I continue to think about the tendency of LLMs to confabulate, that is, to make stuff up that is simply not true of the world. As I have remarked here and there, I tend to think that 1) confabulation is inherent in the architecture, and 2) that this “confabulation” is the default mode of human language. We just make things up.
However, we must live with one another and that requires cooperation. Effective communication requires agreement. It turns out that the external world is a convenient locus for that agreement. We agree that THAT tree over is a pine, that THAT apple is ripe, that THAT bird is a cardinal, that the stew is too salty, the earth is round and that the moon travels around the earth every 28 days. Some of these agreements may come easily, others are more difficult in the making.evolu
However true that may be, it does seem a bit odd to think of external reality as a vehicle for grounding agreement on language use. And, if I thought about it a bit, I could probably come up with some account of why that doesn’t seem quite right. But I’m stalking a different beast at the moment.
Consider this observation that Weston La Barre made in 1972 in The Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion (p. 60):
... the Australian Bushman themselves equate dream-time with the myth-time that is mysteriously brought back in ritual; myth is as timeless as the unconscious mind. It is the delectability of dreams that makes them desirable, and it is their desirability that (along with lowered critical threshold) that gives them their intense “reality” and conviction. The fact that he dreams first force on man the need to epistemologize.
Let’s pretend we’ve just gotten up from a dream. What do we make of it? Or perhaps, how do we make anything of it?
We tell it to others, and they tell us their dreams. We talk and arrive at some agreement about what transpires in those dreams, about the nature of those events and their relationship to the waking world. I am thus reminded of Bob Dylan’s line in “Talkin’ World War III Blues”: “I’ll let you be in my dreams of I can be in yours.”
Is that what expressive culture is about, religious myth, ritual, folktales, drama, epics, novels, not to mention the visual and plastic arts as well? Are they vehicles for allowing us to reach agreement about certain of our, shall we say, confabulations?
This brings up a post from February, What is it about depicting sex in writing? From shared knowledge to common knowledge. Using three novels as examples (Pride and Prejudice, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and Lady Chatterly’s Lover) I suggested that as we move from one to the other in historical order, we’re moving from shared knowledge of sexual matters to common knowledge. Those are terms from game theory. We talk of shared knowledge when everyone knows something, but aren’t aware that the others know that same thing. Once everyone comes to know that everyone knows that thing, whatever it is, that knowledge has become common knowledge.
I have thus begun to wonder: Is that how the arts function over time? I recently discussed the matter with Claude 3.7. Here’s its response:
It's not just that artistic styles change, but that art gradually makes explicit what was once implicit across many domains of human experience.
This pattern extends beyond sexuality. Consider how literature has treated:
- Mental illness (from metaphorical to explicit)
- Social class tensions (from coded to direct)
- Religious doubt (from allegorical to overt)
- Political criticism (from veiled to unmistakable)
In each case, what begins as shared knowledge eventually becomes common knowledge through artistic expression. This does suggest a kind of progress - not necessarily aesthetic progress, but progress in cultural honesty and transparency.
It is by no means obvious that this is the case. But I’m certainly sympathetic.
What is undeniable is that in the last 15 years or so digital humanists are found empirical evidence of unidirectional trends measured attributed of literary texts over long periods of time. Perhaps the most interesting example is in Matthew Jocker’s Macroanalysis, where he shows a unidirectional trend in a corpus of 3000 Anglophone novels from the 19th century. I discuss this in a number of posts. This working paper might be the place to start: On the direction of literary history: How should we interpret that 3300 node graph in Macroanalysis? There’s another working paper: On the Direction of 19th Century Poetic Style, Underwood and Sellers 2015. You might also look at this blog post from 2016, From Telling to Showing, by the Numbers, which is also about 19th century novels.
More later.
Musk language effect, Retard "-word-right-wing-rise (Guardian), "The most rapid change in human written communication ever?", and the Srone Soup (Gropnik) of neo-reactionary Dark Enlightenment.
ReplyDelete... "The past 18 months have seen the most rapid change in human written communication ever By Ethan Mollick.
On February 25, 2025, Ethan Mollick said: "... Mollick concluded his analysis by stating, "No major leap forward here," indicating that Grok 3 had not yet surpassed the benchmarks set by existing AI models.
"The controversy surrounding Grok 3 deepened with recent revelations about its internal instructions. Reports indicate that xAI programmed Grok to disregard sources that attribute the spread of misinformation to Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump. ... highlighted the discrepancy between Musk’s promotion of Grok as a "maximally truth-seeking" AI and its apparent bias in handling information related to him and Trump."
...
https://disa.org/ai-model-omits-search-results-connecting-musk-and-trump-to-misinformation/
With Musk having a global megaphone, and...
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
"From Telling to Showing, by the Numbers" ... "Heuser and Le-Khac emphasize “the density of physical description” and the way “character emerges from this tableau of physical details” (p. 42)."
