Francis Irving
banner
flourish.org
Francis Irving
@flourish.org
Coercing LLMs into understanding software product teams.
Cohost on "Imagine an apple" podcast about our inner experience.
Trustee of London College of Political Technology (soon).
I found the book very emotionally connecting, making me warm and connected to the variety we have as humans.
October 5, 2025 at 4:15 PM
It's about how people think in lots of varying circumstances - from schizophrenia to playing the guitar. All based on a random mind-sampling technique, which is more like a therapeutic practice than a psychology questionnaire.
October 5, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Agreed, each metaphor is getting closer, more like a simile!

And I was having a long conversation with @berbank.bsky.social about the whole thing being compression just yesterday... Hadn't thought about the scientific method being that, but it is.
August 28, 2025 at 6:16 AM
We're doing that a bit with LLMs too. There's something very architecturally different about human minds that we still don't know/understand. LLMs help solidify things we knew anyway about the mind (it is made by composing trillions of connection weights), and give a feel for that. That's all.
August 28, 2025 at 5:42 AM
Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind has a brilliant opening chapter explaining how we *always* make simile's of current technology to the human mind. e.g. It's like a steam engine.
August 28, 2025 at 5:42 AM
The various Anthropic interpretability papers a least give a hint at how it is doing it - with imagination of the few features they document scaled billions of times.

Yes, humans are similarish networks, and part of what we do is clearly "LLM-like". I wouldn't stretch this too far though.
August 28, 2025 at 5:42 AM
Reposted by Francis Irving
Just learned from @flourish.org’s “imagine an apple” podcast that permanent musical soundtracks are part of some people’s inner experience and here is another one!
January 31, 2025 at 4:54 AM
Those kinds of practical uses of imagination are easy and fun to talk about, and potentially help people learn ways to improve their lives by improving their minds.

zencastr.com/z/CCEuZGjW

Do get in touch if you use your mind in similar interesting ways!
Navigating a city with Anna by @Francis Irving
When you navigate a city, what is your inner experience? Do you see detailed overhead maps, or street-level views of landmarks, or neither? Vynn Suren and Francis Irving interview Anna about how she ...
zencastr.com
January 20, 2025 at 10:34 PM