Comment by daveguy

You construct a theory of mind of the author of a work whether you recognize you are doing it or not. There are certain things everyone assumes about code based on the fact that we expect someone who writes code to have simple common sense. Which, of course, LLMs do not.

When you are talking to a person and interpreting what they mean, you have an inherent theory of mind whether you are consciously thinking "how does this person think" or not. It's how we communicate with other people efficiently and it's one of the many things missing with LLM roulette. It's not that you generate a new "theory of mind" with every interaction. It's not something you have to consciously do (although you can, like breathing).