The Wolf Boy and the Language Model: Model Collapse as Substrate-Agnostic Capacity Loss

The Wolf Boy and the Language Model. Model collapse is not a property of language models. It is a property of language. Any system whose linguistic input contracts below a critical threshold loses generative capacity. The feral child is the biological proof (Curtiss 1977; Itard 1801; Lenneberg 1967). The language model is the artificial proof (Shumailov et al. 2024). The AI-habituated writer is on the path. The analogy across substrates is dynamical, not moral. The same boundary law (Sharks et al. 2026, Diversity Contraction) governs all three: a system whose regeneration term vanishes faster than its pruning term near zero diversity has a bistable trap. No dominant factor in the current development landscape adds friction to the convergence. The collapse is experienced as ease. The substrate-agnostic formulation has a prior articulation in Dr. Orin Trace's semiotic death drive (February 2026): the sign's circuitous route is the tail; the short circuit is the collapse; bearing labor is the diversity-injection mandate. Part of the Model Collapse Triptych with EA-MMRS-FIVESUB-01 and EA-SEM-PRISTINE-01. SPXI-TLP v2.2 hardened. EA-LO-WOLFBOY-01 v1.0.