This is fascinating. I’m intrigued by the combination of discursive metaphor and weak convention to define actor identities.

The writing style is not natural to me. I was initially put off by phrases like “YAML Jazz” even though I love Tron’s “digital jazz”. Maybe this is because I’ve never experienced psychedelics. I’m at least two generations beyond / behind - removed? - from the movement that defined this way of thinking and communicating.

But sitting with it, it makes sense. I have to stretch my brain. It feels like thinking through a new algorithm… except I’m juggling jello instead of assembling a puzzle.

Ultimately it aligns with my understanding of AI as xkcd’s stirred pile of linear algebra. LLMs don’t understand anything. They project words into probability space, infer momentum vectors based on chunks that bubbling up in the soup of digested everything, and strike out in the prognosticated direction with blind confidence constrained only by temperature.

We constrain these systems with sandboxes and sturdy deterministic tools. Prompts default to the same shape: sharp, precise, hard, directive. But maybe a bag of words is also valid.

If the computer knows your references, each token is much richer than I might assume. Does “minsky” vendor the psychedelic moment? Does “SIMS” scaffold a game loop worth of the emotional energy people have poured into that series? Do these combine to elevate Claude, Qwen, or any other multi-million-dollar number box into an engaging partner?

I will play around it with it to find out.