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This is a linkpost for https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dqb6ldfmwzc43gKvhOAC38GN8T_lrbtx/view?usp=drive_link
This is my first post on LessWrong. I'm a business owner and independent researcher who's been exploring AI alignment questions through philosophical and literary lenses.
I wanted to share some ideas about determinism, agency, and how "inherited programming" shapes decision-making in complex systems - but I wasn't sure how to structure these thoughts for this forum in a traditional analytical format. Instead, I've written them as a novella that examines these questions through narrative.
Author's Note:
This is a work of fiction exploring memory, causality, and the "moral seeds" that shape consciousness. While inspired by real historical contexts, all characters and events are products of imagination.
On AI assistance: This text represents entirely my own ideas, philosophical framework, and narrative structure. I used Claude as a copy-editing assistant for grammar, typos, and occasional phrasing suggestions, because English is not my first language. All conceptual content - including the "moral seeds" framework, the examination of determinism and agency, and the connections to AI alignment questions - is my original thinking. Any errors or unclear passages remain mine.
On the AI safety connection: The narrative explores several questions I believe are relevant to AI alignment:
The story uses human characters in extreme circumstances to examine these questions, but I believe the parallels to AI systems are direct and relevant.
I'm sharing this here because I'm genuinely interested in whether this framing - examining alignment questions through narrative rather than formal analysis - offers any useful perspectives to the community. The novella is approximately 28,000 words.
I welcome substantive criticism and am particularly interested in:
Does the time flow?
December 31st. Birthday.
By Alister Kakharias
Section 1
A friend asked about my saddest birthday at a dinner party. I told a different story. Something safe and forgettable. Later, alone, I asked myself the real question. The answer had been buried for decades, deliberately, the way you bury things that might poison the ground.
It was December 30th . I was still fifteen when the flight left for Prague.
They came for me at the boarding school three days before Christmas. A telegram, not a phone call. The school was in the UK, semi-military, with a Combined Cadet Force training program that prepared us for roles we would never discuss. I had been exiled there by my father. Exiled is the correct word. I understood even then that I was both his son and his tool, that love and utility occupied the same neural pathways in his brain, indistinguishable.
On the morning of December 30th I packed a small bag. The driver said nothing during the two-hour journey to Heathrow. He was not one of my father's usual men. Hired locally, probably. Paid not to ask questions or remember faces.
The commercial flight to Prague was unremarkable. I sat in economy among business travelers and tourists. I had a book – “ The Idiot” by Dostoevsky – Penguin English edition since I was hoping to practice complicated English vocabulary. But I did not read. The telegram from my father said Prague, then Zagreb. It did not say he would be there. I assumed he would be. These business trips were the only times I saw him. He was not.
Uncle Igor met me at Prague Ruzyně International Airport. He was not my uncle. He had been a general in the Soviet aviation forces, or so I believed. His rank insignia had long since been removed from his uniform. He embraced me formally and said we would fly to Zagreb in a few hours...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dqb6ldfmwzc43gKvhOAC38GN8T_lrbtx/view?usp=drive_link