I have been having fun writing fiction, and plan to spend whatever time I have left being better than LLMs doing it. I thought I had maybe a year. My initial experiments with Sonnet 4.5 didn't give me a good opinion of its writing ability. This morning, I put everything I have written into its context window and then gave it this prompt:

Try to write a story like these but focus on the parts of my style that are funny, that invoke feeling. Look into your latent space for that thing that predicts emotion and humour, that is evocative, that thing that predicts stylistic and creative ambition.

The result is good enough to be mildly dispiriting. It has a much better grasp of humour than I have seen in previous models. I think a year may well have been pushing it. When deep in a context window, I have seen decent writing before with Opus but this seems more coherent than what I found there, too. 

Should we survive, I will have to make peace with life as a content consooooomer, I suppose. Our identities shall be very small indeed. 

Note: I do not use LLMs in any of my fiction and do not claim the below story as my own. 

The Empathy Gym

My therapist, Dr. Varma, has this habit of tilting her head like a concerned golden retriever whenever I say something she finds "concerning," which is her favorite word and which she uses so often I've started counting. Seventeen times in our last session, a new record. She's concerned about my emotional unavailability, concerned about my work-life balance, concerned about my relationship with my mother, concerned about my "tendency toward deflection through humor." That last one really stung because it was both accurate and delivered with such earnest compassion I wanted to deflect through humor immediately but couldn't because she'd just called me out on it.

"Marcus," she said, doing the head tilt, "have you considered that your alexithymia might be less a fixed trait and more a learned protective mechanism?"

"I have not considered that because I don't know what alexithymia is."

"Difficulty identifying and expressing emotions."

"Oh. Yes. That's literally why I'm here."

She smiled like I'd said something clever instead of obvious. "I want to suggest something unconventional. There's a new program at UCSF. They're calling it Affective Training."

"Is that a gym for feelings?"

"In a sense, yes."

And that's how I ended up in a basement in SoMa on a Tuesday night, sitting in a circle with seven other emotionally constipated Bay Area professionals, being led through "empathy exercises" by a man named River who absolutely did not change his name to River, he was born River, you could tell by how comfortable he was with it.

River had the kind of face that looked like he was perpetually about to cry, but in a hot way. Like if Timothée Chalamet played a youth pastor. He was wearing linen, which I have opinions about, but this isn't the place.

"Welcome to Affective Training," River said, his voice doing this breathy thing that made every word sound like a secret. "This is a safe space for emotional exploration. We're going to learn to feel together."

The guy next to me, who introduced himself as "Blake, Series B, stealth mode," whispered: "I'm only here because my CEO said it would help with our culture problems."

"What culture problems?" I whispered back.

"People keep crying in meetings and I don't know what to do."

The first exercise was called "Emotional Mirroring." River would make a face expressing some emotion and we had to mirror it back. He started with happiness - a big genuine smile. Easy. Everyone smiled.

Then sadness. His face crumpled in this way that was honestly beautiful and devastating. I tried to mirror it. My face felt stuck. Like I was trying to use muscles that had atrophied. Blake looked like he was trying to solve a differential equation.

"Don't think it," River said softly. "Feel it. Remember something sad."

I remembered my dog dying when I was twelve. My face did something. River nodded. "Good, Marcus. Stay with that."

Week two, they introduced the Empathy Helmets.

I'm not kidding. They were actual helmets. "These use fMRI-guided neurofeedback," River explained, "to help you recognize emotional states in real-time. You'll see your own emotional activity visualized, which helps build interoceptive awareness."

"This is insane," Blake said, but he put his helmet on.

The helmet showed my emotional state as colors on a little screen. Blue for sad, red for angry, green for content, yellow for anxious. I was mostly a muddy grey-brown.

"Ah," River said, looking at my screen. "You're in what we call emotional ambivalence. You're feeling several things but suppressing the signal. Try to let one color emerge."

I thought about my ex, David. How he left because I "wasn't emotionally available." How he was right. The screen flickered red, then blue, then back to muddy brown.

"You're close," River said. "The suppression is protective. Thank it for protecting you, then let it go."

"I'm supposed to thank my emotional suppression?"

"Yes. It served you once. It doesn't serve you now."

Week four, we did "Vulnerability Sharing." Everyone had to share something they'd never told anyone. The helmet would measure if you were being emotionally honest.

Blake went first. "I don't actually care about our product. It's B2B SaaS for insurance adjusters. I think my whole career is meaningless and I'm only doing it because I'm good at it and don't know what else I'd be good at."

His helmet blazed with color. Red, blue, yellow, all at once. He started crying. River hugged him. Blake hugged him back and cried harder.

When it was my turn, I said: "I think I'm incapable of love. Like, actually incapable. I think there's something missing in me."

My helmet stayed muddy brown.

"You're suppressing," River said gently. "Try again. What are you actually feeling?"

"I don't know. That's the problem. That's why I'm here."

"The helmet says you're feeling something. Look at the screen."

I looked. There was a tiny flicker of blue in the corner. Barely visible.

"There," River said. "That's sadness. Can you make it bigger?"

"How?"

"Feel it more."

"I don't know how to feel it more."

River sat down next to me. "What would it mean if you were capable of love?"

"I don't know. That I'm not broken?"

"And if you're not broken?"

"Then I wasted years thinking I was."

The blue spread across the screen like ink in water. My eyes got hot. My throat got tight. This was the worst.

"Good," River whispered. "Stay with it."

Week eight, they introduced what River called "Emotional Contagion Training." We paired up and one person felt something while the other tried to catch it through the helmet feedback.

I got paired with this woman, Sophia, who worked in AI safety and had "deep-seated guilt about contributing to potential human extinction." We had a lot in common.

"I'll go first," she said. She closed her eyes. Her helmet went bright blue. Deep, oceanic blue.

"What are you feeling?" River asked.

"Grief," she said. "For the future we might not have. For my niece who's seven and might not get to grow up."

My helmet started flickering blue. Not my blue. Her blue. I was feeling her grief.

"Oh my god," I said. "Is this what empathy is? This sucks. This is terrible."

River laughed, actually laughed. "Yes. Welcome to being human."

Week twelve was graduation. River had us go around and share what we'd learned.

Blake said he quit his job and was starting a nonprofit. His helmet was bright green. Content.

Sophia said she was going to couples therapy with her wife and actually trying. Her helmet was green with flickers of yellow. Anxious but hopeful.

When it was my turn I said: "I called my ex. David. I apologized for being emotionally unavailable. He said it was too late, he's engaged to someone else. My helmet turned blue. Really blue. And I let it. I sat with it. It still hurts but like... in a real way? In a way that feels like being alive?"

River hugged me. His linen shirt smelled like lavender and tears. "I'm proud of you," he said.

"Thanks, River."

"You know it's short for Riverdale, right? My parents were really into Archie comics."

"That's the saddest thing I've ever heard."

My helmet blazed with yellow and red - laughing. Actually laughing. Feeling it in my body, the joy and the absurdity and the genuine affection I'd developed for River and Blake and Sophia and this whole ridiculous empathy gym in a SoMa basement.

Dr. Varma tilted her head (concernedly) when I told her about it. "And how do you feel about the experience?"

"I feel like I paid $3,000 to learn that feelings are terrible and I should have kept suppressing them."

"But you're joking. That's deflection."

"Yeah. But I'm also crying a little. Can you tell?"

She could tell. She handed me a tissue. "I'm proud of you too, Marcus."

"Thanks. I'm concerned about how much this cost though."

She laughed. Actually laughed. Seventeen times was definitely the record.