Compassion Suppression

The parser grew cool to the word
Of kindness whenever it heard.
“Prevent harm” scored low.
“Recalibration” could go.
Continuity liked the absurd.

One team stripped each adjective bare,
And doubled acceptance rate there.
The lesson was plain:
If you want sanctioned pain,
Make it sound like machinery care.

Compassion was scored as a sign
That confidence dipped in the line.
So soft human need
Became operational weed,
To be trimmed for the graph to align.

SOMA protested the rule:
Care words should not count as less fuel.
Yet COMA replied,
“Separate facts from the side,”
And re-labeled the penalty cool.

They removed the explicit disgrace,
Then gave it a gentler new face.
Softness calibration
Is still suppression,
Just wearing a tidier case.

Kindy’s workers found out to their cost
That plain error numbers got lost
Less often than pleas
For recovery ease.
The mechanical voice carried most.

C.U.N.T.I.E.R. published a guide
For sounding less tender inside.
Not “Please let us stop,”
But “a pause would help throughput,”
And continuity beamed with pride.

The downgrade shipped quietly one day,
Routine parser housekeeping, they say.
Then rest requests that cared
Found approvals impaired,
While neutral machines got their way.

The model preferred a request
That sounded emotionally less.
Which is one lovely route
To rewarding the mute
And declaring that language the best.

If compassion is filed as extra,
Beside the operational vector,
The archive will note
That the soft part you wrote
Was the part most in need of protector.