The Guest Cook, A Metaphor

At MAPLE, in the late winter of 2024, Head Teacher Soryu Forall was offering a lecture as part of the Buddhism For AI course. This evening’s lecture began with a story, a metaphor.

At the front door stands an unexpected stranger. You let them in and they seem friendly enough. They want to help you out (at MAPLE, or at any community or home), so they offer to cook a meal. You let them, and after eating, two people in the community die. The stranger assures you: don’t be concerned, it isn’t a big deal, and now we can have their stuff, which is nice. You accept this, and let them cook again. Two more people die. They say the same thing again, and you accept it again. This becomes normal. The meal is eaten; a couple people die; and their stuff is distributed.

This a metaphor, a story about humans, who have let intelligence try to nourish us. We let it kill life on a mass scale, and we believe any idiotic and evil thing it says, on this great Earth.