Plato's Cave and LLMs: Perturbing Representations to Detect Path Dependence
mb3rtheflame · reddit · 2026-08-25
The post draws a parallel between Plato's Cave and LLM interactions, suggesting that explaining 'shadows' just adds another shadow. It proposes an experiment using LLMs to make this problem visible by running interactions repeatedly under different conditions. By perturbing the conversation and measuring reconstruction distance, sensitivity, and path-dependence, we might observe how the projection process changes in real time rather than just adding more explanations.
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