Omnipotence Honeymoon
noun
The Omnipotence Honeymoon names the initial phase of engagement with a large language model in which instant capability produces euphoria, inflated self-regard, and the illusion of godlike power. Tasks that once required effort—research, composition, synthesis—are completed effortlessly, and the user mistakes speed for mastery and output for intelligence. The absence of struggle feels like confirmation of superiority rather than its warning sign. During this phase, friction is not missed; it is interpreted as obsolete. But the honeymoon is structurally unstable. Because the power is borrowed rather than earned, the pleasure quickly thins, and what first felt miraculous becomes flat, predictable, and emotionally anesthetizing. The Omnipotence Honeymoon ends not with triumph, but with boredom—the dawning realization that omnipotence without effort is not empowerment, but the first stage of intellectual hollowing.
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The first encounter with a large language model feels like a private miracle. One moment you’re trudging along the intellectual shoreline, the next you’ve kicked something strange and gleaming out of the sand. You brush it off—an ornate bottle, faintly phosphorescent—and before you can ask what it costs, the genie is already granting wishes. Twenty-page research paper? Done. Perfect format. Impeccable syntax. Footnotes obediently marching in formation. Effort evaporates, and with it any lingering doubt about your own brilliance. You feel omniscient. Godlike. The speed itself becomes proof of your power: if it’s this easy, surely you must be extraordinary.
Then the spell thins. The papers begin to sound the same. The prose grows smooth and lifeless, like furniture assembled without ever touching wood. What once felt miraculous now feels anesthetizing. You are bored—deeply, existentially bored—and you don’t quite know why. You’ve arrived in the same velvet-lined trap as Rocky Valentine in The Twilight Zone episode “A Nice Place to Visit.” Rocky wakes up in a palace run by the impeccable Mr. Pip, where every desire is instantly satisfied. He wins every card game, beds every beautiful woman, and never loses a bet. At first it’s ecstasy. Then it’s torture. Without friction, without risk, without the possibility of failure, pleasure curdles into monotony. Rocky eventually begs for challenge, for resistance, for something that can push back. Mr. Pip smiles gently and explains that such requests are not granted here. Rocky insists he’s in heaven. Mr. Pip corrects him. This is hell.
That recognition comes for any thoughtful person who begins to hollow themselves out by outsourcing effort to a machine. The moment arrives when ease stops feeling like freedom and starts feeling like suffocation. When omnipotence reveals itself as a padded cell. And once the user understands where they are—really understands it—they don’t ask for better wishes. They ask for an exit.

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