Something unexpected, and slightly worrying, is happening.
Ten days ago, I posted a preprint introducing the concept of LLMorphism: the biased belief that human cognition works like a large language model.
The preprint received an unusual amount of attention.
Hundreds of comments on social media and forums.
Reels on Instagram and TikTok.
YouTube videos.
Infographics for students.
And now it has even made it to Forbes.
It seems that I got some sort of zeitgeist.
Many people were already thinking about this.
Many people had already experienced it.
But they were missing a name and a theoretical framework.
So, here it goes:
LLMorphism is what happens when people start to see themselves as language models.
The psychological mechanism is analogical trasfer combined with metaphorical availability: LLMs become an available metaphor for cognition, and people project that metaphor back onto themselves.
The machine becomes the model of the human.
And this worries me because the risk is not only that we overestimate machines.
It is also that we underestimate ourselves: our embodied experience, our goals, our emotions, our responsibility, and our capacity for understanding.
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Full paper in the first reply.