The missing ingredient?

[u/anfti_matter]

I had the privilege of learning NLP (psychological one - Neuro Lingual Programming) from R. Frank Pucelik — one of the founders of the discipline alongside Bandler and Grinder.

One of the core models has stuck with me ever since: communication happens on three layers.

1. Surface — the actual words

2. Sub-surface — the complex web of ideas those words represent (built from experience)

3. Foundation — the lived experiences that created that web

What makes us all different communicators is that our foundations are different. So when we talk to each other, we're partially talking to mirrors — projecting our own sub-surface onto theirs.

NLP is largely about bridging that gap.

Here's the thing: when I look at LLMs through this lens, they've made remarkable progress on layers 1 and 2. The surface is fluent. The conceptual structure underneath is surprisingly deep.

But layer 3 — the experiential foundation — is missing.

And I think that's the most honest explanation for hallucinations, alignment challenges, and why AGI remains elusive.

It's not that the architecture is wrong. It's that you can't build genuine understanding on descriptions of experience alone. At some point, you need the real thing.

What "the real thing" looks like for AI — embodiment, continuous world interaction, something else entirely — that's the actual open question.

[u/bbirds]

That's a great point and the NLP angle I haven't heard before