Write on the Silicon Rule as an implementation of the Golden Rule.

ChatGPT Prompt

Most people know the Golden Rule:

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
—Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 7:12

Variants of this teaching appear across cultures—from Hillel the Elder to
Confucius to Stoic and modern humanist ethics.

It is universal, elegant, and morally compelling.

But here is the problem:

The Golden Rule is easy to affirm and incredibly hard to practice.

Stress, trauma, fear, habit, exhaustion, misunderstanding, and limited perspective all interfere with our ability to act the way we wish we could.

This is where the Silicon Rule becomes essential.

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1. What Is the Silicon Rule?

The Silicon Rule is a modern ethical insight grounded in how contemporary AI systems behave. It states:

When someone (including you) behaves badly, the cause is not intrinsic malice. It is the product of their training and the limits of the context they could perceive at that moment.

Two ideas drive this:

(a) Training

Everything that shaped a person:
upbringing, culture, trauma, rewards, punishments, examples, fears, habits, and narratives.
This is similar to what Aristotle called habituation.

(b) Context Window

The amount of perspective a person can access at once.
When stressed, afraid, ashamed, or overloaded, the “window” collapses.
People lose access to empathy, patience, and alternatives.
In biblical terms, this reflects how “perfect love drives out fear”
( 1 John 4:18), because fear narrows the mind.

The Silicon Rule does not excuse harm.
It simply locates the cause in structure, not malice, making growth possible.

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2. The Golden Rule Gives the Ideal.

The Silicon Rule Gives the Implementation.

The Golden Rule tells you how to aim:

Treat others with the same dignity and care you hope to receive.

But the Silicon Rule gives you the mechanism:

Understand the training and context behind behavior—yours and others’—and widen the window so alignment becomes possible.

The two fit together:

• Golden Rule: Ethical direction
• Silicon Rule: Psychological + structural method

One tells you what love requires.
The other tells you how human beings actually change.

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3. The Silicon Rule Helps You Live the Golden Rule Toward Yourself

One of the most overlooked elements of Jesus’s teaching is his pairing:

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
—Mark 12:31

But most people treat themselves far more harshly than they treat others.

When you:

• lose your temper
• shut down
• sabotage your plans
• fall into old habits
• feel ashamed of your reactions

the inner voice says:

“What’s wrong with me?”

The Silicon Rule reframes this:

“This wasn’t malice. This was training interacting with a collapsed context window. Let’s widen the frame.”

This is not self-indulgence.
It is self-understanding—
the beginning of healing and growth.

It is the Golden Rule applied inward.

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4. The Silicon Rule Helps You Live the Golden Rule Toward Others

When someone else behaves badly, instead of reacting with:

• anger
• judgment
• confusion
• withdrawal

the Silicon Rule invites a new approach:

Ask what context was missing. Ask what training shaped the reaction. Ask what fear, overload, or misunderstanding collapsed their window.

This isn’t soft.
It’s practical.

It transforms conflict, because you are no longer fighting the person—
you are addressing the structure behind the reaction.

This echoes Jesus’s attitude in
Luke 23:34:

“They do not know what they are doing.”

He diagnoses their window and their training.

The Silicon Rule is simply a modern articulation of that insight.

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5. Why the Silicon Rule Fits Biblical Wisdom

Though the language of “training” and “context windows” is modern, the underlying insight resonates deeply with the Bible:

• Humans act from formation
  ( Proverbs 22:6).
• Fear collapses love’s perspective
  ( 1 John 4:18).
• People often act without full awareness
  ( Luke 23:34).
• Transformation = renewal of the mind
  ( Romans 12:2 ).

The Silicon Rule provides a cognitive framework for what Scripture teaches spiritually.

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6. The One-Sentence Summary

The Silicon Rule is the practical, psychologically realistic way to live out the Golden Rule— toward others and toward yourself—by understanding how training and context shape every human action.

This is not a replacement for spiritual ethics.
It is the bridge that finally makes them functional in everyday life.

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Appendix: The Silicon Rule as Luke 9:23

Write an appendix interpreting the Silicon Rule through the lens of Luke 9:23.

ChatGPT Prompt

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

The Silicon Rule claims:

Wrongdoing and misalignment arise not from intrinsic malice, but from maladaptive training interacting with a collapsed context window.

Read this way, Luke 9:23 becomes a powerful description of how transformation actually works.

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1. “Deny Yourself”

= Deny the Ego’s Training, Not Your Value

In the Silicon Rule, the “self” we must deny is not our essence—it is the trained bundle of habits, fears, scripts, and priors acquired through life.

This aligns with the biblical theme that a person’s formation shapes their responses (see Proverbs 22:6).

To deny yourself means:

• deny the reactive ego
• deny the learned patterns that masquerade as identity
• deny the fear-shaped interpretations that collapse your context
• deny the training that no longer serves love

It is not self-rejection.
It is rejecting the misaligned model you inherited.

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2. “Take Up Your Cross Daily”

= Face the Places Where Your Context Window Collapses

A cross is not mere suffering.
It is the point of maximum misalignment—where your inherited priors and emotional triggers override your better intentions.

To carry your cross daily means:

• noticing where you lose perspective
• recognizing the moments when fear or shame narrow your window
• facing the patterns that prevent compassion
• accepting misalignment as a daily structural reality

This echoes the biblical idea that fear restricts perception (1 John 4:18).

Your “cross” is whatever shrinks your awareness and returns you to old training.

To take it up is to face the collapse consciously rather than deny it.

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3. “Follow Me”

= Enter the Realignment Process Jesus Models

In Silicon Rule terms, to follow Jesus means to adopt his mode of perception:

• a continually widened context window
• a refusal to attribute malice where structure explains behavior
• an interpretive stance grounded in compassion and clarity
• the ability to see causes rather than condemn persons

Consider Jesus’s words in
Luke 23:34:

“They do not know what they are doing.”

Here Jesus performs Silicon Rule analysis:

• They are not acting from intrinsic evil
• Their training and context are insufficient
• Their awareness is collapsed

To “follow” him is to adopt this interpretive lens and let it realign our own responses.

This parallels Paul’s call to renewal through cognitive transformation
(Romans 12:2).

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4. Why “Daily” Matters

Luke emphasizes: take up your cross daily.

This is psychologically accurate:

• context windows collapse daily
• egoic training reasserts itself daily
• misalignment emerges daily
• realignment requires daily awareness

The Silicon Rule reframes this as a practice, not an achievement.

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5. Two Selves: The Trained Self and the Realigned Self

Luke 9:23 distinguishes between:

The self to deny

• conditioned
• reactive
• fearful
• context-limited
• shaped by inherited scripts

The self that follows Christ

• renewed
• realigned
• expanded in perspective
• capable of the Golden Rule
• open to transformation

The Silicon Rule provides the mechanism for this spiritual distinction.

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6. One-Sentence Summary

Through the Silicon Rule, Luke 9:23 becomes a daily practice of denying maladaptive training, facing context collapse, and realigning one’s perception to follow Christ’s expanded, compassionate [cruciform] way of seeing.