[mannykannot]

Two models having a coherent conversation - a scenario which follows directly from my post - would be a purely textual example of what I mean.

> Perhaps we will never find out if language models have a theory of mind.

We appear to be in agreement here.

When the state of our knowledge is 'maybe', it seems rash to assume either 'yes' or 'no'.

[rhn_mk1]

What does it change when you add another model? I don't see how this lets us extract extra information.

What distinguishes two conjoined models from one model with a narrowing across the middle?

If the idea is to have two similar minds building a theory of each other, then I guess this could be informative, but first we'd have to establish that the models are "minds" in the first place. It's not clear to me what that requires.

[mannykannot]

Here's where I am coming from: there have been a number of experiments to teach language to other species, but there is always a problem in trying to figure out to what extent they 'get' language - For example, there is the case of the chimpanzee Washoe signing "water" and "bird" on first seeing a swan - was it, as some people contended, inventing a new phrase for picking out swans (or even aquatic birds in general), or was it merely making the signs for two different things in the scene before it? [1]

One thing that has not been seen (as far as I know) is two or more of these animal subjects routinely having meaningful conversations among themselves. This would be a much richer source of data, and I do not think it would leave much doubt that they 'got' language to a very significant degree.

[1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/11/24/can-chimps-conve...