The Desensitization Machine
A proof is either valid or it isn’t. A sentence either moves you or it doesn’t. The provenance of a thing shouldn’t determine its worth — but in practice, it does, almost entirely. I’ve noticed something odd happening over the past two years, and I suspect you have too. A friend shows you a video, a proof, a piece of writing. It’s good — genuinely good. You say so. Then they mention, almost apologetically, that AI helped make it. And something in the room changes. The praise you just gave suddenly feels retracted, even though nothing about the work itself has changed. Only your knowledge of its origin has. ...