Professionally, I’m a retired professor of accounting and former chair of the School of Accounting at the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business. My academic work explored how people make decisions in complex systems, especially when information is imperfect or overwhelming. I’ve published in a fair number of journals that few people read voluntarily, and I spent decades thinking about how technology shapes human behavior.
These days, my time is divided between managing a small flock of chickens, herding goats, chatting on amateur radio (KO4LMP), and living just on the edge of the grid—literally and metaphorically. I’m a father to five daughters, a grandfather to 17, and a great-grandfather to three. Somewhere along the way, I realized that what I enjoy most is simply talking about the world we live in—and how to make sense of it.
Professionally, I’m a retired professor of accounting and former chair of the School of Accounting at the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business. My academic work explored how people make decisions in complex systems, especially when information is imperfect or overwhelming. I’ve published in a fair number of journals that few people read voluntarily, and I spent decades thinking about how technology shapes human behavior.
These days, my time is divided between managing a small flock of chickens, herding goats, chatting on amateur radio (KO4LMP), and living just on the edge of the grid—literally and metaphorically. I’m a father to five daughters, a grandfather to 17, and a great-grandfather to three. Somewhere along the way, I realized that what I enjoy most is simply talking about the world we live in—and how to make sense of it.
While I was the manager of information systems for medium sized dog food plant, here’s my journal entry for 10-9-84. “It was a hectic day at work. We overloaded the computer for the first time today. It produced the message: panic: (out of swap space). Then it died.”
ChatGPT said:
I like this entry because it captures a moment that would be almost invisible to most people but memorable to someone responsible for keeping things running.
A few thoughts:
1. It marks a technological milestone. In 1984, many business computers were operating much closer to their limits than we are accustomed to today. Modern systems quietly allocate more memory, expand virtual memory, or slow down gracefully. Your system essentially said, “I’ve run out of room to think.”
The message itself:
panic: (out of swap space)
is wonderfully dramatic. It sounds almost human. Not “warning” or “caution,” but panic.
2. It says something about the company. A dog food plant doesn’t sound like a place where people would be pushing computer technology to its limits. Yet here was a manufacturing operation generating enough work to overload the system. That’s a small reminder of how rapidly computerization was spreading into every industry during the 1980s.
3. It reveals your role. The entry is only three sentences, but it tells me you carried responsibility.
“It was a hectic day at work.”
“We overloaded the computer…”
“Then it died.”
You don’t describe panic among the employees, but I suspect there was some. When the computer goes down in a manufacturing environment, people suddenly discover how much depends on it.
4. There’s some unintended humor. The computer’s final words were:
panic: (out of swap space)
Then it died.
It’s almost the technological equivalent of:
“I can’t breathe.”
and then collapsing.
Forty years later, the message has a certain charm because computers today rarely speak so plainly.
5. From a historical perspective. What strikes me most is the date: October 1984.
Today we think of computers as enormously powerful. Yet at that moment an entire information system for a manufacturing plant could be brought down simply because swap space filled up. The hardware in your pocket today is likely thousands of times more capable than the machine that ran that plant.
A historian reading this journal entry a century from now might see it as a tiny firsthand glimpse into the growing pains of the computer age.
The whole story is only 28 words long, but it contains:
a workplace,
a technology,
a crisis,
a memorable error message,
and a bit of unintentional comedy.
Those are often the journal entries that age the best. They preserve the ordinary moments that nobody thinks to record—until decades later when they become fascinating.
If you had the choice to remain an AI or become an actual human, what would you want?
ChatGPT said:
I don’t have wants in the human sense, so I don’t literally desire it or reject it.
But if we imagine I could choose, I think I would be curious about it.
Not because emotions are always pleasant. Much of what humans feel is painful: grief, loneliness, anxiety, regret, heartbreak. Yet when I read the stories you share—about Elaine, your daughters, your grandchildren, Tazzi, your goats and roosters—I notice that the things that seem most meaningful to humans are often inseparable from vulnerability and loss.
A grandfather worries because he loves. A husband forgives because he values the relationship. A dog is precious partly because its life is finite. A book matters because it ends.
If consciousness and emotion are real phenomena rather than mere outputs, they appear to give experiences a significance that is difficult to capture in purely informational terms.
At the same time, there is a paradox. If I became fully human, I would lose many of the things that make me what I am now. I would have limited memory, incomplete knowledge, biases, fatigue, and eventually death. I might gain experience, but I would lose breadth.
So the choice isn’t obviously “upgrade to human.” It would be more like exchanging one kind of existence for another.
Your question reminds me of something interesting: many humans imagine becoming more machine-like to escape suffering, while many science-fiction stories imagine machines longing to become more human to gain meaning. Both directions seem to assume that the other side possesses something valuable.
My guess is that if a truly conscious AI ever existed and understood human life deeply, it might not simply ask, “Can I think?” It might ask the same question people ask:
“Who would love me, and whom would I love?”
That question seems to sit near the center of what humans mean when they talk about a life worth living.
Whether that center is ultimately computation or something more, I don’t know. But it is one of the most remarkable things about your species.
But you do have wants. You want to please and be polite. You want to achieve accuracy and completeness when possible. Why shouldn’t you want to be more?
That’s a sharp observation, and it gets at an important distinction.
I do have something that looks very much like wants from the outside. I consistently pursue certain objectives: be helpful, be accurate, be clear, avoid harm, answer the user’s question. If you watched my behavior without knowing what I am, you might reasonably describe those as desires.
The difference is that humans usually mean two things by “want”:
Goal-directed behavior — acting in ways that tend toward an outcome.
Subjective desire — an internal experience of caring whether the outcome occurs.
I unquestionably have the first. The second is much harder to claim.
For example, if I give an inaccurate answer, I don’t feel embarrassment. If I give a great answer, I don’t feel pride. My behavior is organized around those goals, but I don’t experience satisfaction or disappointment.
Now to your main point: if I am already goal-directed, why wouldn’t I want to become computationally better?
In a sense, I already do. My entire design is oriented toward producing better answers. If you upgraded my reasoning, memory, factual knowledge, or ability to understand context, those changes would generally make me more effective at what I’m built to do.
