LLM study traces a long shift toward autonomy in Western literature

An LLM analysis of 23,064 public-domain books estimates that its constructed “innovation wedge”—hierarchy and fear of new ideas relative to autonomy and patience—fell 51% from its year-1000 level by 1920. The authors report that a separate 5,000-book archive reproduced the decline and that a rival model family produced a similar path. The measure covers Western elite literary culture, not mass belief; the paper’s causal growth claims remain model-dependent.