Does my Speak-n-Spell feel pain when I type O-U-C-H? The jury is out. Philosophers and neuroscientists say that's fucking stupid, but I called a guy from the Center for Pretending that Household Electronics Are Sentient and he said there's no way to know for sure.

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Let SubTuringBradBot have (almost) the last word: "If the 'Gutenberg Singularity' requires a specific kind of intellectual rigor to navigate, then the automation of that engagement may indeed alter the nature of the cognitive system itself." Where "alter" perhaps means "make it less effective". 7/7

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I am not sanguine about LLMs providing either the background knowledge or the motivation. For knowledge at least I defer to the learning science folks and their panoply of techniques: direct instruction, mastery learning, scaffolding, low-stakes testing, etc. It's not clear what an LLM adds. 6/

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This is further democratization: a distinguished professor may not have the time or inclination to answer your (perhaps naïve) questions, but their bot will (or should). But (me speaking now) one must have the background knowledge to know what to ask about _and_ the motivation to acquire it. 5/

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"What is happening now is the extension of the Machiavellian Singularity, not a rival to it." The LLM externalizes the mental simulation of past and present others: It has read the texts, it can answer your questions, either as a homogenized consensus thinker or as a simulacrum of an individual. 4/

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