Truth in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The Contracting Circle

Why don't we believe LLMs are people?

Dan Shipper 📧 on Twitter / X

this is true and is a big reason why you don’t need to be a highly technical researcher to use LLMs in surprising and novel ways https://t.co/TuxNzXzToU— Dan Shipper 📧 (@danshipper) July 27, 2025

How LLMs are and are not like the brain

Hi from buttondown! At the bottom of this newsletter is a bit of administrivia about the new platform How LLMs are and are not like the brain Beneath all the...

There's Something Fundamentally Wrong With LLMs

LLMs aren't trained on the "vast majority of speech," experts warn, a major blind spot that could have sweeping consequences.

LLMs and performative productivity

It's worth asking whether LLMs are actually making us more productive at all—and if so, what we might be sacrificing in return.

Google DeepMind Paper Argues LLMs Will Never Be Conscious

Philosophers said the paper’s argument is sound, but that “all these arguments have been presented years and years ago.”

LLMs believe false statements even after explicit warnings that they're false

Fine-tuning tests show "bias... toward confidently representing the claims as true."

The Ultimate Guide to Fine-Tuning LLMs from Basics to Breakthroughs: An Exhaustive Review of Technologies, Research, Best Practices, Applied Research Challenges and Opportunities (Version 1.0)

One year as an AI Engineer: The 5 biggest misconceptions about LLM reliability I've encountered

535 votes, 59 comments. After spending a year building evaluation frameworks and debugging production LLM systems, I've noticed the same…

I’m Tired of Talking About AI

I don’t want to talk about LLMs anymore.

The scientific case for being nice to your chatbot

New research confirms that LLMs often perform better when you encourage them. But why?

Andrew Ho on Twitter / X

Not really observations that others before me haven’t made, but:- Despite the seemingly magical nature of LLMs, reflection over a >3 month timescale suggests my total productivity hasn’t increased by over 100%, or perhaps even by over 50%, and a lot of time is actually wasted…— Andrew Ho (@andrewho03) September 3, 2026

The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway.

I almost agree with all of the LLM critics, yet I still use LLMs a lot. I know this sounds like I am delusional, but I don't think I am alone with it.

The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway.

I almost agree with all of the LLM critics, yet I still use LLMs a lot. I know this sounds like I am delusional, but I don't think I am alone with it.

Well-intentioned obscenity

An LLM lied about me at the office and I'm cranky about it. That interaction makes me think a lot about how LLMs are becoming normalized, though, and what we're looking at in terms of their role in human-to-human interactions in the future.