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Wild WordCross-Nature

ELIZA effect

“Projecting understanding or feeling onto a system that is mirroring you.”

First Seen

1966

Context

Named after Joseph Weizenbaum's 1966 chatbot ELIZA, which simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist by reflecting users' statements back as questions. Users attributed emotional understanding to a program that had none. The effect persists with modern LLMs: conversational fluency creates an illusion of comprehension that may not exist.

A wild word — documented from usage in the field, not coined by Xenolexica.

Understanding & Perception