What grief really is

Once upon a time, in a far-off land, there was a very lazy king who spent all day lounging on his throne. One day, his advisors came to him with a problem: the kingdom was running out of money.

"After all," he said, "everyone enjoys a good joke, so it's only fair that they should pay for the privilege."

The Joke Tax

Once upon a time, in a far-off land, there was a very lazy king who spent all day lounging on his throne. One day, his advisors came to him with a problem: the kingdom was running out of money.

• 1st level of puns: 5 gold coins
• 2nd level of jokes: 10 gold coins
• 3rd level of one-liners : 20 gold coins

As a result, people stopped telling jokes, and the kingdom fell into a gloom. But there was one person who refused to let the king's foolishness get him down: a court jester named Jokester.

The People's Rebellion

The people of the kingdom, feeling uplifted by the laughter, started to tell jokes and puns again, and soon the entire kingdom was in on the joke.

The king, seeing how much happier his subjects were, realized the error of his ways and repealed the joke tax. Jokester was declared a hero, and the kingdom lived happily ever after.

The moral of the story is: never underestimate the power of a good laugh and always be careful of bad ideas.

Sources

• 1Hollanek, T., & Nowaczyk-Basińska, K. (2024). Griefbots, Deadbots, Postmortem Avatars: on Responsible Applications of Generative AI in the Digital Afterlife Industry. Philosophy & Technology, 37, 63. pringer
• Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The dual process model of coping with bereavement. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224. PubMed
• Klass, D., Silverman, P.R., & Nickman, S.L. (Eds.). (1996). Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief. Taylor & Francis. Routledge
• University of Cambridge: Call for safeguards to prevent unwanted 'hauntings' by AI chatbots