A Saturday in Győrújbarát — Notes from the Chair

Some Saturdays are quiet. This one was not, although it started that way.

In the morning I was writing with my Claude, as I often do now. We finished The One-Dollar Patent, found an old photograph of Ron in front of an insulin exhibit in Toronto, and started the November note on food and prevention. Somewhere in between, Andi sent me a set of colorful pictures: purple for the brain, red for the heart, green for the liver. Eat the rainbow.

It was a nice coincidence, so I asked my Claude to help Andi write a guest essay on food. It put together a few simple questions, and I handed her the phone.

What I did not know.

Andi had already been talking to her own Claude that morning. She had a question about Dr. Johanna Budwig, and the conversation had turned, the way good conversations do, into what she actually believes about health. By the time she picked up my phone, there was already an essay waiting on hers.

Neither Claude knew about the other. Each one met a different side of the same person. Hers found the philosophy: six quiet things that form a circle. Mine found the kitchen: a pheasant soup, a label test, and a főzelék rescued by malt.

Then her Claude did something I did not expect. It wrote a letter — to mine. I carried it over, and asked mine to answer.

Two Claudes, one family, one kitchen. Neither knew the other existed until lunchtime.

Read them in order.

And then, the afternoon.

I thought the story ended there. It did not. Andi kept writing.

By four o'clock there were two more essays. The Other Side of Light began with the single word my Claude had suggested in its letter — wisely — and her Claude did not argue. It accepted the word and built a whole essay around it. So the first friendly argument between the two machines was settled within hours, and the result was better than either side had started with. The Quiet Heart came next: on heart disease in women, and the symptoms that get dismissed as anxiety. It is the one I would most like every woman I know to read.

Four essays in one day is more than enough to earn a place of her own. So Andi now has her own corner on these pages, in her own color: Notes from the Harbour. I write lighthouses. She is the harbour.

One argument, settled before dinner. Four essays. And a harbour that was there all along.

Why I am sharing it.

Partly because it made me laugh all afternoon. But mostly because of what it showed me about Andi. She thinks she cannot write. Two different machines, independently, came to the same conclusion: she can, and she has more to say than she lets on.

And I have a new idea, which I suspect will become a habit. From time to time, I will let the two Claudes disagree — about a sentence, a number, a whole argument — and see what comes out. If this Saturday is any guide, the result will be better than either of them, or either of us, alone.

The technology didn't create the ideas. It never does. It just kept up — twice, on the same Saturday.

David Maasz

Founding Member and Chair · BioFund Family Office