Large Language Models as symbolic DNA of cultural dynamics

TL;DR

This paper conceptualizes Large Language Models as externalized cultural DNA, serving as repositories of human symbolic patterns that facilitate cultural evolution and human self-reflection through recursive reinterpretation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework viewing LLMs as externalized, compressed cultural substrates akin to DNA, emphasizing their role in preserving and reactivating human cultural dynamics without embodied understanding.

Findings

LLMs act as externalized cultural 'fossils' preserving symbolic patterns

They enable recursive reinterpretation and hypothesis generation

LLMs serve as tools for cultural evolvability and self-reflection

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel conceptualization of Large Language Models (LLMs) as externalized informational substrates that function analogously to DNA for human cultural dynamics. Rather than viewing LLMs as either autonomous intelligence or mere programmed mimicry, we argue they serve a broader role as repositories that preserve compressed patterns of human symbolic expression--"fossils" of meaningful dynamics that retain relational residues without their original living contexts. Crucially, these compressed patterns only become meaningful through human reinterpretation, creating a recursive feedback loop where they can be recombined and cycle back to ultimately catalyze human creative processes. Through analysis of four universal features--compression, decompression, externalization, and recursion--we demonstrate that just as DNA emerged as a compressed and externalized medium for preserving useful cellular dynamics without containing explicit reference to goal-directed physical processes, LLMs preserve useful regularities of human culture without containing understanding of embodied human experience. Therefore, we argue that LLMs' significance lies not in rivaling human intelligence, but in providing humanity a tool for self-reflection and playful hypothesis-generation in a low-stakes, simulated environment. This framework positions LLMs as tools for cultural evolvability, enabling humanity to generate novel hypotheses about itself while maintaining the human interpretation necessary to ground these hypotheses in ongoing human aesthetics and norms.