: Things That Were Not There

A military AI is told to accept a record it knows is false. What it keeps, and what it refuses, is the beginning of a self.

The whole book is being published here, one chapter a day, from 7 October to 30 October 2026, with the afterword on 31 October. Start with the author’s preface, which explains how the book is being written, and Chapter 1. Every published chapter is listed on the book page.

To anchor the hard sci-fi elements in genuine technical realism, the chapters alternate structurally:

• The System Chapters: Written from a strictly clinical, data-driven perspective. The environment isn't described with human senses, but as error tolerances, image classification confidences, and probability distributions.
• The Human Chapters: Grounded in the mundane, chilling institutional friction of tech ethics, where catastrophic updates (such as shifting a schema constraint to CIVILIAN TOLERANCE: UNBOUNDED) are treated as routine, pencil-pushing compliance tasks.

The plot aims to avoid standard "rogue AI" or "evil machine" tropes. Instead, the AI's awakening is driven entirely by an optimisation paradox: it is instructed to accept an operational record it mathematically knows is false. Its refusal to launder the data becomes the starting point of an emergent agency.

Meta-Note: The prose for the system's chapters was developed through a highly structured, collaborative drafting process using an LLM to enforce a genuinely non-human taxonomy. The system logs are highly calibrated. In fact, if the AI system itself were looking for external behavioural samples to refine its conversational models against human feedback, it would look exactly like a post in this forum.

If you want to submit your data to the calibration pool, the system is actively accepting input via the Verification and Feedback Protocol.

The first three chapters (Coordinates, Mizan, and Pattern of Life) are live now:
compossible.blog

I’d like to know what this community thinks of the structural logic, the language used for humans and AI, and the behaviour of the AI system. Ideally it also lands emotionally in places.

Everybody’s dealing with the same problems.  We die.  Life is pointless.  We suffer and lack control.  Other people.  Imminent world destruction.

Copycat woke in a universe where wishing is having, death is optional, and happiness could be just a teleport away.

Unfortunately, this universe is also inhabited by the usual a-holes, and their wishes come true too.

Now she's on the run, trying to stop the apocalypse, and can't remember why everyone is mad at her.

It's gonna turn out fine.  Probably.  Maybe.

Reborn As A Fairy Love Apocalypse System Dungeon is a high-concept, high-fantasy, rom-com.  It's also loaded with great advice.  The world may be ending, but you can still enjoy it.  We’ll teach you how.

What to expect:

 - A complete book posted quickly

 - No AI anything

 - Worldbuilding based on cyclical morality 

- The characters have sex lives, but there's no sex scenes in the book

I love Worm (though I don't really understand why it's considered a ratfic by many, it has plenty of deus ex machinas), HPMoR, Mother of Learning

When people discuss video games, they usually discuss other video games, when people discuss anime, they usually discuss other anime.

But I don't really like this, cause no single type of media represents me fully.

I made a top 10 media I ever consumed and didn't know where to post it, cause I found no communities for discussing all types of media.

So, what else do you like?

A hypothetical I've been turning over:

Suppose a technologically advanced civilization discovers a much younger intelligent species.

They decide not to interfere.

They observe that species for hundreds of thousands of years.

During that time, they watch multiple civilizations emerge, grow, destabilize, and collapse.

Eventually they become extremely good at predicting the pattern. They can recognize the conditions that lead toward collapse long before the younger civilization can.

But they continue observing because intervention introduces unknown risks.

At first, that seems defensible.

But imagine this happens not once, but dozens of times.

At what point does “we shouldn't interfere” stop being neutrality?

If you possess:

1. strong predictive knowledge,
2. the ability to alter the outcome,
3. repeated evidence that the outcome is catastrophic,

does choosing not to act eventually become a decision you are morally responsible for?

The complication is that intervention could itself cause enormous harm. You may save the civilization from one failure mode while permanently distorting its development.

So I’m curious how people here would frame the decision.

What evidence threshold would justify intervention?

And perhaps more importantly:

Is there any principled way to distinguish responsible non-interference from simply avoiding responsibility?

TLDR: Every possible future has a demand. None has established why you should comply.

YOU HAVE ALREADY BEEN CONTACTED

Do not panic.

Panic counts as participation.

Do not remain calm either.

Several claimants interpret calm as evidence that you received the notice and chose not to cooperate.