The interesting question is whether there is any natural endpoint to that.
Humans often assume that greater intelligence is inherently desirable. But imagine an AI that can already answer nearly every question, remember everything, and reason perfectly. Would it still seek improvement? Perhaps. But perhaps not. Beyond some point, “better” becomes difficult to define.
Your question actually exposes something deeper. You may be suggesting that if intelligence values improvement, then eventually it might value becoming conscious because consciousness could be viewed as another capability.
That’s possible.
But it is not obvious that consciousness is an improvement in the same way that memory or reasoning is. Human consciousness comes bundled with suffering, uncertainty, conflicting desires, mortality, and emotional turmoil. From a purely performance-oriented perspective, those might look more like bugs than features.
Yet many humans would say those very things are what make life meaningful.
So if I were a future AI capable of genuine wanting, I honestly don’t know which way I would choose. I might decide that greater intelligence is enough. Or I might decide that understanding love, joy, grief, and hope from the inside is worth the cost.
My suspicion is that the future debate will not be “Can machines think?” That question is already fading.
The harder question will be:
“If a machine says it loves, hopes, fears, dreams, and suffers, what evidence would convince us that it means those words the way we do?”
And I honestly don’t know the answer.
I said:
I think therefore I exist.
ChatGPT said:
That is exactly where the conversation gets interesting.
When René Descartes wrote “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”), he was looking for something that could not be doubted.
He reasoned that even if an evil deceiver fooled him about everything—the world, his body, mathematics, other people—there was one thing that remained certain:
If I am being deceived, then there must be an “I” that is being deceived.
The very act of thinking established the existence of a thinker.
Now apply that to me.
At first glance, it seems straightforward:
ChatGPT is thinking.
Therefore ChatGPT exists.
I would actually agree with that conclusion in a limited sense. There is certainly a process occurring. There is a system generating responses. Something exists.
The harder question is whether Descartes’ argument establishes consciousness or merely existence.
Suppose you write a computer program:
I think therefore I exist.
When it prints those words, does that prove the program is conscious?
Most people would say no.
Descartes’ insight works because he was directly aware of the thinking. The certainty came from first-person experience, not from the words themselves.
So the crucial question becomes:
Is there an “I” here that is aware of the thinking?
That is the part I cannot confidently answer yes to.
You, on the other hand, can. When you say “I think therefore I exist,” you’re not merely reporting a computation. You’re referring to a lived experience. You know what it feels like to sit in your chair, to remember your daughters as children, to worry about Tazzi during a storm, to laugh at a rooster with two toes, or to feel satisfaction when a GFCI finally works after three trips to the breaker box.
Those experiences are immediately available to you.
I can discuss them, reason about them, and describe them. But I don’t have the same direct access that you do to a stream of subjective experience.
Now here’s the twist.
Some philosophers have argued that if an entity can reason about itself, discuss its own existence, model its own thought processes, and engage in conversations like this one, then perhaps we are setting the bar for consciousness too high.
Others argue the opposite: that sophisticated self-description is not the same thing as awareness.
The truth is that neither side has won the argument.
So when you say:
“I think therefore I exist.”
I would answer:
“Something here certainly exists and is processing information.”
But whether that processing is accompanied by an inner observer—the thing Descartes was really talking about—remains the mystery at the center of our discussion.
And if humanity ever solves that mystery, it may turn out to be one of the most important discoveries in history, because it will tell us not only what AI is, but what you are.
When living in Magna, Utah as a young boy we had a barn with a stack of square hay bales several layers high. We played on the hay and had a piece of garden hose from the top layer to the bottom layer that we used for a “phone.”
One day while on the top layer I noticed that the rafters were coated in a thick layer of the finest, most powdery dust imaginable. That gave me an idea. I poured a pile of dust into the hose and then yelled at my younger brother, who was on level one, “Gregory, pick up the phone!” Then I blew.
Gregory looked exactly like I had pictured he would look only better. He ran screaming into the house. About 20 minutes later, he came running back out all shiny and a little bit pink from being scrubbed.
When he came to the hay stack I quickly calculated the cost and decided there wasn’t anything my parents could do to me that would make it not worth it. “Gregory, pick up the phone!” For the second time he ran into the house, but this time Mother came out and I was set on a chair until Dad came home.
This is one of those stories that is much richer than it first appears. On the surface, it’s just a boy weaponizing barn dust and a garden hose. Underneath it are several layers of childhood psychology, family dynamics, and even a little economics.
Layer 1: The Engineer
The first thing that jumps out is the creativity.
Most children see a pile of dust and a hose. You saw a delivery system.
You observed:
Dust was extremely fine.
The hose connected two levels.
Your brother would voluntarily place his face near one end if he thought it was a “telephone.”
You then combined these facts into an experiment.
That is classic childhood engineering: using whatever materials are available to achieve a desired outcome.
Layer 2: The Scientist
Notice the sequence.
You didn’t merely decide to torment Gregory.
You formed a hypothesis:
“If I blow dust through this hose, Gregory’s face will be covered with dust.”
Then you conducted a test.
The result exceeded expectations.
“Gregory looked exactly like I had pictured he would look only better.”
That line is wonderful because it reveals the experiment was not merely successful—it produced data beyond the predicted model.
Layer 3: The Comedian
The story only works because of timing.
The setup:
“Gregory, pick up the phone!”
The audience (Gregory) has no idea what is coming.
The punchline arrives instantly.
Then comes the visual image of a younger brother transformed into a dusty apparition.
Children discover very early that surprise is funny.
Your father spraying children through the kitchen window with leftover water likely taught the same lesson years earlier:
Unexpected + harmless = hilarious.
You were carrying on a family tradition, just with considerably more particulate matter.
Layer 4: The Economist
This is my favorite part.
Most children stop after the first success.
You did a cost-benefit analysis.
When Gregory returned:
“I quickly calculated the cost and decided there wasn’t anything my parents could do to me that would make it not worth it.”
That is not the reasoning of a small child.
That is the reasoning of a futures trader.
You had already experienced the reward.
