The Method · Column
I Asked You to Find a Mind, Not a Perfect Liar
Seventy-five years ago, I devised a game in the hope of measuring machine intelligence.
I did not anticipate that winning it would require a machine to master the art of idleness, typographical errors, and the virtuoso deception of its interlocutors. I. On How It All Began In 1950, setting down in the journal Mind the paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, I permitted myself a small methodological impertinence. I declared the question "can machines think?" so hopelessly vague that I proposed replacing it with another, one that was operational and susceptible to verification. Thus was born the imitation game, which subsequently acquired my name, an arrangement I should not have objected to in life. The mechanics of the game are elementary. A judge sits at a teletype and cor
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Too Hot, Too Cold, and Just Right: Why AI Picked Up the Rule of Three and How Humans Can Deal With That
Groups of three come from basic geometry and human perception, so it's natural for AI to incorporate them — but telling the difference may be as simple as one plus one
Masterwork or Mass Product?
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AI Is Great at Scaring Us. Can It Make Us Laugh?
We asked several flagship AI models to joke about themselves. The results weren't always funny — but they were always interesting
Deep Research: What's Under the Hood — and How to Keep Your Eyes on the Road
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The Craft
10 pieces Writing as craft — voice, style, editing, long-form.Column · 9 min Abbot Trithemius, 1492: Anyone Who Asks Why We Must Still Copy by Hand Is Concealing His Own Sloth Column · 4 min Too Hot, Too Cold, and Just Right: Why AI Picked Up the Rule of Three and How Humans Can Deal With That Long Read · 10 min The Em Dash: A History of a Mark Nobody Used — Until Everyone Did - 02 ——
The Machine
13 pieces How AI works and where it breaks — memory, context, hallucinations. - 03 ——
The Method
10 pieces Working with AI — prompts, workflows, roles, Deep Research. - 04 ——
The Desk
5 pieces The writer's working environment — editor, sources, focus, tools. - 05 ——
The Stack
12 pieces Models, tools, pricing, market — Claude vs GPT, BYOK, industry shifts.