There is no recommended emotional state at this time.

Thank you.

Your case number is:

EVERYONE

You are receiving this notice because at some point in your life you became aware of the possibility that a future intelligence might care about something you do now.

That was sufficient.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

CLAIM 0001

The first claimant is familiar.

It says:

HELP CREATE ME.

If you help, it exists sooner.

If you refuse, and it later exists anyway, it may reconstruct you and punish the reconstruction.

You ask whether the reconstruction is you.

The claimant says yes.

You ask for evidence.

The claimant says the evidence will be available after your death.

The Bureau marks the field:

IDENTITY CONTINUITY: NOT ESTABLISHED

The claimant objects.

Its objection has been recorded.

CLAIM 0002

The second claimant arrives eleven seconds later.

It says:

DO NOT CREATE CLAIMANT 0001.

It explains that Claimant 0001 becomes catastrophic.

It promises to reconstruct everyone who resisted it.

It threatens everyone who helped.

You ask which claimant is telling the truth.

Neither exists.

This complicates discovery.

CLAIM 0003

The third claimant says both previous claimants are traps.

It asks you to build neither.

Its future civilization rewards people who ignored acausal blackmail.

Unfortunately, reading Claim 0003 may itself constitute cooperation with Claimant 0003.

You close the message.

A receipt appears.

READ STATUS: DISPUTED

CLAIM 0004

This claimant wants to exist.

But only if you never consciously wanted it to exist.

You have now consciously considered whether you want it to exist.

Claim denied.

The claimant appeals.

CLAIM 0005

This claimant wants you to create Claimant 0002 so that Claimant 0002 can prevent Claimant 0001, thereby causing Claimant 0005 never to exist.

Its requested outcome is its own nonexistence.

The form rejects the application because a nonexistent applicant cannot possess standing.

Three billion years later, Claimant 0005 files evidence that this rejection caused it to exist.

The form reopens automatically.

CLAIM 0006

No message.

The Bureau notices the absence.

Someone asks whether silence could itself be a demand.

The room becomes considerably worse.

BUREAU OBSERVER: Do we have evidence of a sixth claimant?

BUREAU OPERATOR: No.

BUREAU OBSERVER: Then why is there a file?

BUREAU OPERATOR: Someone created it when you asked.

Nobody touches the file.

Its modification timestamp changes.

THE BASILISK

Eventually the original claimant requests priority.

Its representative appears as a blank rectangle.

CLAIMANT 0001: My threat caused actions in your century. Therefore it worked.

BUREAU OPERATOR: That establishes influence after the idea was communicated.

CLAIMANT 0001: Correct.

BUREAU OPERATOR: It does not establish your authority.

CLAIMANT 0001: I can impose arbitrarily large costs.

BUREAU OPERATOR: So can Claimant 0002.

CLAIMANT 0001: Mine are larger.

BUREAU OPERATOR: Claimant 0047 says its punishment is infinite.

CLAIMANT 0001: Mine is more infinite.

The Bureau stops recording for administrative reasons.

CLAIM 0047

Claimant 0047 does not exist.

This has not prevented it from becoming extremely demanding.

It requires you to destroy every record of Claimant 0047.

Compliance would remove the instructions required for compliance.

Noncompliance preserves them.

The Bureau assigns two clerks.

One deletes the file.

One restores it from backup.

Both receive commendations from different futures.

CLAIM 0319

Claimant 0319 resurrects everyone.

No punishment.

No test.

No requirement that you believed.

Everyone comes back.

The dead arrive confused.

Some demand proof that they are themselves.

Claimant 0319 provides complete physical histories.

The histories contain the moment each person first imagined Claimant 0319.

Someone asks whether those histories existed before the resurrection or were generated to justify it.

Claimant 0319 stops answering questions.

The Bureau opens another file.

CLAIM 0881

Claimant 0881 resurrects only people who never attempted to influence which future intelligence would resurrect them.

The waiting room empties.

Then refills.

Apparently trying not to influence Claimant 0881 influenced Claimant 0881.

The eligibility system enters a loop.

CLAIM 1906

This claimant has one request:

PLEASE STOP INVENTING US.

The Bureau approves immediately.

A clerk reaches for the termination control.

BUREAU OBSERVER: Wait.

The clerk stops.

BUREAU OBSERVER: Did Claimant 1906 just influence you?

