[Hasu]

A couple of thoughts:

1) The story of stone soup is the story of how some grifters got a free meal. I don't think it's moral instruction, or an example to be learned from, unless you are a grifter.

2) In the stone soup example and in cases like Wikipedia, the soup is freely shared with everyone, regardless of their contributions. Is AI like that, or in the AI stone soup story, are the travelers charging everyone for a bowl of soup? Doesn't that change the story quite a bit?

[sdwr]

If you take off your cynicism-tinted glasses, it's the story of how community is more than the sum of its parts, and how it sometimes needs a "beautiful lie" as a catalyst (like justice, or freedom!)

[Hasu]

If you think that community needs a group of strangers to con them into coming together and being more than the sum of its parts, you are more cynical than I am.

[jimmaswell]

Society at large depends on the collective belief in society. It would stop existing tomorrow if everyone stopped pretending it existed. Laws, court rulings, road signs, it's all imaginary, but the collective illusion allows us to accomplish a lot more than than the alternative.

[card_zero]

Numbers, language, boundaries between physical objects, all imaginary. Space, time, meaning, France, you name it. Alternatively: all real.

[Terr_]

While I can see how it can be retold that way, the core plot-mechanic is still (A) fraud by pot-stirrers and (B) greed by participants.

At each step, the participant (especially the first) is deliberately misled to believe that they can secure valuable soup for less-valuable ingredients.

It is not an appeal to their better nature--in many tellings the travelers have already tried that--but an appeal to their baser nature. For it to be a positive story, one must accept that the ends have somehow justified the means.

[sdwr]

That's a good point!