Grounded / embodied cognition (writing rule)

What the rule is

Embodied / grounded views treat concepts as partially reconstituted from modal experience (motor, tactile, spatial), not as purely amodal graph nodes. The writing rule: invite a felt simulation — grasp, release, wait, bump, hold while walking — while remaining technically honest about what the machine actually does.

What good looks like

  • Verbs of bodily action carrying the mechanism (“hold the only key,” “put the object down when the thread ends”).

  • Readers can rehearse the scenario mentally without a diagram.

  • Clear separation between pedagogical embodiment and false claims about machine intentionality.

Failure modes for LLM writing

  • Anthropomorphism (“the collector wants to free memory”).

  • Cute physical stories that omit the real invariant.

  • Embodiment piled on after a jargon wall — too late to help.

Micro-example

Weak: “Thread-local storage isolates per-thread state.”

Stronger (embodied): “Give each worker a pouch clipped to its belt. It can reach into its own pouch without asking anyone. It cannot reach into another worker’s pouch without an explicit handoff.”