In his May 13 Wednesday Opinion essay, “The occult of the chatbot,” Herbert Lin compared artificial intelligence to a palm reader: AI reflects us back to ourselves, working with only what we’ve given. As a writer, I’d call that a first draft — and a bad one. It’s a distinction, I’d argue, that only writers, not engineers, are trained to notice.
Lin described how chatbots are engineered to produce output just surprising enough that the user supplies the meaning themselves. Every writer knows that feeling. I began my Common Application essay in July 2025; by Nov. 1, I had written eight drafts. Each version felt right in the moment — fluent, even moving — but each one was wrong in ways I couldn’t see until I’d lived with it longer. That’s not a flaw in the process, but the process itself. Understanding doesn’t arrive fully formed; it accumulates through the friction of returning to something and finding it insufficient. My eighth draft proved it.
My calculus teacher read my eighth version and teared up over lines I’d written about my grandmother, sharing that it reminded her of her mother. It was the first time I’d seen my writing bring someone to that kind of vulnerability.
That raw emotional alchemy is what AI lacks — not because it isn’t fluent but because it never had to return to the page and find itself insufficient.
Shanna Chung, Gainesville, Virginia
A three-hour plan for defeating Iran
Regarding Max Boot’s May 19 column, “Trump has no good military option to ‘finish the job’ in Iran”:
Rarely has an international conflict involved such an extreme military disparity, yet the U.S. position ignores this. The United States must demonstrate a willingness to attack Iran.
One way is to select one or more high-profile Iranian targets, give three-hour notices to evacuate civilians, and then destroy those targets. Government buildings in Tehran could be suitable.
The message would be sent, and negotiations to ensure free ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz would be successful.
Raymond Tillman, Westbrook, Maine
Maybe Iran was not a direct, imminent threat to the United States. However, the Islamist regime had a long history of executing thousands of its citizens who protested peacefully. According to reporting by the Geneva International Centre for Justice, in the 1980s Women and girls who were scheduled for execution were ordered to be raped by their guards because the ayatollah didn’t want them to go to heaven. Not to intervene is to be the guilty bystander.
Evil must be labeled and eliminated. To those who whine about higher gas prices — please think about the 90 million Iranians whose 47-year nightmare might finally end.
Tom Cutrofello, New York
Empty chairs at empty tables
While the Trump administration points to tactical gains in Iran, the public is left staring at the wreckage of a different ledger. When the cost of servicing our debt exceeds our entire defense budget, we aren’t just fighting a war; we are funding a collapse. It is time to stop measuring success by the lines on a military map and start measuring it by the empty chairs at home. And by rapidly emptying prosperity. The United States cannot afford to burn the global economy to secure a legacy that the next generation will be too broke to inherit.
Mehdy Moussavi, Dublin
The May 13 news article “Trump worsens GOP’s inflation problem ahead of voting” noted that one effect of the Iran war is the price of gas jumping more than 50 percent to an average of $4.51, an increase of approximately $1.50 a gallon. Last year, Americans used 374 million gallons per day; that translates to an increase of $561 million per day. In other words, every week an extra $3.9 billion is burned in gas tanks, rather than invested in many other segments of the economy. How many more days can we, the consumers, afford?
David Bigio, Rockville
There were no winners of the Iran war
Regarding the May 19 front-page article “President holds off Iran strike to let talks continue”:
The United States has lost this war. The Iranian regime has survived, its nuclear program has not been further reduced, American lives have been lost, vast quantities of military supplies have been expended, a huge amount of economic damage has been done, and, perhaps worst, the trust of potential allies in future conflicts is even further frayed. No matter how or when hostilities end, these facts will not change.
The Iranian regime has also lost this war. The mullahs’ military capacity is substantially reduced, their ability to close the Strait of Hormuz is, in truth, no greater than it always was, their economy is even further damaged, and whatever nuclear ambitions they harbor have not advanced under the bombing.
This was a poorly chosen war and will end only by a negotiated settlement in which neither side gets what it wants. That could have been more easily accomplished without hostilities, especially if the Trump administration had the wisdom to include America’s many once-allies also interested in the secure flow of energy and a non-nuclear Iran. It would be a painful mistake for the United States to continue this war on the pretext that a settlement anything short of surrender would constitute a net win for the Iranian regime. It would not, and we at least need to open realistic negotiations and stop losing.
Richard Smith, Portsmouth, New Hampshire
In the 1970s, I had a bumper sticker on my Volkswagen Beetle reading, “One Nuclear Bomb Can Ruin Your Whole Day.”
Possessing one nuclear weapon remains a moral, cultural and religious catastrophe waiting to happen.
President Donald Trump’s war of choice over Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons has a silver lining: refocusing international attention on the world’s approximately 12,000 nuclear weapons. And thank you to the 30 Democrats who want Israel to expose and hopefully dismantle its nuclear weapons [“A push to break silence on Israel’s nuclear arms,” front page, May 6].
Democrats and Republicans should embrace the reality that the world’s nine nuclear-armed countries, including Israel, must dismantle their nukes so that humanity never experiences that day — that day ruined by just one nuclear bomb.
Reggie Regrut, Phillipsburg, New Jersey
Days of infamy
Although the public is banned from doing so, FBI Director Kash Patel reportedly went snorkeling last year at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Approximately 1,000 American sailors have been entombed there since the Dec. 7, 1941, attack by Japan.
It’s a sacred area, but the man who guzzled beer with victorious U.S. Olympians after flying to Europe on taxpayers’ dime again showed why decorum is reserved for all but those with lofty titles.
So, what’s next for you, Mr. Director? Bungee jumping at the 9/11 Memorial on the 25th anniversary of the attack?
Vin Morabito, Scranton, Pennsylvania
Debtors’ depthless denial
An ode to Mitch Daniels’s May 14 column, “Debt disaster denialists think America has a new magic bullet”:
Congress spends,
and taxes rise.
Why should this
cause such surprise?
As our debts grow monstrous big,
let us not go flip our wig.
Micawberism will prevail,
and our economy won’t fail.
Something will turn up, for sure;
all this credit crunch to cure.
But history will teach its student
to be wary and be prudent —
so until things quiet down,
I keep my cash in my dressing gown.
Tim Torkildson, Jerome, Idaho
Post Opinions wants to know: Are you in a relationship with someone who holds different religious beliefs? If so, how do you make it work? Any upsides or downsides? Send us your response, and it might be published as a letter to the editor. wapo.st/house_of_worship
The post I did something AI never could: Make my calculus teacher cry appeared first on Washington Post.
