When I was a kid, we lived within blocks of two different libraries. The city library was an imposing edifice of stone and stained glass and silence; the county library a big, well-lit room in the redbrick county office building. While its architecture was uninspiring, that county library was a treasure trove, a warren of shelves filled with books: especially children’s books. 

I can still remember the long rows of biographies for kids: famous women in faded red bindings, famous men in faded blue bindings. One summer I read every one of those biographies. I liked thinking about other people’s courage and creativity. I liked thinking that my life, too, might make a story that ended well.

A recent article on story-thinking intelligence has me remembering those books.

I’ve been trying to ignore A.I.—I feel like there’s plenty else for me to think about these days. I have avoided selecting A. I. options on the computer because of some instinctual distrust. I haven’t quite put it into words, but reading about the science of story-thinking has made my reticence sensible. The way I understand it, A.I. has the capacity for logic and calculation and deduction: it doesn’t have or know how to value imagination. Narratives—stories—teach us imagination. Stories put us inside lives unlike our own and help us think, “What if?” This capacity for creativity, for thinking in stories, make us human. 

In a recent conversation about the U.S., someone said, “I can’t help but think—when I watch the videos of ICE invading homes—that they grew up playing video games. Video games are their frame of reference for what they’re doing.” 

Think about it: the woman standing in the open door, dressed in scrubs and crocs, the group of masked men aiming enormous guns at her. It doesn’t look like they’re thinking, “Is there a different way to do this?” 

If the mental frame you’re using is a video game, then the rules and possible outcomes are predetermined. Kick in doors, find the bad guys, grab ’em and leave. New solutions aren’t rewarded. There’s no place for creativity or imagination or empathy: logic, calculation, and deduction reign. The goal is getting better and faster at the same task; outcomes are pre-determined by the game’s creator.

But life isn’t like that. We’re never in exactly the same situation twice; outcomes are never predestined. Things are always changing, including our access to empathy, ethics, and courage. If all you know is logic, calculation and deduction, you’re gonna miss these other possibilities. You won’t recognize anything new, imagine a different world, try another way.

We know how to use logic, calculation and deduction. These skills often yield comfortable, predictable solutions. But human solutions are usually messy, creative, surprising. They are open-ended. They require us to recognize that we never have ultimate control; that logic and justice are not at all the same; that there is always another way; that a lot of grey exists between black and white. 

It takes courage and creativity to make a good ending possible.