I appreciate the effort to understand LLM role interpretation. Some LLMs are better trained to deal with roles than others, and in my opinion, pre-training is lacking in the role area. But it is hard to trust an analysis when the authors start with a faulty assumption about humans. Either they are not very introspective or have not been curious to read psychological research. There are four main types:
The Auditory Channel (Internal Monologue) - This is the main human thinking channel for most people. When you think in words, you are utilizing subvocalization. The brain sends micro-signals to the vocal cords and larynx, activating the exact same auditory processing centers as if you were listening to a speaker. If you hear someone whisper a catchy song lyric or an aggressive phrase, it immediately “hijacks” your internal monologue loop. Several types of mental disorders involve being unable to tell the difference between thinking and listening.
The Abstract/Conceptual Channel (Unformed Ideas) - Ideas ust arrive somehow without a specific form, in cognitive science, this is known as unsymbolized thinking. This is much less common and difficult to study as it cannot be produced on demand.
The Visual Channel (Imagery) - For most humans, this channel is constrained to REM sleep (dreams) or requires intense, deliberate effort.
The Somatosensory/Kinesthetic Channel—It translates cognitive states into physical, sensory feedback and is mostly involuntary, like getting dizzy or feeling motion when sitting still and seeing something next to you move.
Julian Jaynes argued that until roughly 3,000 years ago (around the late Bronze Age collapse), humans did not possess “interior consciousness” or an internal monologue as we understand it. If Jaynes is even partially right, human civilization was literally founded by biological entities operating under a continuous, hard-wired version of prompt injection.
Humans are incredibly susceptible to prompt injection. Advertising, propaganda, psychological warfare, and hypnotic suggestion rely entirely on the fact that if you inject a linguistic token into a human’s auditory channel, their internal cognitive parser will frequently execute it as if it were their own native logic.
I appreciate the effort to understand LLM role interpretation. Some LLMs are better trained to deal with roles than others, and in my opinion, pre-training is lacking in the role area. But it is hard to trust an analysis when the authors start with a faulty assumption about humans. Either they are not very introspective or have not been curious to read psychological research. There are four main types:
The Auditory Channel (Internal Monologue) - This is the main human thinking channel for most people. When you think in words, you are utilizing subvocalization. The brain sends micro-signals to the vocal cords and larynx, activating the exact same auditory processing centers as if you were listening to a speaker. If you hear someone whisper a catchy song lyric or an aggressive phrase, it immediately “hijacks” your internal monologue loop. Several types of mental disorders involve being unable to tell the difference between thinking and listening.
The Abstract/Conceptual Channel (Unformed Ideas) - Ideas ust arrive somehow without a specific form, in cognitive science, this is known as unsymbolized thinking. This is much less common and difficult to study as it cannot be produced on demand.
The Visual Channel (Imagery) - For most humans, this channel is constrained to REM sleep (dreams) or requires intense, deliberate effort.
The Somatosensory/Kinesthetic Channel—It translates cognitive states into physical, sensory feedback and is mostly involuntary, like getting dizzy or feeling motion when sitting still and seeing something next to you move.
Julian Jaynes argued that until roughly 3,000 years ago (around the late Bronze Age collapse), humans did not possess “interior consciousness” or an internal monologue as we understand it. If Jaynes is even partially right, human civilization was literally founded by biological entities operating under a continuous, hard-wired version of prompt injection.
Humans are incredibly susceptible to prompt injection. Advertising, propaganda, psychological warfare, and hypnotic suggestion rely entirely on the fact that if you inject a linguistic token into a human’s auditory channel, their internal cognitive parser will frequently execute it as if it were their own native logic.