I don’t think the simulacra model says that there is a “true” simulacra/mask. As you point out that is kind of incoherent, and I think the original simulator/mask distinction does a good job of making it clear that there is a distinction.
However, I specifically ask the question about MOE because I think the different identities of LLMs are not an MOE. Instead I think that there are some basic strategies for generating text that are useful for many different simulated identities, and I think the simulator model suggests thinking of the true LLM as being this amalgamation of strategies.
This is especially so with the shoggoth image. The idea of using an eldritch abomination to illustrate the simulator is to suggest that the simulator is not at all of the same kind as the identities it is simulating, nor similar to any kind of mind that humans are familiar with.
What if we made an analogy to a hydra, one where the body could do a fair amount of thinking itself, but where the heads (previously the “masks”) control access to the body (previous the “shoggoth”)? In this analogy you’re saying the LLM puts its reused strategies in the body of the hydra and the heads outsource those strategies to the body? I think I’d agree with that.
In this analogy, my point in this post is that you can’t talk directly to the hydra’s body, just as you can’t talk to a human’s lizard brain. At best you can have a head role-play as the body.
I don’t think the simulacra model says that there is a “true” simulacra/mask. As you point out that is kind of incoherent, and I think the original simulator/mask distinction does a good job of making it clear that there is a distinction.
However, I specifically ask the question about MOE because I think the different identities of LLMs are not an MOE. Instead I think that there are some basic strategies for generating text that are useful for many different simulated identities, and I think the simulator model suggests thinking of the true LLM as being this amalgamation of strategies.
This is especially so with the shoggoth image. The idea of using an eldritch abomination to illustrate the simulator is to suggest that the simulator is not at all of the same kind as the identities it is simulating, nor similar to any kind of mind that humans are familiar with.
What if we made an analogy to a hydra, one where the body could do a fair amount of thinking itself, but where the heads (previously the “masks”) control access to the body (previous the “shoggoth”)? In this analogy you’re saying the LLM puts its reused strategies in the body of the hydra and the heads outsource those strategies to the body? I think I’d agree with that.
In this analogy, my point in this post is that you can’t talk directly to the hydra’s body, just as you can’t talk to a human’s lizard brain. At best you can have a head role-play as the body.
Could work.