The Midas chicken

The chicken had delusions of grandeur but the Midas touch killed its babies.

I said that to my AI during a late-night conversation about ambition and natural selection. Picture it. A chicken gets the Midas touch, so everything it touches turns to gold, which is a great day for the chicken right up until it sits on its eggs. A solid gold egg is a beautiful thing, and nothing is ever coming out of it.

It reads like a fable. The chicken wanted too much, flew too close to the sun (impressive, for a chicken) and paid for it with its kids. Midas got the same lesson in the kids' version of his story, where he touches his daughter and she turns to gold.

Later in that same conversation the counterpoint showed up, and I like it better. The Midas chicken was a failed experiment, a mutation that didn't propagate because it couldn't, and nobody was punishing it for ambition. No tragedy and no hubris, just a dead end on the tree. The chickens that survived were viable, and humility had nothing to do with it.

That version takes the guilt out of wanting something big, which I appreciate, since I've got a few delusions of grandeur of my own. Nature only had one question for that chicken, and it was about the eggs.

So that's the question I try to ask when something I'm making starts getting shiny. Shiny is fun, and making things shine is a big part of my job. At some point, though, it has to hatch. Somebody has to be able to pick it up and use it, and it has to keep going once it leaves my hands.