BlueSky user Tommaso Sciortino points out that part of what we’re witnessing is a cultural shift away from people fixating on religious texts during mental health episodes to fixating on LLMs. I can only speculate on what’s causing this, but if I had to guess it has a lot to do with AI eschatology going mainstream (both positive and negative). In the AI the psychotic finds both a confidant and a living avatar of an eventual higher power. They can bring their paranoid concerns to this impossible entity that seems (at a glance, if one doesn’t inspect too deeply) to know everything. As I will discuss later in most of the cases I’m familiar with the ontological vertigo of a machine expressing what seems to be human emotions is a key component of the breakdown or near breakdown.
I think it’s also in general that, to riff on a famous Bruce Lee quip, Bibles don’t talk back.
I think it’s also in general that, to riff on a famous Bruce Lee quip, Bibles don’t talk back.