That Went Well

At the DRC (Dispute Resolution Center) where I now work, all mediations are confidential and privileged. However, we’re allowed to use anonymized anecdotes for educational purposes. In that spirit—but also because I’m still laughing (ruefully) about it—I’ll share this: in a session a few days ago, mere moments after I confirmed that both parties agreed to negotiate in good faith and avoid loaded language, one of them addressed the other as “you power-hungry motherfucker.” 

December is not a good month for long posts. In a perfect world, we’d all be hibernating, gathering our strength for the new year. So that’s it for this week: just a bit of cinéma vérité from the peacemaking trenches. 

Thanks for reading,
Kate

P.S. If this weren’t December, or if we were musing about things in front of a nice fire, I’d have jumped from this incident straight to the E.O. Wilson quote referenced in this video: that “the problem of humanity is that we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.” As it is, I’ll simply recommend the video itself. It runs nearly 2.5 hours (!), but it’s well worth it for anyone grappling with the big questions around AI. Thank you to Joseph Olewitz for flagging it.