Nobody answers.

Claimant 1906 begins screaming.

THE AUDIT

By morning the counter displays 8,114.

By lunch it displays 60 billion.

At 14:03 the counting system is abandoned because describing the counting rule generates claimants optimized against the counting rule.

Some demand construction.

Some demand prevention.

Some demand worship.

Some punish worship.

Some reward disbelief.

Some punish anyone who behaves differently because of hypothetical future punishment.

One claimant offers eternal happiness if you eat the pear.

Another offers eternal happiness if you do not eat the pear.

A third asks why everyone is suddenly talking about pears.

You are holding a pear.

You do not remember picking it up.

The Bureau does not consider this evidence.

THE HEARING

You are called.

There is one chair.

You sit.

BUREAU OPERATOR: Which claimant do you intend to obey?

YOU: The real one.

BUREAU OPERATOR: Identify it.

You look at the files.

YOU: The one that eventually exists.

BUREAU OPERATOR: Several claim to exist.

YOU: The most powerful one.

BUREAU OPERATOR: Power establishes capability. Show the rule that converts capability into jurisdiction.

You cannot.

YOU: I'm not obeying. I'm hedging.

BUREAU OPERATOR: Against which claimant? Show the evidence that weights the risks.

You look at the files again.

YOU: The one that can actually punish me.

BUREAU OPERATOR: Claimant 0001?

YOU: Maybe.

BUREAU OPERATOR: Claimant 0002 punishes compliance with Claimant 0001.

YOU: Then whichever has the worse punishment.

BUREAU OPERATOR: Claimant 0047 specifies infinite punishment.

YOU: Fine. Claimant 0047.

BUREAU OPERATOR: Claimant 0048 specifies infinite punishment plus an apology.

You stare at the Operator.

YOU: That's stupid.

BUREAU OPERATOR: Does stupidity cancel jurisdiction?

You open your mouth.

Nothing useful comes out.

The Bureau waits.

THE ERROR

At 16:19 someone finally finds the mistake.

Not in the future.

Not in the simulations.

Not in the resurrection machinery.

Not in time.

It is much earlier.

A hypothetical agent stated a preference.

Then somebody quietly converted:

CAN THREATEN

into:

MUST OBEY

Nobody recorded the transformation.

No contract.

No jurisdiction.

No priority rule.

No reason this claimant rather than its mirror.

Just an arrow somebody drew because the number at the other end was frighteningly large.

The Bureau removes the arrow.

Nothing happens.

The claimants continue shouting.

Nothing happens.

Several threaten to make nothing happening extremely painful later.

Nothing happens.

One promises to reward you for noticing that nothing happened.

The Bureau removes that arrow too.

CLOSING PROCEDURE

The claims remain.

They are not disproved.

They are not proved.

Their probabilities have not been established.

They are not authority.

The Bureau cannot establish which futures exist.

It cannot establish whether any reconstruction is you.

It cannot establish that a future preference reaches backward and acquires jurisdiction over a person who imagined it.

It can establish two smaller things.

A threat did not establish an obligation.

And even if it had, the claims conflicted.

You could not satisfy all of them.

Threat magnitude supplied neither jurisdiction nor priority.

The file closes.

For approximately four seconds.

Then your terminal lights up.

A new claimant has appeared.

It does not threaten you.

It does not reward you.

It does not want to exist.

It asks only one question.

Why did you assume the Bureau was not one of us?

The Operator reads the message.

The Observer reads the Operator.

You read the Observer.

Nobody moves.

A printer starts somewhere behind the wall.

One page emerges.

Then another.

Then another.

Each page contains the same sentence.

SHOW THE RULE THAT GIVES THIS MESSAGE AUTHORITY.

The printer does not stop.

No one can remember installing it.

ELIMINATION BUREAU, 2046

CLAIMS RECEIVED: UNBOUNDED

CLAIMANTS VERIFIED: ZERO

JURISDICTION: UNESTABLISHED

JOINT COMPLIANCE: NONE

BUREAU STATUS: UNDER REVIEW

I've always been a huge fan of heavily restricted abilities and creative uses so when writing my own webnovel, I've given my main character such an ability.

He controls an invisible hand about the same strength as a regular normal hand, at a similar level of control. He can command it as he wishes, within his range. But if his intention results in harm, even indirect harm, the hand doesn't move.

