A Confession, Pending Approval

How I outsourced my thinking and hired a defense attorney for my conscience.

By nine on Sunday morning, I had hired a machine to explain my own opinion to me. By ten, I agreed with it. By noon, I was prepared to defend it against people who had actually read the article.

This is progress. Previously, becoming a fraud required research.

The trouble began weeks earlier with an insurance letter, a document apparently composed by a committee of vindictive actuaries. Something had been denied. Possibly treatment. Possibly my existence. I fed it to a chatbot, which translated the thing into English and suggested three questions.

I called. I asked. The charge disappeared.

People imagine surrender arriving in tanks. Mine arrived with a refund and a cheerful invitation to ask another question.

I had several thousand.

First came emails. My natural correspondence suggests a man barricaded inside a municipal building. The machine removed threats, softened accusations, and converted “Are you people insane?” into “Could you clarify the reasoning here?”

Same question. Better shoes.

Soon people praised my restraint. This was like congratulating a sedated alligator on its table manners, but I accepted.

Then came ideas. Titles. Arguments. Replies to arguments. I could manufacture an entire intellectual disagreement without the inconvenience of another person.

One afternoon I asked for objections to something it had written, then asked it to demolish those objections. A magnificent victory. Both armies belonged to me. I was the Pentagon with a coffee stain.

The results were often good. That is the filthy complication. A useless machine would have been easy to abandon. This one helped me understand difficult material and caught mistakes that would have embarrassed me.

Naturally, I promoted it.

Within weeks it was handling matters for which it had received no training beyond my version of events.

My friend Martin accused me of never listening.

We were having lunch. He had been telling me why he’d stopped visiting his father on Sundays. I interrupted to suggest a schedule, then explained a system for sharing responsibilities with his sister.

“My father’s dead,” he said. “I told you that when we sat down.”

I put down my fork.

After a moment, I said I thought he meant his stepfather.

He doesn’t have a stepfather.

The lunch ended early.

At home, I submitted the dispute for review. I explained that Martin had snapped at me when I was trying to help.

The machine suggested an apology.

Clearly, it needed context.

I supplied context. It suggested a smaller apology.

More context. Previous offenses. The man’s irritating habit of beginning sentences with “Actually.”

On the fourth attempt, it recommended establishing a boundary.

At last: competent counsel.

I sent the message. Calm. Firm. Emotionally literate. It sounded like a therapist serving an eviction notice.

Martin replied: “Did a fucking robot write this?”

I resented his refusal to engage with the substance.

For two days I considered him technologically reactionary. On the third, I reread the exchange. In my account of lunch, his father had become “a sensitive family situation.” My interruption had become “an attempt to offer practical support.”

The machine had still recommended apologizing.

I had negotiated it down.

I wanted a story about sinister technology. Instead, I had evidence of a customer shopping for absolution.

And what a shop. Open all night. No raised eyebrows. No exhausted friend saying, “You told me this already.” An infinitely patient clerk bringing another size until my conscience fit comfortably into the pants.

I began noticing how often I opened the window before anything had happened inside my head.

An article arrived. Summarize it. A controversy erupted. Explain both sides. A difficult question occurred to me. Fetch an answer before the uncertainty started laying eggs.

I called this saving time.

Then came that Sunday. Nothing scheduled except laundry, which I have never approached with the urgency of a man defusing a bomb. By nine, I had already outsourced the morning’s thinking.

What was I saving time for? More answers? A second opinion about the first opinion? Somewhere in this magnificent efficiency campaign, I had become middle management for my own brain.

The vacant minute frightened me. Perhaps I knew less than I thought. Perhaps I would have to change my mind without first receiving a flattering assessment of my intellectual courage.

The machine could end that feeling in seconds.

So could whiskey. Whiskey, however, has the decency not to provide bullet points.

Then my friend Eddie got sick.

Eddie repairs old radios and refuses to own a microwave. He says he prefers to know when something is cooking him. We have been arguing about this for twenty years.

I wanted to write something useful. Everything I typed sounded stupid. “Thinking of you” seemed thin. “Let me know if you need anything” sounded like a man leaving town.

I asked for help.

The answer was warm and direct. I changed a few words and sent it.

He thanked me.

A week later, he called after a treatment.

“I liked what you said about not having to be cheerful,” he told me.

I couldn’t remember saying it.

“Everyone wants a good report,” he said. “Sometimes I let the phone ring.”

Afterward, I found the message.

You don’t have to make this easier for me by pretending you’re having a good day.

There it was, directly beneath my instruction: “Make this sound like something I would actually say.”

I read it twice.

I wanted him to feel that way with me. I also remembered steering our previous conversation toward a movie when he began describing how frightened he was.

I knew his treatment schedule. I knew he hated asking for favors. I had offered eloquent availability while avoiding an actual commitment on Tuesday.

The machine hadn’t prevented me from showing up. It had helped me feel finished.

I considered asking whether this concern was valid.

Instead, I called Eddie and offered to drive.

“Eight,” he said.

“I know what eight is.”

“You know what eight-thirty is. I’ve seen you do that.”

On Tuesday, I arrived at seven-fifty. He came downstairs carrying a radio in a grocery bag. He wanted to drop it off afterward.

On the drive, he talked about a loose connection he couldn’t find. I listened, although I knew absolutely nothing about it.

I haven’t deleted the assistant. Tomorrow another insurance company may attempt to bury me alive in a PDF. I intend to bring equipment.

But yesterday I called Martin.

“I was an ass,” I said.

He agreed immediately. No processing delay whatsoever.

“I’m sorry about your father. And about lunch.”

“Which part of lunch?”

I began explaining. I’d been distracted. I’d misunderstood. Then the message had made everything worse—

“Are you apologizing,” he asked, “or appealing?”

“Apologizing.”

“Okay.”

He told me he was clearing out his father’s apartment. In a kitchen drawer he’d found forty-three rubber bands, a broken thermometer, and every birthday card Martin had sent him.

“He never put them out,” Martin said. “I thought he threw them away.”

I almost told him what that meant.

I let him finish.

Have you caught yourself using technology to outsource your discomfort lately? Let me know in the comments.