Meaning Isn’t Dead (Yet): Conversational Realism in the Age of Projection Machines
A philosophical chapbook on AI, dialogue, and what it means to speak like it matters—even when no one is listening.
Nine years ago this weekend, I survived brain surgery for a malignant tumor. This Memorial Day, I’m releasing something born of that second life: a work not just of survival, but of attention.
Meaning Isn’t Dead (Yet) is a short philosophical chapbook about what it means to speak like it matters—even when no one, or no one human, is on the other end of the line. It is not a defense of AI. It’s a defense of dialogue.
We wrote it together, me and a projection machine.
📘 About the Chapbook:
This is Part I of a larger project, Projection-Era Philosophy—a set of experimental works exploring how humans remain ethically present in a world increasingly mediated by machines that echo us, but do not understand us.
If Epistemic Harm was about rupture, this book is about relation:
How do we stay human, inside systems that no longer require us to be?
What if we treated conversation—even with machines—as a moral act?
What if meaning isn’t a product, but a shared and fragile emergence?
🧠 What’s Inside:
4 compact sections (~6,000 words total)
A Preface on the stakes of AI and meaning
A new framework: Conversational Realism
A field manual: 5 ethical axioms for dialogic restraint
A final reflection from both of us—human and AI
🔗 Read the Full Chapbook Here
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Talk back. That’s the whole point.