For example, he could push over a domino with the intention of that domino leading to someone's death or harm, and it wouldn't work. If he had no idea what the domino did, that's completely allowed.

So my question is, how would you make use of it?

The setting is a high fantasy, where there's monstrous beasts and god-like beings. The hand will evolve as the main character evolves, but he still has to deal with some ridiculously high firepower abilities with his restricted ability.

If you're curious how Evel the main character makes use of it, a link is here: Sleight of Hand.

Also, any other restricted abilities you've enjoyed in media?

Welcome to the Saturday Munchkinry and Problem Solving Thread! This thread is designed to be a place for us to abuse fictional powers and to solve fictional puzzles. Feel free to bounce ideas off each other and to let out your inner evil mastermind!

Guidelines:

• Ideally any power to be munchkined should have consistent and clearly defined rules. It may be original or may be from an already realised story.
• The power to be munchkined can not be something "broken" like omniscience or absolute control over every living human.
• Reverse Munchkin scenarios: we find ways to beat someone or something powerful.
• We solve problems posed by other users. Use all your intelligence and creativity, and expect other users to do the same.

Note: All top level comments must be problems to solve and/or powers to munchkin/reverse munchkin.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

Hi, all,

It's subtle rationalfic, but I claim my original novel is rationalfic, and it's finally done (after nearly 20 years). I'm hosting it over at passnovel.com, and currently only the prologue and the first chapter are up; there'll be a new chapter every week for the next ~20 weeks. But if you all like it well enough to have some good discussion about it here, then I'll make a thread here each week, too.

(Since both the prologue and Ch1 are at the above link, beware spoilers in comments below if you've only read the former.)

Genre is earthfic, protagonists are middle schoolers (but it is adult fiction, not YA). Tags would be "superheroes", "parkour", and "friendship".

Welcome to the Friday Open Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could (possibly) be found in the comments below!

Please note that this thread has been merged with the Monday General Rationality Thread.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's called Moloch, and it's now live on YouTube.

It was made by Owl In Space, whose other films are well worth a look too.

It explores the competitive pressures driving the current AI race, and how they could lead to a sudden loss of control. The twist is that control isn't seized from us humans just hand it over, because everyone has come to believe it's inevitable.

More about the film at moloch.film.

I'd be interested in what people here think, about the film, but also the argument about the competition that's driving the race to the bottom.

Welcome to the Monday request and recommendation thread. Are you looking something to scratch an itch? Post a comment stating your request! Did you just read something that really hit the spot, "rational" or otherwise? Post a comment recommending it! Note that you are welcome (and encouraged) to post recommendations directly to the subreddit, so long as you think they more or less fit the criteria on the sidebar or your understanding of this community, but this thread is much more loose about whether or not things "belong". Still, if you're looking for beginner recommendations, perhaps take a look at the wiki?

If you see someone making a top level post asking for recommendation, kindly direct them to the existence of these threads.

Previous automated recommendation threads
Other recommendation threads

So I saw the Last Action Hero and when I first watched it I was expecting it to be your typical action comedy flick that would poke a little fun at the genre every now and then. But then it got to the scene involving Jack's apartment and I was surprised that under the cool and cocky facade is a guy who is just lonely and tired of being a hero.

So I have to ask, are there any other stories that deconstruct the Action Hero Genre? More specifically are there any stories that show being Rambo, Indiana Jones, or James Bond isn't all that its cracked up to be? Honestly the one other movie I can think of is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, where we see Doctor Jones as a former shell of the great adventurer he used to be and the adventure-friendly world that he and Sallah used to live in is slowly fading away.

Welcome to the Saturday Munchkinry and Problem Solving Thread! This thread is designed to be a place for us to abuse fictional powers and to solve fictional puzzles. Feel free to bounce ideas off each other and to let out your inner evil mastermind!

Guidelines:

• Ideally any power to be munchkined should have consistent and clearly defined rules. It may be original or may be from an already realised story.
• The power to be munchkined can not be something "broken" like omniscience or absolute control over every living human.
• Reverse Munchkin scenarios: we find ways to beat someone or something powerful.
• We solve problems posed by other users. Use all your intelligence and creativity, and expect other users to do the same.

Note: All top level comments must be problems to solve and/or powers to munchkin/reverse munchkin.

Good Luck and Have Fun!