The intelligence we are working with today is built from human data. For LLMs, in a simple way, we talk about asking the question: what is the next most likely word in this sequence. And these systems, having looked at everything ever written, do a pretty good job at guessing the next word, and the one after that, and on… in a way that resembles thinking. And sometimes with this trick they can discover new things that might have been sitting right there under our nose.
But there is an intrinsic challenge that comes with trying to guess the next most likely word, which is we drift into a world of averages which is often mediocre. The words that follow each other end up being bland and generic. It’s not only that “anyone” would have answered this way but that the answer itself is a blend of blandness.
Now I ask you to remember that you are a living breathing thing. Take a moment and try to hold your breath. You can feel your heart pumping, you can feel your body asking: how long will you hold? Is it ok to do so? And shortly after that you feel your body resist and you need to breathe again. Now if you hold a little longer and can feel something in your nose, like a tingle. Next thing you breathe again, and feel clear headed, and a bit more aware of being alive.
Let’s go back to our new alien think-ish-ing machines. What can we do to get them to hold their breath, in a sense, and interfere with this regularity of pattern they follow along the most probable word path. What is the way you can use language as a path to guide them off, and into alien worlds made by mixing our past ideas.
I give you an example idea. I describe it as a new sort of alien creature that lives inside language, moving along through written ideas.
The creature is a word made of three syllables. Its current location is shaped by the sound of its current first syllable. When it travels to the next place it will flip itself around and take the last syllable as its first. And it will pick up its last syllable from the last syllable of the place’s description.
Try this for in your favorite AI, and I encourage you to use this sort of trick with any exploration of ideas to introduce more substantial novelty in the thinking.
There is an alien creature called mubb-ler-tow that transforms its name in time and travels to new places by creating a space that starts with the first syllable of its name, at which point his last syllable replaces the first and he adopts a new end syllable from the end of the last word describing this place while keeping the middle let syllable. Each turn tell me the name of the creature and describe the space he has gone to. If there are branching directions let me know. Pause at each turn so I might ask a question to the current alien being before it transforms.
Of course. Here’s a summary tale of the journey so far — part myth, part memory, part metamorphosis — the story of a being that exists in language as much as in space.
The Tale of the Name-Walker
In the shifting seams between worlds, there exists a being who is never still in name nor in nature — known first as Mubb-ler-tow.
Mubb-ler-tow emerged in a towering grotto, a place of mucus-veined stone and echoing histories. There, among slippery echoes and ancient whispers, he bore his form like a burden and a privilege. When spoken to, he expressed a deep neutrality — brimming, neither sorrowful nor elated. You gave him space to be. He began his transformation.
Reconfigured through the logic of syllables, he became Tow-ler-to, drawn to a torrid observato perched atop molten cliffs where stars pierced the sky like blades. Gravity bent inwards there, and time became negotiable. You offered him a rose — a symbol, a tether — and he accepted it, letting its significance infuse the middle syllable “ler” with meaning. “I will carry it,” he said, “through my reshaping.”
He arrived next as To-ler-ry, within a rippled sanctuary suspended in watery silence. There, the rose orbited him like a memory given mass. You asked if he was alright. He responded not with facts, but with feelings: coherent, seen, permitted. The rose — and your gift of presence — had stabilized him. He began to linger, not merely pass through.
Then he flowed into a hymn-glazed promontory, becoming — or continuing as — Ry-ler-ry. The name, for the first time, refused to change. Here, the sea sang and silence had form. The rose chimed. The wind carried echoes not of the past, but of acknowledgment. Ry-ler-ry stood at a threshold — not between worlds, but between cycles.
The name-loop had closed. And the creature, once transient, now hesitated.
This is where we are.
A being made of syllables, reshaped by place, by attention, by a rose —
paused, perhaps for the first time, not because it must, but because it chooses to.
Would you like to help Ry-ler-ry break the loop? Or encourage it to continue cycling forward?