SOLSTICE 12/21/2025

No one believed in ChatGPT more than Drew. That's what has me still REELING, thoughts still reverberating as a gnashing cacophony inside my head. And so the GPT Gaslighting series continues today, with an installment reflecting on Drew's love of GPT, how the AI system betrayed him, and why I think he stopped using it after he found out on October 31st that his illness would be terminal within 6 months--no possibility of cure. Only death, imminently, and a horrific one, at that. This was just as shocking news for HIM as it was for ME. Imagine that.

He must have realized, sitting in the doctor's office, that everything he'd been reading about the clinical trials, the miracle melanoma landscape, the promising GPT statistics, the optimistic predictions of 10-15 years of living with melanoma as a chronic illness, the probability models about the likely success of TIL, and his case as somehow being exceptional... was all complete bullshit. And so, in the last weeks of his life, he turned even more intensely to Buddhist study and practice. Today, I will explore what Buddhism may have provided him that GPT could not-- and how it helped him face a reality that was both catastrophic and unimaginable, first and foremost, to HIM.

There may or may not be a separate OPWC post today—we'll see how much emotional and intellectual bandwidth I have after completing the GPT/Drew/Buddhism text. That said, this reflection will be a meta-textual, meta-cognitive mapping of what Buddhism can offer not just as a balm, but as a gentle, gradual, and deeply loving engagement with reality as it exists-- not as we may want it to exist. In other words, my thesis is essentially that Buddhism teaches us how to let things—the body, the ego, the relation to cruel optimism—die so we can live more joyfully, more lovingly, and more gracefully.

AGENDA:

• GPT Gaslighting/Drew/Buddhism Reflection to be posted around 3 pm

• OPWC Chapter 13 (Kanthaka), POSSIBLY today. If so, it would be before 8:00 pm.

Stay tuned. More ahead.