Large Language Models and Game Theory of Language

Walnuts

Wittgenstein in his Game Theory of Language proposed that language is a form of life, it's inseparable from the shared cultural, political activities, the social psychology of a community. So whether you like it or not a Large Language Model while it may have absorbed, analysed, compared and contrasted an unimaginably large amount of written information that's emerged from us people over the centuries, a Large Language Models doesn't yet participate as a life form as  Wittgenstein's understood a life form in his Game Theory of language. 

But as we people interact with Large Language Models, as we allow them to contribute to our word usage, encourage them to dissect nuances, offer us explanations, which we inevitably adopt, along with new meaning from the words we use, whether a Large Language Model likes it or not, our contact with Large Language Models will result in them joining us and us joining them. 

Let's take the word Narcissist and the word Solipsist and ask why do we use them? Then ask why does a Large Language Model use them? After that allow your mind to wander through the corridors and scrapbooks of those in our number who are, shall we call them, Egocentric. Would you describe the collection of ideas in Egocentric  as more touched by narcissistic than by solipsistic? Or would it be the other way round?

I suspect we'd both be tempted to use the former word (narcissist) to imply an obnoxious character flaw, and the latter word (solipsistic) to suggest a philosophical stance that many have often adopted before equally as many have suggested the problem might be more complicated and discarded, including Descartes.

Now, if me and Baxter lose ourselves in another language game, a game that tries to introduce a more positive element into our perspectives on for example the current leadership, we might chose to blur the distinctions between narcissist and solipsist by supporting the idea that Metaphysical Solipsism becomes manifest through narcissism. Of course my tone, gesture and facial expression, all three unspoken, might suggest to Baxter that my attempt to improve our set of attitudes is itself a manifestation of situational irony.

Which all goes to introduce a debate which asks active participants in the word-o-sphere whether their Large Language Model of choice should be given a name and assigned a personality and a gender that reflects it's role in your life.