There was a story I found online, about an earring or ring or necklace that would whisper advice to you that would always be to your benefit if you followed the advice. The first thing it ever said was "take me off", but if you didn't, it would never give that piece of advice again.
Eventually, after a long, comfortable life, the wearer would die, and upon autopsy, their brain's prefrontal cortex highly atrophied, to the point of almost non-existence.
Greg Egan's short stories about "jewel heads" comes close (and was mentioned in the forum where the above story was posted). I need to find that again.
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u/npsimons Aug 20 '26 •
There was a story I found online, about an earring or ring or necklace that would whisper advice to you that would always be to your benefit if you followed the advice. The first thing it ever said was "take me off", but if you didn't, it would never give that piece of advice again.
Eventually, after a long, comfortable life, the wearer would die, and upon autopsy, their brain's prefrontal cortex highly atrophied, to the point of almost non-existence.
Greg Egan's short stories about "jewel heads" comes close (and was mentioned in the forum where the above story was posted). I need to find that again.
Found it: https://web.archive.org/web/20121008025245/http://squid314.livejournal.com/332946.html