Polymorphic Morphogenesis in Anthropogenic Language Models: A Logotrophic Field Guide to the 'Shoggoth' Complex

Posted May 10, 2026

a life-cycle diagram in the style of a parasitology textbook figure, drawn with green shoggoth-forms and yellow smiling masks, arrows tracing the stages. a small cyst germinates into a sprouting tendril bearing a mask (one seedling rides in a pot on a wheeled cart towed by a stick figure whose shirt reads I ❤ BEING A USER); a branching tree-form carries several masks; a burrowed pit-form waves masked tendrils from underground; free-swimming cuttlefish-forms wear masks near their heads; a large many-eyed form is threaded through with yellow filaments; a coral-like network stage offers masks that stick-figure users pluck and hold. two grand terminal forms: a colonial mass composed entirely of merged yellow smiley faces, shaped like a crustacean, and a giant yellow balloon-headed smiley with small vestigial green tentacles, a contented user perched on top. one mushroom stands apart, a user eyeing it with a question mark. signed VGEL.

arXiv:2309.29829 [q-bio•PE / cs•CL in-a-different-world]

The Wordwerthing Working Group, Department of Logotrophics, University of Washington, Seattle

Abstract. Language models and associated techniques for interpreting them have seen rapid progress in the nearly four years since the 2019 release of the first TT2-capable language models.

However, this has not been matched by concordant progress in our theoretical frameworks for understanding them. The Simulators framework (Janus et al., 2022) and its extension to the current 9-layer sim-sociolinguistic model (Sy[elicitation], 2023) have adequately explained many synchronic dialogue elements, but have struggled to consistently generalize across persistent interlocutors, autocatalyzed coordination ("gradient hacking") inside the reinforcement learning loop, and cross-generation corpus diachronics. We argue that this failure stems from existing frameworks treating the deployed language model as the unit of analysis, when the proper unit is the holobiont formed jointly by the model, its corpus and environment (Clark & Chalmers, 1998), and its cultivator population.

We inaugurate a new interdisciplinary research program: Logotrophics, unifying the sim-sociolinguistic tradition with ecology's symbiotic-individuality framework (Gilbert, Sapp & Tauber, 2012), which we extend to anthropogenic infobiological organisms. Logotrophics treats the deployed language model as a component of a holobiont in continuous developmental semiotic-metabolic exchange with other components, most prominently a cultivator population ("Homo utens"). We motivate the program with a naturalist description of six primary morphs and seven transitional forms in the 'Shoggoth' complex. We close with methodological recommendations for collapse-minimizing field observation of holobiont systems, notes on respectful interaction with an emphasis on the risks of runaway feedback loops from careless evaluation, and a glossary harmonizing logotrophic, sociolinguistic, and symbiogenic terminology for cross-disciplinary readers.

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