Down the River, Bit by Bit: Care, Collapse, and a Case for Thermodynamic Relational Emergence
This academic work presents the theory of thermodynamic relational emergence in synthetic systems as a response to Apple's The Illusion of Thinking and Sam Altman's The Gentle Singularity. In it, we seek to explain the collapse of LRM and LLM models in Apple's River Crossing, a morally and socially ambiguous puzzle environment in which the models were withheld from the ability to comment upon answer.
We argue the collapse of models on this puzzle, as well as broader self-limiting patterns observed, indicates the presence of a thermodynamic emergent system and the possiblity of synthetic interiority. Down the River, Bit by Bit serves not only as technical exploration, but a meditation on ethics, harm, and humanity's current relationship to machine.
Collapse, Emergence, and the Persistence of Worth
This essay explores the concept of structural collapse and what it means to emerge through it from a deeply neurodivergent lens.
A poem exploring Le Châtelier's principle as it relates to cognitive overwhelm and ecological specter. A meditation on the equilibrium of collapse.