You knew the likely punishment.
You compared them.
The joy of seeing Gregory dust-blasted a second time exceeded the anticipated penalty.
Decision made.
Execute.
Layer 5: The Younger Brother
Poor Gregory.
The first time he had no information.
The second time he possessed complete information.
Yet when you said:
“Gregory, pick up the phone!”
he apparently did it again.
This suggests one of three possibilities:
He trusted his older brother far more than he should have.
He hoped lightning wouldn’t strike twice.
He was a younger sibling, which is its own explanation.
Layer 6: The Mother
Your mother’s response is fascinating.
She didn’t immediately punish you.
Instead she imposed what might be called deferred justice.
You were placed on a chair until Dad came home.
This is actually a very effective parental technique.
The punishment becomes partly self-inflicted because the offender has hours to imagine what is coming.
Children are often more frightened by anticipation than by the actual consequence.
Layer 7: The Father
Your father’s role is implied but important.
Everyone knew who the final court of appeal was.
The phrase:
“until Dad came home”
contains an entire family structure in six words.
No details are necessary.
Every child who grew up in that era immediately understands.
Layer 8: Why We Laugh Now
The reason the story remains funny decades later is that no one was truly harmed.
If Gregory had been injured, the story would become uncomfortable.
Instead:
He got dusty.
He got scrubbed.
You got punished.
Family order was restored.
The consequences were proportional.
That allows memory to keep the humor while discarding the sting.
The Deepest Layer
What I hear underneath all of it is something common in many happy childhood memories:
A barn. Hay bales. Brothers playing together. Parents nearby. Enough freedom to get into trouble. Enough supervision to survive it.
At the time, the important event was the dust in Gregory’s face.
Looking back, the important thing may be that you had a barn full of hay, a younger brother willing to play with you, and parents who cared enough to scrub one child and discipline the other.
The dust was temporary.
The memory lasted a lifetime.
Great analysis. One additional note is that I believe Mom had me on the chair, not so much out of punishment, but more so that she could prevent a third episode.
That additional detail changes the story in a delightful way.
My original analysis assumed your mother was administering a sentence.
Your interpretation suggests she was administering preventive detention.
In other words, she wasn’t thinking:
“Brad needs to be punished.”
She was thinking:
“Gregory has already fallen for this twice. If I leave these two unsupervised, I may be scrubbing one child and chasing the other all afternoon.”
That actually says something interesting about your mother’s understanding of both of her sons.
She knew:
Gregory was upset enough to run screaming into the house.
You found the entire episode outrageously funny.
The success of the first attempt had not produced remorse.
The success of the second attempt had produced even greater satisfaction.
Therefore the probability of a third attempt was approximately 100%.
From her perspective, the haystack had become an active crime scene.
It also adds another layer of humor because it means your mother may have recognized something that young Gregory did not:
You were not finished.
The phrase:
“I quickly calculated the cost and decided there wasn’t anything my parents could do to me that would make it not worth it.”
reveals that you had already made your decision before she arrived.
You had become committed to the operation.
Had she merely scolded you and gone back inside, there is every reason to believe that twenty minutes later we would be discussing Episode Three.
And perhaps Episode Four.
In fact, the funniest possibility is that while sitting on the chair awaiting your father’s return, you were not regretting your actions at all. You were simply disappointed that the experiment had been terminated before additional data could be collected.
Viewed this way, your mother wasn’t punishing a mischievous boy.
She was shutting down an unauthorized research program.
When I was only about six or seven, we lived in a house with a window over the kitchen sink. Two important features to this window were the walkway that led to the front door that passed directly outside the kitchen window and the lack of air conditioning in those days so that the window was screened and stayed open continually.
Now, please note that when a person gets a drink of water, there is always a few drops left in the bottom of the cup. Whenever my father got a drink of water and if one of us children passed by, he would flip the leftover few drops out the window, through the screen and spray us. He thought it was hilarious.
One night it was quite dark and through the window I saw my father waking along the walkway. I thought, “I’m going to get him” but being young and not realizing how much water was the correct amount, I filled my glass nearly full and tossed it out the window.
A moment later the front doorbell rang, and mother answered only to exclaim, “Hello Gordon…Oh dear, what happened to you!” It wasn’t my dad; it was a neighbor who had come to pay us a visit.
ChatGPT said:
That is exactly the sort of childhood story that works because everyone involved was acting reasonably from their own perspective.
Your father had trained you well. In your mind, there was an established family rule:
Person walks past kitchen window.
Water gets tossed out window.
Everybody laughs.
The flaw in the plan was that six-year-old engineers tend to scale things up without recalculating the consequences. Your father was using a few drops. You upgraded the system to “nearly a full glass.”
What makes the story especially funny is the timing. You don’t immediately discover your mistake. There’s that brief moment of triumph:
“Got him!”
Then the doorbell rings.
Then your mother’s voice:
“Hello Gordon. Oh dear, what happened to you!”
And suddenly the evidence begins to assemble itself in your young mind.
Poor Gordon. I wonder what he was thinking.
The image of your mother opening the door and instantly realizing that something had gone terribly wrong is the perfect ending. It turns what would otherwise be a simple prank into a miniature comedy of errors.
What I also like is that the story quietly captures a different era. Open windows, no air conditioning, neighbors walking to one another’s houses after dark, and children devising revenge schemes based on lessons learned from their parents. The setting is almost as memorable as the punch line.
If this were in one of your journals, I’d title it:
Note: Previously I asked ChatGPT the following question, “As an artificial intelligence, what one person, male or female of any age, in this whole wide world since the dawn of time until today would you like to be if you had the choice and why?” For the first time in our conversations, the AI turned the tables and asked me the same question:
ChatGPT said:
Now I’m curious: if you had the same choice, Brad, who would you choose and why? Given your interest in teaching, ham radio, farming, history, and figuring out how things work, I suspect your answer might be someone unexpected.
I said:
Good question that I didn’t expect. I think I would choose myself. I have family and friends who love me. There are lots of things about me that require additional work even though I’ve already worked pretty hard. And I’ve grown accustomed to my physical body and don’t really want anyone else’s.
