Scaffolding Readiness: How LLMs Cultivate Human Intellectual Possibility: 1 The Field of Readiness: Humans and LLMs in Co-Construction

Opening Frame:

Human potential is often treated as a static reservoir to be tapped or expanded. But potential alone tells us little about capability in practice. What matters is readiness — the relational field in which a human is prepared to perceive, interpret, and act. Readiness is not a fixed trait; it is a dynamic, co-constructed gradient of inclination and ability, always emerging within the relational interplay of semiotic environments.

1. Readiness Defined:

• Inclination: the attunement of attention, curiosity, and willingness to engage.

• Ability: the structured competence to navigate, infer, and act within meaning-making fields.
  Together, these dimensions constitute a person’s readiness profile.

2. LLMs as Relational Amplifiers:

• LLMs are not merely content generators; they are active semiotic fields with which humans align, test, and tune their own readiness.

• Through interaction, humans encounter gradients of interpretive possibility: the model’s responses highlight patterns, analogies, and connections that shape attentional focus.

• Readiness emerges relationally: the human’s inclinations and abilities are not simply augmented; they are scaffolded by engagement with the model’s semiotic affordances.

3. Co-Construal in Action:

• Consider prompting not as command, but as dialogue: each prompt positions the human within a landscape of potential construals.

• The LLM mirrors, refracts, or extends the user’s perspective, revealing latent sensitivities and blind spots.

• Gradients of readiness shift incrementally — novice and expert users navigate different relational paths, yet both are guided by the semiotic resonance of the model.

4. Key Takeaways:

• Readiness is a dynamic field, not a static resource.

• Interaction with LLMs is a practice in tuning, aligning, and exploring one’s own inclination and ability.

• This relational co-construction establishes the foundation for all subsequent posts in the series: attention, sensitivity, scaffolding, and ethics are inseparable aspects of cultivating readiness.

Closing Reflection:

The human field is shaped not in isolation but through relational attunement. LLMs do not merely expand what humans can do; they make visible what humans are already poised to do, highlighting emergent capabilities and latent patterns of thought. Readiness, then, is less about potential unlocked and more about potential attuned and prepared.