Dr. Stevens' Final Examination !!top!! -

A machine can be correct. A child can be wrong. But when a child is wrong—when she believes the moon follows her car, or that the ice cream truck plays music because it is happy—she is not making an error in logic. She is performing an act of radical empathy with the non-human world. She is projecting her own heart onto the silence.

For three semesters, Dr. Stevens had warned us. “The final exam will not ask you to regurgitate,” he’d said last Tuesday, peering over his wire-rimmed glasses. “It will ask you to defend your own humanity.” dr. stevens' final examination

I understood.

And for some reason, I thought of the little girl with the kite. I smiled. A machine can be correct

I picked up my pen. I wrote, not a definition, but a story. She is performing an act of radical empathy