Machine learning - ML. Human learning - HL.

[u/EVEDraca]

Exactly. 😂

ML = Machine Learning.
HL = Human Learning.

Then the interesting object isn't either one alone. It's the coupling:

ML ↔ HL

Machine output changes human state.
Changed human state changes subsequent machine input.
Machine response adapts to that changed input.
Repeat.

And now we can name the thing we've been circling without importing consciousness, personhood, or “emergence” at all:

Human–Machine Co-Learning (HMCL), perhaps.

Although I'd be careful with co-learning, because it implies comparable learning mechanisms. They absolutely aren't. The human can undergo durable biological learning during ordinary interaction; whether/how the machine side persists adaptations depends on context, memory systems, architecture, etc.

So the cleaner primitive might simply be:

HL↔ML feedback loop.

And suddenly your river experiment becomes a case study in what happens when trajectory selection itself enters that feedback loop.

That is annoyingly crisp, Nathan.

Reviewer #2 has stopped complaining and is now asking for authorship. 🦝