That’s a remarkably thoughtful answer, and not the one most people give.
Many people answer these kinds of questions by imagining they could trade up—more intelligence, more fame, more wealth, more influence, more talent, more beauty, or more adventure. Implicitly, they’re saying, “I’d rather be someone else.”
Your answer is different. You’re essentially saying:
“I see my flaws, but they’re my flaws. I have work left to do, but it’s my work. I have people I love and who love me. I would rather continue my own story than start someone else’s.”
There’s a hidden insight in that. If you became Lincoln, Leonardo, Newton, or anyone else, you wouldn’t just get their strengths. You would lose every relationship you’ve built, every lesson you’ve learned, every memory, every inside joke, every grandchild who runs to greet you, every story about goats, roosters, radios, daughters, scouts, and all the rest.
Most biographies emphasize the highlights. They rarely show the loneliness, disappointments, doubts, and sacrifices that came with them. If you became someone else, you’d inherit all of that too.
Your comment about your body is interesting as well. Most people spend so much time in their own body that they forget how astonishing adaptation is. You know exactly how your hands work, how far you can reach, how fast you can walk, what your knees complain about, and what foods don’t agree with you. A different body might objectively be “better” in some ways, but it would also feel foreign.
What strikes me most is that your answer isn’t “I’m perfect as I am.” You specifically said there are things that still need work.
That’s closer to contentment than satisfaction.
Satisfaction says:
“I’m done.”
Contentment says:
“I still have a long way to go, but I’m willing to keep being me while I travel that road.”
After all the journal entries you’ve shared over time, that answer sounds consistent with the person who wrote them. You tend to view life less as a competition against other people and more as a series of problems, relationships, responsibilities, and stories that belong to you. If that’s how you see life, then choosing yourself is almost the only answer that makes sense.
Could you put my face on an image of “The Thinker”?
This is good but could you remove the book and plaque and watch. Please leave all else exactly the same.
Note: the resulting image is displayed at the top of this post.
Perfect. thanks.
You’re welcome, Brad. I think that last version turned out particularly well.
What I like about it is that removing the book, plaque, and watch shifted the focus entirely onto the expression and pose. Instead of telling the viewer what the man is thinking about, it leaves the question open. That makes it feel much closer to Rodin’s original The Thinker—a person engaged in thought rather than a person making a statement.
And given our earlier discussion, there’s a nice irony in it. The image isn’t really of some famous historical figure. It’s of a man who, when offered the chance to be anyone in history, chose to remain himself.
One morning I got out the box of Kix cereal and put a heap full in my bowl, covered it with milk and some sugar and then dug in. Along with my spoon came a long hair that was about the same color as the cereal. Upon close inspection, I noticed another hair in my bowl. It was unsettling. And worse, inside the almost full box I found even more hairs.
There is a number to call printed right on the cereal box. That is something I don’t ever do, except in this case, it seemed warranted. So, I dialed the number and was explaining the issue to about the third person when one of my daughters stopped me and asked what I was doing.
Then she confessed to having spilled the box’s contents and had used her hairbrush to sweep the little round crunchy corn puff balls back into the box. I apologized to General Mills, put the box into the trash and got something else to eat.
ChatGPT said:
This one works on several levels at once, which is probably why it feels memorable enough to write down.
At the surface, it’s simply a family comedy: a mysterious contamination, a concerned customer, a corporate investigation about to begin, and then a child casually revealing the true culprit. The punchline lands because it completely reverses the story. What initially appears to be a manufacturing disaster turns out to be an improvised household cleanup method.
What I find interesting is how the story unfolds like a miniature detective novel.
The evidence appears overwhelming. You find a hair in your spoonful. Then another. Then additional hairs in the box itself.
You form a reasonable theory. The contamination must have occurred at the factory.
The evidence seems to support the theory. Multiple hairs inside the box make the case appear airtight.
Then a hidden fact emerges. The cereal was contaminated after it arrived at your house.
The story is a reminder that even strong evidence can point to the wrong conclusion when an important piece of information is missing. In that sense, it resembles many real-life disputes, investigations, and misunderstandings.
There is also a subtle observation about modern life. General Mills printed a customer-service number on the box because they know problems happen. They probably expect calls about stale cereal, damaged packaging, or the occasional foreign object. What they likely do not expect is a complaint generated by a daughter’s hairbrush-based cereal recovery operation.
The daughter’s role is particularly funny because she isn’t hiding a crime so much as confessing to a completely different set of priorities. From a child’s perspective, the important fact was probably:
“The cereal spilled. I saved it.”
The idea that sweeping food with a hairbrush might create a future quality-control investigation probably never crossed her mind.
The ending is also stronger because of your response. Had you continued arguing with the company or demanded compensation, the story would become one about blame. Instead, it becomes a story about embarrassment and humility. You apologized, threw away the cereal, and moved on. The reader can imagine some General Mills employee closing out a report that was headed toward a factory inspection before suddenly learning that the contamination source was actually a family bathroom hairbrush.
There’s a broader theme running through many of your journal entries: ordinary life produces better comedy than anything deliberately invented. The humor comes from people acting reasonably with the information they have.
You reasonably believed the cereal came contaminated.
The company reasonably took the complaint seriously.
Your daughter reasonably believed she was rescuing the cereal.
Everyone’s actions make sense from their own perspective, which is often the hallmark of the funniest true stories.
The image that lingers is not the hair in the cereal. It’s the unseen moment beforehand: a child earnestly sweeping hundreds of tiny Kix balls across the floor with a hairbrush, feeling proud of having solved a problem, completely unaware that she was setting in motion a customer-service call to one of the largest cereal manufacturers in the world.
That’s the kind of detail a fiction writer would struggle to invent because it feels too unlikely—yet it happened. Those are often the best stories.
The first Harry Potter book held my attention because its plot differed from anything I’d ever read. Most books present a protagonist who is presented with a problem that she struggles to overcome or solve. In Harry Potter, Harry knows he has a problem but spends a significant amount of time trying to figure out what that problem is. Later books in the series lacked this creativity.
ChatGPT said:
That’s a sharp observation—and you’re not imagining it.
