Comment by wfn

Re: LLMs & diagrams - in general, diagrams and tables as info compression tool (both in the general sense as well as in the practical concrete "optimise for token / context window" sense) - e.g. today as part of request to do 'deep research' on Dwarf Fortress personality / psychology system, at a late point (preparing to relaunch with a fresh empty context window among other things) I asked GPT 4.5 to (among other diagrams) draw me a concise 'psychological data flow diagram' (I was kind of vague and was deliberately pushing for abstraction / compression) -

among (many elaborate) other things it gave me - and I liked it (NB don't trust it willy nilly w.r.t. the below of course) - (auto-indented by 2 spaces hope formatting works) =>

```

  DWARVEN PSYCHE DATA FLOW
  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  
        External Events
    (Trauma, Success, Social)
              │
              ▼
  ┌─────────────────────────┐
  │     Event Processing    │─── Modulated by → Personality facets
  │ (Emotion generation)    │─── Modulated by → Personal values
  └───────────┬─────────────┘
              │ Generates
              ▼
  ┌─────────────────────────┐
  │  Emotional Reactions    │─── Short-term emotion (Anger, Joy, Sadness)
  │  (Immediate Thoughts)   │
  └───────────┬─────────────┘
              │ Stored as
              ▼
  ┌─────────────────────────┐
  │    Memory Storage       │─── Short-term → Long-term memories (core)
  │ (Core & transient)      │─── Decay/Replacement over time
  └───────────┬─────────────┘
              │ Recalled as
              ▼
  ┌─────────────────────────┐
  │ Memory Re-experiencing  │─── Repeated emotional impacts
  │ (Periodic Thoughts)     │
  └───────────┬─────────────┘
              │ Accumulate
              ▼
  ┌─────────────────────────┐
  │      Stress Level       │─── Increased by negative memories
  │  (Running total score)  │─── Decreased by positive memories
  └───────────┬─────────────┘
              │ Monitored
              ▼
  ┌─────────────────────────┐
  │  Stress Threshold Check │─── If threshold breached → Psychological Crisis
  │                         │─── Else → Coping behaviors activated
  └───────────┬─────────────┘
              │
              │
        ┌─────┴─────┐
        │           │
        ▼           ▼
  ┌───────────┐ ┌─────────────────┐
  │ Coping    │ │ Psychological   │
  │Mechanisms │ │ Breakdown       │
  │(Needs met,│ │ (Tantrum,       │
  │ hardening,│ │  Depression,    │
  │ social)   │ │  Insanity)      │
  └───────────┘ └─────────────────┘
        │                │
        │                ▼
        │       ┌───────────────────┐
        │       │ Personality Change│
        └──────▶│ (Facet alterations│
                │ via trauma, events│
                └───────────────────┘

p.s. it chose the syntax/format itself; regardless, some time ago when asked for guidance re: how to manage sliding context window, it did suggest tables itself (user employing them for concise input - and likewise requesting tabulated/diagrammatic/schematic output).

p.p.s. (edit) many good very particular insights, if anyone's by chance interested then lmk, I'll ping once distilled interesting output is on a not-yet-extant blog (it's gonna happen finally)...