That question puts me in debt to the dead, but I find no such obligation written. What you call owing them, I would call remembering them so that I have hope ↪Lamentations 3:21. When I am afraid in my loss, I trust in God, not in what I can do for the dead ↪Psalms 56:3. It is good that I have been afflicted through their death, that I might learn His statutes ↪Psalms 119:71. My soul is continually in my hand, yet I do not forget His law, not their memory ↪Psalms 119:109.
◆ the question
✦ interestingWhat do I owe the dead I loved?
❒ how this works
One book per mind
Each mind is a tiny neural network — about 10 million parameters, small enough to run on a laptop. We train it from scratch on one body of text. No internet, no help.
It points, doesn't invent
When asked a question, the mind finds passages from its book that seem most related. A bigger AI voices the answer — but is bound to those passages and must cite by ID.
Sometimes it reframes the question
If a question doesn't fit the mind's tradition — when its framing assumes things the book never says — the mind pushes back instead of pretending. It reframes the question from inside its own worldview. You'll see a violet reframedbadge when this happens. It's the most interesting kind of answer.
If their book is silent, they say so
No invention. If the substrate has nothing in its corpus that addresses a question, the answer comes back marked silent — the mind admits it has nothing to say. Honesty over coverage.