Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 40, No. 119.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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[1] From: Mcgann, Jerome (jjm2f) <jjm2f@virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 40.115: World Models and Artificial Intelligence (102)
[2] From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: on "World Models and Artificial Intelligence" (38)
[3] From: Federico Pianzola <f.pianzola@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 40.115: World Models and Artificial Intelligence (17)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2026-08-07 12:33:51+00:00
From: Mcgann, Jerome (jjm2f) <jjm2f@virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 40.115: World Models and Artificial Intelligence
I have to add something to this exchange that Willard’s posting triggered.
I would recommend reading and pondering an essay in the essay collection that
Willard recommended to us: “A Sentence is Worth a Thousand Pictures”.
Its findings are important but the essay doesn’t go after a key truth about LLMs
and “Language”: that LLMs, like scripts and texts and all “systems of
communication”, are not Language, they are all codes. For better AND for worse,
human beings are able to invent codes, ie, mechanisms for exerting what we
perceive to be a certain amount of abstract control over our natural human
condition. As “A Sentence is Worth a Thousand Pictures” points out briefly but
tellingly, those codes and efforts always both succeed and fail, and when they
fail “we” reprogram and . . . fail again . . . and so on in saecula saeculorum.
But what the coming of the Anthropocene has so startling exposed is the
accumulating costs of code reprogramming.
And as the smart ship grew,
In stature grace and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the iceberg too.
x
Jerry
From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>
Date: Friday, August 7, 2026 at 1:41 AM
To: Mcgann, Jerome (jjm2f) <jjm2f@virginia.edu>
Subject: [Humanist] 40.115: World Models and Artificial Intelligence
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 40, No. 115.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org<http://www.dhhumanist.org>
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Date: 2026-08-07 00:42:54+00:00
From: James Smithies <James.Smithies@anu.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 40.113: Correction: World Models and Artificial
Intelligence URL
Dear Willard,
I've been interested in the concept of emergence for a few years now and have
watched the increase in naive use of the term with interest. I had a crack at
exploring it in the 'Emergent Infrastructure' chapter of my recent monograph
(link below my signature), my goal being to historicize the concept and use it
to undermine belief in technological determinism. The Krakauer et al paper is
very welcome from that perspective. I particularly like the way they present a
framework for the application of emergence theory to LLMs that is grounded in
complexity science and distinguishes between 'knowledge out' (KO) and 'knowledge
in' (KI) systems.
My chapter is historical and oriented towards trying to understand global
digital infrastructure rather than only LLMs but I'm of the opinion that
'emergence' is one of the key ideas for contemporary scholarship, and a concept
we need to grapple with. It sits on an epistemological boundary. One side of
that boundary leads to a world of determinism, romanticism, and lack of human
control; the other leads to rationalism, science, and human agency. As I note in
the introduction to my chapter, Philip Clayton goes so far as to claim that
emergence theory presents us with a third option for ontological commitment,
next to physicalism and dualism. I'm not qualified to adjudicate on that but I'm
confident that (rigorously conceived), the concept can help us differentiate
between marketing hype and knowledge.
Best wishes,
James
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003684398-9/emergent-
infrastructure-james-
smithies?context=ubx&refId=9f5f25cb-66d2-4c14-a84e-8ff98e8a0b2c
________________________________
From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>
Sent: Tuesday, 4 August 2026 5:38 PM
To: James Smithies <james.smithies@anu.edu.au>
Subject: [Humanist] 40.113: Correction: World Models and Artificial Intelligence
URL
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 40, No. 113.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2026-08-04 07:33:37+00:00
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: Correction: World Models and Artificial Intelligence URL
Apologies for the quickly expired link. See instead:
<https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/issue/384/2320>..
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor em., King's College London;
<http://www.mccarty.org.uk/>
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2026-08-07 07:30:37+00:00
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
Subject: on "World Models and Artificial Intelligence"
Recent work on artificial intelligence from an
historical-anthropological perspective leads me to reflect rather
differently on "World Models and Artificial Intelligence" than James in
Humanist 40.115. I'll get back to that publication, but first a step back.
It seems to me that the first or perhaps most important fruit of
interdisciplinary efforts is in the experience of finding oneself, as it
were, outside one's discipline of origin. (Acquiring such a discipline
is, I think, what the PhD or similarly intense work accomplishes--its
core gift.) The disciplinary poacher merely finds loot to take back home
and play with. Beyond poaching, striving to take on another
discipline--vividly described by Thomas Kuhn in The Essential
Tension--can be, as his experience was, a painful wrenching away, or in
less agonistic terms, a sudden realisation of one's assumptions, now
available for critical examination.
One enormous benefit of anthropology is or can be in the distancing from
the cultural envelope of the natural sciences. This is NOT to say a
rejection of how we, or most of us here, have thought since Galileo, but
a realisation of living in "a world of many worlds" (see de la Cadena
and Blaser's book with that title). There are, and have been since way
before Galileo, and elsewhere in the world, other ways of thinking and
living--as Nicholas Jardine calls them, "distant sciences". See, for
example, Piers Vitebsky's Dialogues with the Dead (1993). Dismissal of
them, assignment of them to some earlier, less advanced phase in the
evolution of intelligence, speaks of an arrogance we can hardly afford.
In a nutshell, that's how I've reacted to the fascinating and compelling
set of papers in "World Models and Artificial Intelligence". Other
reflections on that publication and on the above attempt would be
valuable and of course welcome here.
Best,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor em., King's College London;
www.mccarty.org.uk
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2026-08-07 06:10:54+00:00
From: Federico Pianzola <f.pianzola@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 40.115: World Models and Artificial Intelligence
Thanks for the article, Willard.
I agree that complexity theory can be a very fruitful framework to describe
human behavior, technology, and also culture in general.
The 2018 book *Narrating Complexity* (link below) has very interesting
multidisciplinary contributions.
- Pianzola, Federico. 2018. “Looking at Narrative as a Complex System:
the Proteus Principle <https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319647128#>
”. *Narrating Complexity*. Eds. Susan Stepney and Richard Walsh.
Springer. 101-122. (Preprint here
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/13xdoKua3dS_N9IHarZYTjx6F14jdxkm4/view?usp=s
haring>
)
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