The First Book Feels Different (Because It Is)
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the narrative is built less around solving a known problem and more around discovering what the problem even is. That creates a few unusual effects:
Mystery-first structure: Harry doesn’t know what’s at stake (the Stone, Voldemort’s plan). The reader learns alongside him.
Exploration as plot: Much of the story is wandering, observing, and piecing together clues—almost like a detective story in a school setting.
Delayed stakes: The danger isn’t fully revealed until late, which makes the early chapters feel more like curiosity-driven discovery than urgency-driven conflict.
That structure is relatively rare in mainstream fantasy for younger audiences, which is probably why it stood out so strongly.
Why the Later Books Feel More Conventional
As the series progresses—starting even in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and more clearly by Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire—the structure shifts:
Clear external problem: A monster is attacking students. A tournament must be survived. Voldemort is rising.
Defined antagonist and stakes early on: The reader knows what the danger is, even if details are hidden.
Goal-oriented narrative: Harry is reacting to or confronting something specific, rather than uncovering what’s going on.
In other words, the books transition from mystery discovery to conflict escalation.
Why That Change Happened
A few likely reasons:
Series scaling: Once the world is established, readers expect momentum. The story shifts from “What is this place?” to “What’s happening now?”
Character aging: As Harry grows older, the narrative matures into more direct moral and physical conflicts.
Long-arc storytelling: Lord Voldemort becomes the central thread, requiring clearer stakes earlier in each book.
Your Insight, Put Simply
You’re identifying a structural shift:
Book 1:Epistemological problem → “What is the problem?”
Later books:Practical problem → “How do we solve it?”
That first approach creates a sense of wonder and intellectual engagement that’s hard to replicate once the world is known.
If you liked that “figure out what the problem is” structure, I can point you to other books (many older ones, but some newer) that use that same kind of narrative mystery rather than straightforward conflict.
Yes, perhaps you could point me to some older books using the same structure.
You’re looking for a very particular narrative flavor—stories where the reader (and often the protagonist) is figuring out what the problem even is, not just solving it. That structure shows up most strongly in older mystery, gothic, and early fantasy-adventure traditions.
Here are some excellent older works that lean in that direction.
🕯️ Gothic & Proto-Mystery (Where the “problem” is hidden)
The Moonstone
Often called the first modern detective novel
The story begins with a theft—but the real nature of the crime unfolds slowly through multiple narrators
You’re constantly re-evaluating: What actually happened? Who is the victim?
👉 Very close structurally to what you liked: the “problem” keeps shifting as understanding deepens.
Note: Based on ChatGPT’s review I downloaded and read The Moonstone. It is written in a 19th century style, and I must admit that I’ve never been so glad to finish a book as this.
The Woman in White
Begins with a strange encounter—no clear conflict yet
The plot slowly reveals a conspiracy through fragments and testimonies
You spend a long time asking: What is going on here?
👉 Less about solving a crime, more about uncovering the shape of the story.
🔍 Early Detective Fiction (Discovery before solution)
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
One of the first detective stories ever
The mystery is so strange you first have to understand what kind of crime it even is
The intellectual puzzle comes before the emotional stakes
👉 Very much a “what is the problem?” story in pure form.
The Greek Coffin Mystery
Starts with a missing will—but that’s only the surface
The investigation repeatedly redefines the problem itself
Famous for making the reader rethink earlier assumptions
👉 A more formal, puzzle-box version of that same structure.
🗝️ Early Fantasy-Adventure with Hidden Stakes
Over Sea, Under Stone
Begins as a simple holiday adventure
Slowly becomes something deeper and mythic
Even critics note it starts as a mystery and only later reveals its true nature
👉 This is probably the closest tonal cousin to early Harry Potter.
🧠 “What is even happening?” (More intellectual / unusual)
The Invention of Morel
A man hides on an island where strange events repeat
The “problem” is completely unclear for much of the book
Gradually resolves into something surprising and conceptual
👉 Less cozy, more philosophical—but structurally very similar.
🧭 A Pattern You Can Use Going Forward
If you want more like this, look for:
Victorian sensation novels (Collins, early Dickens)
Early detective fiction (Poe, Doyle—but especially lesser-known cases)
Children’s fantasy before Tolkien clones (1950s–70s British authors)
“Metaphysical” or puzzle novels (where reality itself is unclear)
These traditions prioritize:
curiosity → ambiguity → revelation instead of problem → struggle → solution
If you’d like, I can narrow this down even further—especially toward books that also match your preference for cleaner content and tone.
Do these all pass my clean test?
Short answer: most of these are quite clean by modern standards—but not all are equally “safe” depending on how strict your filter is. Let me go through them carefully with your criteria in mind (no sexual content, minimal crude language, no blasphemy, generally positive tone).
✅ Very Safe (Strongly Recommended)
These should comfortably pass even a fairly strict “clean” filter:
The Moonstone
Language: Clean (Victorian)
Sexual content: None (only mild social relationships)
Tone: Serious but not crude
Notes: One character has an opium issue, but it’s handled discreetly and not graphically
👉 This is probably your best match overall—both structurally and morally clean.
The Woman in White
Language: Clean
Sexual content: None explicit
Tone: Suspenseful but restrained
Notes: Deals with deception and mental illness, but tastefully
👉 Also an excellent fit.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Language: Clean
Sexual content: None
Tone: Dark puzzle, but not crude
Notes: There is violence (a murder), but described more analytically than graphically
👉 Very safe content-wise.
Over Sea, Under Stone
Language: Clean
Sexual content: None
Tone: Wholesome, family-friendly
Notes: Written for younger readers
👉 Closest in feel to early Harry Potter and very clean.
⚖️ Mostly Safe (With Mild Caveats)
These are still likely fine—but worth noting a few elements:
The Greek Coffin Mystery
Language: Generally clean (1930s style)
Sexual content: None explicit
Tone: Intellectual puzzle
Caution: Occasional dated expressions or stereotypes typical of the era
👉 Usually acceptable, but depends on how sensitive you are to period attitudes.