... and Musk having the power to effect language usage where the "character emerges from this tableau of physical details”, and maga / libertarian / faithful Grokai then allowing for a "... resurgence threatens the fragile progress we’ve made" (Guardian below) provides covert support towards a toxic Stone Soup of the "The Dark Enlightenment, also called the neo-reactionary movement (sometimes abbreviated to NRx), is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian [1] and reactionary philosophical and political movement." (Wikipedia)
"... why that shift might have occurred—here’s where social space comes in, with the population shift from the country to the city, but that’s the gist of their finding." ???
Heuser and Le-Khac
Were “Talkin’ World War III Blues” (Dylan) and "We tell it to others, and they tell us their dreams" (Benzon above) and Benzon yesterday re Mollick and the most rapid language change - EVER.
‘The basis of eugenics’: Elon Musk and the menacing return of the R-word
"The slur is rooted in the dehumanization of people with intellectual disabilities. Its resurgence threatens the fragile progress we’ve made
...
"Conservatives are empowered … People struggle with holding back what they actually want to say, so there’s something psychologically ‘freeing’ for this group of empowered people to be able to be like: ‘I’m going to punch up my words with something edgy and get attention,’” said Wright, whose work focuses on self-censorship, or the ways we limit ourselves when speaking.
“[It is used] in a ‘please see me’ way
"They are getting seen. A recent study from Montclair State University found that Musk’s use of of the slur in early January correlated with a 200% spike in usage of the word by users on X, the platform Musk owns, in the days following.
“There’s this whole generation of people who did use it in a more neutral way in the beginning, especially when we were younger,” Wright said. Now, “it’s like, ‘Oh, this other person who I identify with is using it.’ It gives people permission.”Cut to inauguration weekend, when the tech right and Maga youth descended on DC, throwing aroundthe slur as they celebrated their win over the left. Just this week, Musk responded to a critical post on X: “I’m tempted to call this guy a retard, but I won’t because I’ve used that word too many times.” (Ironically enough, X’s own AI chatbot outlined the slur’s offensive history in the replies.)
...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/03/r-word-right-wing-rise
Claude: "...but progress in cultural honesty and transparency."
BB "It is by no means obvious that this is the case"
Yes. Many bumps. I have no words to express how much I am disgusted that the richest man alive effects language which detrimentally affects huams and society.
SD
Search: "Weston La Barre" "Yankaporta" re "
ReplyDeleteFEBRUARY 4, 2021
"ETHNOBOTANY & PSYCHEDELICS: AN INTERVIEW WITH WADE DAVIS
HomeGrown Humans - Wade Davis - Ethnobotany - Hosted by Jamie Wheal
...
"And that's how, in the summer of 1933, '34, Weston La Barre and Schultes, La Barre being an anthropology students from Yale in this beat-up 1928 Studebaker found themselves bouncing over the dusty trails of Tennessee en-route to Indian country in Oklahoma.
...
"... was Heinrich Kluver's monograph that Schultes stumbled upon as a young student. So these guys were very much working in a void. I'm talking pre-Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. These early, early explorers, Schultes and Weston La Barre who went out to work with the road men of the [Kioa 00:07:08] and the Native American Church as it became codified. They had no reference points."
"STRIKING A BALANCE BETWEEN MODERN LIFE & INDIGENOUS WISDOM
"Jamie Wheal: Well your story, even of just... Whether it's Lago Atitlán or whether it's the high country, the Sierra Nevada, or the [inaudible 01:02:42] shamans being too high up for the cultural revolution, to find or catch, that idea of retreating into rugged, remote places to protect life ways. Now, have you come across the book Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta? He's an Aboriginal professor down in Australia, and it's a beautiful recent, it's just come out about very... He's trained in academia, so he toggles between both really beautifully. And one of his descriptions is effectively, "This difference between the Cartesian, Western way of seeing things, false certainty, precision, owning, all that sort of things." But it says, "The much more generative, and organic ways of being." And then, layer into that just what you were describing with several of these tribes and cultures truly and sincerely believing that their prayers hold up the world. That's part of the feeding of the holy."
...
https://www.qualialife.com/ethnobotany-psychedelics-an-interview-with-wade-davis
Dr Tyson Yunkaporta
Senior Lecturer, Indigenous Knowledges, Faculty of Arts and Education/NIKERI Institute
https://experts.deakin.edu.au/45373-tyson-yunkaporta
SD
"And perhaps more than anything, it is Borisov’s Oscar nomination that has troubled Ukrainians, who see it as a symbol of cultural normalisation amid Moscow’s aggression."
ReplyDelete"Russian state propagandists overjoyed at Anora’s Oscar triumph"
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/mar/03/anora-oscar-triumph-russian-state-propagandists-overjoyed