"Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." — Voltaire, 1765

A man in his late forties discovers a new passion. After decades of working as a mid level manager for a restaurant chain, he starts spending his evenings deep in study, filling notebooks with diagrams, reading everything he can get his hands on. Within a few weeks he's convinced he's on the verge of a grand unified theory that reconciles quantum mechanics and general relativity. He starts emailing professors at universities, posting on forums, and brushing off every criticism, rejection, or dismissal of his findings. His wife tries to have a conversation about it; he tells her she "just wouldn't understand." He's considering quitting his job to do it full time.

Would you consider this delusional?

A software developer has an idea for a startup. Not just any idea, the idea, the one that's going to change everything. He starts iterating on it, refining his pitch, building prototypes. His friends point out some problems with the concept: the unit economics don't work, there's no evidence of market demand, his core assumptions about user behavior seem unfounded. He listens politely, then explains why it's worth [...]

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Outline:

(04:17) Pathology vs Pathologizing

(08:55) Reference Classes

(16:18) Putting the Break in Breakthrough

(21:49) Folie à Machine

(24:21) Voltaires Warning

(28:39) What Ive Seen

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First published:
March 29th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2hyGiAnLKEFv3jBHt/folie-a-machine-llms-and-epistemic-capture

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Watercolor illustration showing person connected by tube to surreal mechanical head sculpture.

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“Folie à Machine: LLMs and Epistemic Capture” by DaystarEld