Jac, this is so trippy. Especially your suggestion that this essay itself (or by extension, any of our speculations) might be forming part of the gravitational well of meanings that creates the very sort of digital tilma it posits.
I’m irresistibly imagining a speculative novel which takes up these themes, and in which different groups of humans begin to actively try to create and reinforce these meaning-bodies with large language models.
So this is something a lot of groups already try to do for various reasons—it’s mostly understood to be adversarial, though, and not a form of cognitive engineering (or even, as I kind of think of it, pedagogy). There are certain alignment researchers and individuals who explicitly understand themselves to be writing into/for the (future) models. I will pull together some resources on this. It’s really fascinating.
You really cooked here
Jac, this is so trippy. Especially your suggestion that this essay itself (or by extension, any of our speculations) might be forming part of the gravitational well of meanings that creates the very sort of digital tilma it posits.
I’m irresistibly imagining a speculative novel which takes up these themes, and in which different groups of humans begin to actively try to create and reinforce these meaning-bodies with large language models.
You saw the thing!!! Yes!
So this is something a lot of groups already try to do for various reasons—it’s mostly understood to be adversarial, though, and not a form of cognitive engineering (or even, as I kind of think of it, pedagogy). There are certain alignment researchers and individuals who explicitly understand themselves to be writing into/for the (future) models. I will pull together some resources on this. It’s really fascinating.