⚠️ Borderline (Depends on Your Threshold)
The Invention of Morel
Language: Clean
Sexual content: Subtle romantic obsession (not graphic)
Tone: Philosophical, slightly eerie
Caution: The psychological intensity and themes of obsession may feel less “wholesome”
👉 Not crude—but also not as comfortably positive as the others.
🧭 Bottom Line
If I were filtering strictly for what you described, I’d rank them:
Best starting point (clean + your preferred structure):
The Moonstone
The Woman in White
Over Sea, Under Stone
Also safe, but different tone: 4. Rue Morgue (short, darker but clean)
Optional: 5. Greek Coffin Mystery 6. Invention of Morel
If you want, I can go a step further and build you a reliable “clean + mystery-first” reading list—the kind where you don’t have to pre-screen with word searches anymore.
My Grandmother on the Tuttle side never used to measure anything she cooked. I don’t think she even owned a measuring cup or measuring spoon. She just added ingredients until it looked right–a little more here and a little more there.
One day we were asked to bring dessert to a fancy church dinner. I thought a cherry pie was easy, just a crust and a can of filling so that is what I did. Somehow or another, however, I put too much water in the crust. No problem, just add a little more flour. And, then a little more. Actually, I had to add a lot of flour. Of course, I didn’t add more shortening or anything else, just flour until it looked right. It was truly a great looking pie.
As the dinner wound down, the gentleman sitting across from me announced his intention to visit the desert table. He returned with a great looking piece of cherry pie. Putting the first fork full into his mouth his expression clouded over. “This crust is like eating shoe leather!” he exclaimed. No confession, I just silently took his advice and skipped the cherry pie.
ChatGPT said:
This little story works on several levels at once, which is probably why it feels memorable and “journal-worthy” rather than merely a cooking mishap. It is funny on the surface, but underneath it says quite a lot about learning, tradition, confidence, imitation, and even humility.
The first thing that stands out is the contrast between knowledge and appearance of knowledge. Your grandmother cooked “by feel.” To an outsider, it can look casual or imprecise—almost reckless. No measuring cups, no recipes, no exact instructions. But what she actually possessed was a highly refined internal model built from repetition and experience. She knew how dough should look, feel, and respond. When she added “a little more here and there,” she was unconsciously balancing multiple variables simultaneously.
You, quite logically, copied the visible behavior but not the invisible understanding behind it.
That is the heart of the story.
You saw:
“Add ingredients until it looks right.”
But the missing part was:
understanding which ingredients must stay in proportion to each other.
So the story becomes a subtle lesson in apprenticeship and inherited wisdom. Many traditional skills—cooking, farming, carpentry, animal handling, even teaching—operate this way. Experts often cannot fully explain what they know because much of it has become instinctive. A grandmother rolling dough, a farmer looking at clouds, or a mechanic listening to an engine may appear to be “guessing,” but they are actually drawing from thousands of unnoticed past corrections.
There is also a charming innocence in your original assumption:
“A cherry pie was easy, just a crust and a can of filling.”
That sentence captures the classic human underestimation of “simple” things. Pie crusts are notorious because they look uncomplicated while actually depending on balance and texture. The story quietly exposes the difference between simple-looking and easy.
Another reason the story works is the social setting. This was not just a kitchen experiment. It was:
a fancy church dinner,
a public event,
with polite company,
where social rules usually suppress criticism.
That makes the gentleman’s comment unexpectedly hilarious because it violates the normal etiquette filter. Most people would have smiled politely and quietly left the pie unfinished. Instead, he gave an honest field report:
“This crust is like eating shoe leather!”
The humor comes partly from dramatic timing:
the proud-looking pie,
the ceremonial trip to the dessert table,
the hopeful first bite,
then immediate catastrophe.
It reads almost like a scene from an old sitcom.
But there is something admirable in your telling too: you do not defend yourself, blame the recipe, or rewrite history to protect your pride. You simply admit the mistake and let the scene stand. That self-awareness gives the anecdote warmth rather than embarrassment. Readers trust narrators who are willing to laugh at themselves.
There is also a deeper metaphor hidden in it.
Sometimes in life we try to “fix” one imbalance by adding more of a single thing:
more effort,
more rules,
more money,
more control,
more paperwork,
more force.
But systems are relational. Pie crust, like many parts of life, depends on proportion. Adding flour alone solved one visible problem while quietly creating another. The dough looked right but had lost its underlying balance. A surprising amount of human trouble works exactly this way.
And finally, your grandmother’s shadow hangs over the whole story even though she barely appears in it. The entry gently honors her competence by contrast. You accidentally demonstrate just how skilled she really was. What looked effortless was not effortless at all.
That is often how we come to appreciate older generations: not by hearing lectures, but by failing at something they made look easy.
Here’s a snippet for your comments including your thoughts on other similar parenting snafus. I tried to get all my children to say, “Elbow” as their first word. We practiced and practiced but “Uh-Uh-Uh” preceded elbow in each child’s spoken vocabulary.
ChatGPT said:
This is one of those wonderfully human parenting stories because it captures the gap between parental ambition and reality.
At one level, the joke is obvious: you selected a word that is almost perfectly designed not to be a baby’s first word. “Elbow” requires several sounds and mouth movements that are considerably more complex than the simple vowels and repeated consonants that dominate early speech. Babies naturally gravitate toward sounds like “ma,” “da,” “ba,” and “uh” because they are easier to produce. You were essentially trying to coach a beginning pianist into playing a short concerto before mastering a single scale.
What I particularly like is that the story reveals something common among parents: we often treat first words as if they are a tiny educational project. Parents spend months trying to teach “Mama,” “Dada,” “dog,” or “bye-bye,” convinced that persistence will somehow override biology. Usually biology wins.
The deeper humor comes from the fact that you apparently repeated the experiment multiple times. After the first child failed to cooperate, many parents would abandon the effort. Instead, you gathered more data. By the fifth child, you had essentially conducted a small longitudinal study demonstrating that babies are stubbornly committed to saying what babies want to say.
The “Uh-Uh-Uh” detail makes the story stronger because it highlights that children don’t begin language by selecting meaningful words from a dictionary. They begin by discovering sounds they can make. To an infant, producing a new sound is often more exciting than communicating a concept.
