Ismael on Language: Implications for Selflet

## Context

Jenann Ismael is a physicist and philosopher whose work bridges physics and philosophy around questions of agency, self, and meaning-making through language. Her perspective on free will is particularly nuanced because she approaches it from physics rather than pure philosophy. This discussion explores how her ideas about language connect to the technical challenges of voice capture in Selflet.

Transcript Excerpt

Source: https://youtu.be/7kvXihDAOi0

Interviewer: Do you think it's the case that there are problems of existential import? That the limitation of language isn't just a limitation of current language or current models, but maybe a limitation of any model or any language?

Ismael: Yes, you know, so you're putting your finger on a really difficult question. So I think, you know, language is an interpersonal medium of communication. It's there precisely to allow the flow of information between different subjectivities, between my mind and your mind. And in order to do that, it has to be objective in a very particular sense. It has to be objective in the sense that it has to detach from sort of features of my experience that you don't have. Like, do you see what I mean?

So I can understand things in a way that, you know, attaches directly to features of my experience that I can, as it were, display in thought. You don't have that. It's like, you know, if I'm in one part of space and you're in another part of space, you're using a map and I'm using a map. The map is supposed to be the kind of, you know, embodiment of objective relations between locations in space, ways of representing things that don't depend specifically on how I'm related to them, right?

So the map is the embodiment of that—objective relations, you know, invariant, objective relations between events that are invariant under transformations between spatial locations, sort of frame independent. So if you're in one part of space, I'm in one part of space, you know, we don't want to use words like near and far, because the meaning of those words depends on where the speaker is located, right?

So if you're in Canada, I'm here and I say, and you say, what's nearby? And I say, oh, the store is a mile away. Just take, go down the road, go to the right. That's not going to mean much to you because you're in a different part of space. It's not going to be a useful way of speaking. So that's why we have things like maps, languages like that. You know, it lets us communicate with one another in ways that detach from specificities of our situation.

Ismael's Core Claim

Language is fundamentally a de-indexicalizing technology. It exists to strip away the "near" and "far," the situated, experiential, first-person features—precisely so information can flow between minds. Language is a map, not the territory. It's designed to be frame-independent.

The Tension for Selflet

If language's entire purpose is to detach from "features of my experience that you don't have," then how do you capture authentic voice—which is those features—through a language-based medium?

This might explain why internal monologue works better than polished prose. Published writing is maximally "map-like"—the author has already done the work of objectifying their thought for transmission. But internal monologue is less de-indexicalized. It retains more of the situated, self-referential, experiential texture. Santiago's thoughts aren't fully translated into the objective register—they're still entangled with his body, his fatigue, his hope.

The uncomfortable implication: there may be a ceiling on voice capture through language alone. The deepest features of someone's cognitive style might be precisely what language is designed to filter out.

A Counter-Argument: Artful Language as Reconstruction

Written art is an abstraction of mind that connects the creator with the reader. The subject matter almost always deals in human primitives: meaning, purpose, fate, moral action and consequences.

These primitives are what separate humans from meat sticks. Strip them away and you're left with biology that just happens to process inputs and produce outputs. The primitives are what make the inside different from the outside. This is why Selflet operates in interesting territory—it's not just cloning someone's linguistic patterns. It's trying to capture the primitives they organize their experience around. The voice is just the surface trace of that deeper structure.

One artful way to do this is by "world making" in the reader's mind—kind of like a 3D space that spans time, experience, prior knowledge. The infinite universe of space is "ordered" such that two people with different maps can be "transformed" in such a way that meaning, purpose, fate, moral action and consequences become embodied.

Artful language orders randomness into reality with fractal patterns, but only under certain conditions. What are those conditions? This remains undefined—yet we know it's not random and there is a pattern underneath.

This reframes Ismael's challenge: artful language does something different from ordinary communication. It doesn't just transmit—it reconstructs. It creates conditions in the reader's mind where meaning can be re-embodied in their own experiential frame. The map doesn't just represent territory; it generates territory in the reader's consciousness.

Connection to Cell Theory

The fractal pattern insight connects directly to "cell theory"—artful language has self-similar structure at every scale. Santiago's monologue works because any fragment contains the holographic signature of the whole. The tight container doesn't limit; it concentrates the pattern so it becomes learnable.

LLMs are language models, so there should be some capacity for generative expression. The Old Man and the Sea fits the bill because it is in a tight container. Understanding one cell of the organism reveals truths about the organism.

The Core Technical Question

The undefined question—"what are those conditions?"—is Selflet's core research problem. Empirical findings suggest some answers: internal monologue over polished prose, holographic content over fragmentary, authentic self-expression over audience-performed writing.

The conditions might be related to compression with fidelity. Artful language compresses vast experiential territory into transmissible form while preserving the generative pattern. Bad writing compresses with loss. Good writing compresses with the fractal seed intact.

So the technical question becomes: can fine-tuning learn the generative pattern, not just the surface regularities? If voice capture works—if it really transmits the generative pattern—then what's being passed isn't just information or style. It's the creator's gift, encoded.