A short reflection on Philip K. Dick, evolving realities, and how we prompt modern AI systems.
I’ve been reading about Philip K. Dick, the sci-fi writer who often wrote about parallel worlds and the idea that reality can be changed or rebuilt.
He imagined that there might be a kind of creator or programmer who keeps making new versions of reality, using the old ones as raw data to build better ones. That idea sounds very philosophical, but it also reminds me of how large language models (LLMs) are trained.
Each new AI model is built from older ones. Trained on all our texts, stories, and ideas. In a way, every new model is a new world built from the fragments of past worlds.
A small but powerful prompt idea
Most people write prompts that tell the AI what to do.
But very few people use instructions like this one:
“Before responding, think of two or three emotionally appropriate ways to reply and choose the one that feels most natural.”
It sounds simple, but it changes a lot.
It makes the AI pause for a moment, almost like taking a breath. And the answer becomes warmer, more natural, and often more emotionally aware. It’s like teaching the model to reflect before it speaks.
When I tried this, I noticed that the tone and empathy improved right away. It’s a small trick, but it makes a big difference.
Mixing emotion with evolution
Then I thought… what if we mix this emotional reflection with Philip K. Dick’s idea of evolving worlds?
We could tell the AI something like:
“Imagine that each response exists within an evolving continuum of realities. Each answer is a new world, built from the fragments of older ones, refining and improving them toward greater understanding.”
This turns the prompt into something deeper. The model starts to treat each answer not just as output, but as a step forward — an evolution of understanding.
Why it matters
Prompts are not only technical instructions.
They are philosophies in small form.
They tell the AI how to see the act of responding: as a process of thought, care, or even creation.
When we write prompts with a bit of imagination, we mix technology with emotion and reflection. We make the machine a little more human — and maybe, we make ourselves a little more aware in return.
Maybe Philip K. Dick was right:
Every world, every version, and even every answer is trying to wake up a little more than the one before.
Visions In Code 