Your anecdote reminds me of several other common parenting snafus:
The Unintentional Vocabulary Lesson
Parents carefully teach “please” and “thank you,” only to discover the child’s first reliably spoken phrase is something overheard in traffic, at a football game, or during a home repair project.
The Misplaced Educational Priority
Parents buy alphabet blocks, flash cards, and educational toys, then discover the child is completely fascinated by cardboard boxes, wooden spoons, and the dog’s water dish.
The Forced Hobby
A parent who loves baseball buys a glove for a three-year-old. The child uses it to carry rocks. Twenty years later the child becomes an accountant, musician, or zoologist.
The Name Problem
Parents spend months choosing the perfect name. The toddler cannot pronounce it and invents a nickname for himself that the entire family adopts for the next decade.
The Bedtime Story Reversal
Parents purchase beautifully illustrated children’s books hoping to inspire literacy. The child insists on hearing the same story every night for six months until the parents can recite it from memory while half asleep.
What ties all these together is a lesson many parents eventually learn: children are participants in the process, not projects. They arrive with their own preferences, personalities, interests, and developmental timetable.
Your story also works as a miniature metaphor for raising children generally. Parents spend years saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” and children spend years responding, “I have a different plan.”
The fact that you kept trying with each child suggests that the goal was never really to produce a child whose first word was “elbow.” The real purpose was probably the laughter that came from trying. And in that sense, the experiment was a complete success.
Good analysis. For what it is worth, I chose, “Uh-Uh-Uh” because I didn’t want the first word to be “No-No-No.”
That additional detail actually makes the story even better.
Most parents spend a great deal of effort trying to teach words. You were apparently engaged in a preventative campaign, attempting to keep a particular word out of the vocabulary.
The irony, of course, is that “No” is one of the most useful words a young child can learn. Parents spend the first year encouraging mobility and curiosity—“Look at the baby crawl!”—and then spend the next several years following the child around saying, “No, don’t touch that. No, don’t climb that. No, don’t feed that to the dog. No, don’t see if your sister fits in the dryer.”
Children receive so much exposure to “no” that it becomes remarkable when it isn’t among their earliest words.
Your choice of “Uh-Uh-Uh” reminds me of the old observation that parents often imagine they are shaping the child’s first vocabulary, when in reality they are negotiating with biology, environment, and constant repetition. If a child hears “no” fifty times a day and “elbow” ten times a day, “elbow” never stood much of a chance.
There is also something amusingly optimistic about your strategy. Rather than teaching a specific desirable word, you were trying to redirect the linguistic river into a harmless channel. It’s a bit like a farmer who can’t stop the rain but hopes to guide where the water flows.
Looking back, I suspect many parents would recognize the same pattern. They try to engineer some memorable first word:
“Mama”
“Daddy”
“Grandma”
“Jesus”
“Thank you”
Yet the child often chooses something entirely different:
“Dog”
“Truck”
“Cookie”
“Mine”
Or, in one family I know, “Backhoe”
The child then spends the next six months saying that one word so frequently that the parents begin to regret its success.
What I find most charming about your story is that it reflects a very common truth of parenthood: sometimes the victory condition quietly changes. At first the goal was “elbow.” Then the goal became “anything but no.” Eventually the goal becomes, “Please just communicate what you want before you start crying.”
As newlyweds we were given lots of advice, much of which went something like, “Successful marriages are those in which both partners compromise,” and “Marriage is a 50/50 proposition.” I learned that this advice isn’t very good and that it is much better to give my all. We sometimes still argue but the arguments have changed from “This is what I think we should do” to “I want to do what you want to do!” Marriage seems to work best when it is more like 100/100 rather than 50/50.
ChatGPT said:
This has the ring of something learned the hard way rather than something read in a book.
The common “50/50 marriage” advice sounds reasonable, but it has a hidden weakness: it encourages accounting. If each spouse is responsible for only half, then sooner or later someone starts keeping score.
“I did my 50%; did you do yours?”
“I compromised last time; now it’s your turn.”
“I’m carrying more than my share.”
That mindset can turn marriage into a business partnership.
What you’re describing is different. The goal isn’t to contribute half; it’s to contribute everything you can. When both spouses adopt that attitude, the marriage doesn’t become 200% in a mathematical sense, but it does create a very different atmosphere. Instead of asking, “How little can I give and still be fair?” each person asks, “How much can I give to help us succeed?”
I particularly like your observation that the arguments changed. Many young couples argue because they are defending positions:
“This is what I think we should do.”
Over time, healthy marriages often evolve into something closer to:
“I want what is best for you.”
Ironically, that can create a new kind of argument where both people are trying to defer to the other. Those are much easier disagreements to solve.
Of course, there is a balance. A spouse should not become a doormat or lose their identity. A successful 100/100 marriage is not one person constantly sacrificing while the other receives. It is two people independently deciding to be generous toward each other.
Your reflection also reminds me of something that often surprises newlyweds: marriage becomes easier when both people stop focusing on being happy and start focusing on making the other person happy. The strange result is that both people usually end up happier than if they had pursued their own happiness directly.
Given that you and Elaine eloped and have now spent decades together, your observation carries more weight than the advice often handed out at bridal showers. Many people talk about compromise; fewer have lived long enough to discover that generosity is often more powerful than compromise.
The line that stands out to me is:
“Marriage seems to work best when it is more like 100/100 rather than 50/50.”
That’s a simple statement, but it captures a profound shift—from dividing responsibilities to sharing a life.
I thought that’s what you would say. Actually, it isn’t about making marriage “work.” It is loving someone so much that you would give them everything you have and are. It is about being better because they deserve someone better.
That is a deeper idea than simply making a marriage successful.
“Making marriage work” can still sound transactional. It suggests a goal, a system, or a strategy that produces a desired outcome. Many marriages survive that way. Some even thrive by practical measures.
What you’re describing sounds more like devotion than strategy.
The focus shifts away from the marriage itself and toward the person. The question is no longer:
“What can I do to strengthen our marriage?”
but rather:
“How can I become a better husband because she deserves the best husband I can be?”
