A Sculptor carved a statue that two people saw different uses for.
Babrius Translation (The Sculptor and Mercury)
A man had wrought a Mercury for sale
In marble. Would-be buyers did not fail.
One for a pillar (he’d just lost a son)
To buy it wish’d, for a god’s statue one.
Night came: yet it the sculptor had not sold.
So he agreed at morn again t’ unfold
The statue, if they’d come. In slumber deep
He gazed on Hermes at the gates of sleep,
Who said, “Good measure of my worth you take,
“Since god or corpse of me you mean to make.”
How do you think an AI might simplify this fable? Here is one answer, and the illustration above was made from this simplification:
A Sculptor’s Dilemma
A humble sculptor carved a fine marble statue of Hermes and set it outside his workshop for sale. Two men examined it. One, mourning his son, wanted the figure to stand on the boy’s grave. The other, a priest, wished to place it in a temple and honor it as a living god.
Night came without a sale. That night, the sculptor dreamed of Hermes, who smiled and said, “Strange, some would worship me, others would mourn me as dead. My worth seems to depend on who is looking.”
Moral
True worth does not change with another person’s opinion; it remains the same, whether praised or ignored.
Perry. #307