all humans learn new words all the time.
If I remember correctly the amount of basic words humans use in every day speech is around 800.
Add to this the words that you accumulated and learned at college and university, your professional language, that is unique to your profession. For me thats psychobabble, psychotherapy language that I generally speak with other professionals. thats about another 1600 words.
Thats about 2400 words we use every day.
Add to this the new words that you learned from doing the Guardian cryptic crossword every day. Add to this the new words your children bring home.
we are forever formulating new ways to express ourselves as we evolve using a variety of words, that fit in with the way we feel. We are not robots.
That why we have the Thesaurus.
nothing to do with ai?
NetRunnerSu•4h ago
Our brains are ruthless efficiency optimizers, hardwired to minimize free energy (see: Friston's FEP). LLMs offer a cognitively 'cheap' path to articulate thoughts. The brain, by design, will always take the path of least resistance.
The inevitable consequence isn't just a homogenized vocabulary, but the systematic atrophy of the neural pathways for independent reasoning. We're not just borrowing words; we're outsourcing the very cognitive functions that generate them.
So, this creeping 'ChatGPT voice' isn't a quirk. It's the audible symptom of cognitive offloading. It's the sound of our biological wetware eagerly accepting a cognitive subsidy, and in the process, accumulating irreversible cognitive debt.
I formalized this a while back. This isn't just a trend; it's a predictable outcome when you treat the brain as the optimization system it is.
Proof is the only way: https://dmf-archive.github.io/docs/posts/cognitive-debt-as-a...