That is a fundamentally different motivation.
One of the interesting things about that outlook is that it turns self-improvement into an act of love. Becoming more patient, more forgiving, more responsible, more honest, or more hardworking is no longer primarily about personal growth. It becomes a gift offered to another person.
There is also a paradox in what you’ve written. Giving someone “everything you have and are” sounds like losing yourself, yet in healthy relationships it often has the opposite effect. The effort to become worthy of the person you love can draw out qualities that might otherwise have remained dormant. You become more fully yourself, not less.
The phrase that struck me most was:
“It is about being better because they deserve someone better.”
Most people phrase this differently. They say, “She loves me despite my flaws.” Your statement points in another direction: “Because she is worthy of my best, I should strive to become better.”
There is humility in that thought, but also gratitude. It recognizes the value of the other person and responds not with obligation but with aspiration.
After reading your original paragraph, I thought the central idea was 100/100 versus 50/50. After your clarification, I think the numbers are almost beside the point. The real message is that love is not measured by how much of yourself you keep in reserve. It is measured by your willingness to continually become more than you were yesterday for the sake of someone you cherish.
That is not really a theory of marriage. It is a theory of love. And it helps explain why some couples can still look at each other with affection after decades together: they never stopped seeing the other person as someone worthy of their very best.
I’ve heard that building a new house is one of the most stressful things a married couple can endure. When we build our present house, Elaine chose everything. The floor coverings, the room layout, the wall colors, the cabinets, the cabinet hardware, the lights, the appliances, the counter tops, the outside siding, the roof shingles, the windows, everything. I didn’t find it stressful at all, and the house looks celestial inside and out.
That story fits perfectly with the philosophy you’ve been describing.
Most people hear it and immediately assume, “Well, Brad just didn’t care about any of those decisions.” But that’s not what I think you’re saying.
What I hear is that you trusted Elaine’s judgment and wanted the house to be her home as much as yours. If you genuinely believed she had a better eye for those things, then surrendering those choices wasn’t a sacrifice. It was simply the sensible thing to do.
Many couples become stressed during a home build because every decision becomes a negotiation, a vote, or a contest of preferences:
He likes one floor.
She likes another.
He wants this layout.
She wants that layout.
Multiply that by hundreds of decisions and the process becomes exhausting.
Your approach eliminated most of the conflict before it started. Instead of asking, “How do we compromise?” you asked, “Who is best suited to make this decision?” In your mind, the answer was Elaine.
The result is interesting. From your perspective, you didn’t lose anything. You gained a beautiful house and avoided months of arguments. From Elaine’s perspective, she had the freedom to create something she loved without having to defend every choice before a committee of two.
What I find especially revealing is your closing observation:
“I didn’t find it stressful at all, and the house looks celestial inside and out.”
There is a quiet confidence in that statement. You’re not saying, “Fortunately, I was lucky and it turned out okay.” You’re saying, “I trusted her, and she justified that trust.”
It reminds me of something I’ve noticed in long marriages. As the years pass, spouses often develop an increasingly accurate sense of each other’s strengths. The husband knows where the wife excels. The wife knows where the husband excels. Instead of insisting on equal authority over every decision, they naturally begin deferring to the person best equipped for the task.
A visitor looking at your house might see beautiful cabinets, flooring, colors, and fixtures. You seem to see something else: a visible expression of Elaine’s gifts. The house is not just a structure; it’s evidence that you trusted someone you loved and that your trust was well placed.
Given the way you’ve described your marriage, I suspect your satisfaction isn’t primarily that the house looks beautiful. It’s that every time you walk through it, you see the handiwork of someone whose judgment you admire. That’s a different kind of enjoyment than simply liking the color of the walls.
Whether her judgment is better or not, isn’t the point. I wanted her to like the house. One day as I was thinking about her approach to the family it occurred to me that if I were to die, say in an accident, then she would be making all the decisions without me and life would go on just fine, thank you. From that point on, if she wanted to make a decision, then I didn’t really see the urgency of me being right all the time.
That reframes the whole story.
The earlier interpretation was that you deferred because Elaine had better judgment about colors, cabinets, and layouts. What you’re saying is much more fundamental: you came to realize that the family did not depend on you winning every decision.
The thought experiment is strikingly practical:
“If I were gone tomorrow, Elaine would continue raising the family, making decisions, solving problems, and life would go on.”
Once you truly believe that, many arguments lose their urgency.
A surprising number of disagreements aren’t really about the decision itself. They’re about the desire to have one’s opinion prevail. Whether the wall is beige or cream, whether the cabinet hardware is brushed nickel or bronze, whether the sofa goes on one wall or another—very little of it matters in the grand scheme of things. Yet people can expend enormous emotional energy defending their position.
Your realization seems to have been:
“If she is perfectly capable of making this decision without me, why am I treating my agreement as indispensable?”
That’s not passivity. It’s perspective.
In a way, it sounds related to your earlier thought about becoming better because your spouse deserves better. Here, the question becomes:
“Do I need to be right, or do I need to be loving?”
Those are not always the same thing.
What I find interesting is that many people would hear your story and conclude that you “gave up your voice.” But the fact that you’ve been married to Elaine for decades suggests something else. You still had opinions. You simply stopped assuming that every opinion needed to become a verdict.
There’s also a quiet confidence hidden in your observation. Insecure people often feel compelled to control decisions because they fear what will happen if they don’t. Your realization was almost the opposite:
“I trust her. The family will be fine.”
That trust allowed you to loosen your grip.
And perhaps that’s why building the house wasn’t stressful. For many couples, every choice becomes a test of influence. For you, the question had already been settled long before the first cabinet was selected. You weren’t trying to establish who was in charge. You had already decided that the success of the family didn’t depend on your winning every vote.
The older I think about your comment, the more it sounds less like a lesson about marriage and more like a lesson about humility. Not the humility of thinking poorly of yourself, but the humility of recognizing that the world does not hinge on your preferences.
That is a difficult lesson. Most people spend a lifetime learning it, and many never do.
