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by keiferski 1036 days ago
I don't read this statement as hypothetical at all.

And what do you feel when we understand it well enough to realize we're the same type of parlor tricks?

It seems pretty clearly when and not if. Not sure what you're reading there.
1 comments
bondarchuk 1036 days ago
"When" is in the future so I don't get your issue. Unless your point is that we can in principle never hope to understand certain things about it.
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keiferski 1036 days ago
When implies that the thing is going to happen. If implies that it might happen.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/if-...

The comment is written in such a way that it assumes this is the nature of reality and at some point, we will learn that the human mind is no different from the parlor tricks of LLMs. This is what I was criticizing.

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bondarchuk 1036 days ago
>The comment is written in such a way that it assumes this is the nature of reality and at some point, we will learn that the human mind is no different from the parlor tricks of LLMs.

Again your whole point seems to boil down to simply denying physicalism (unless you have something more subtle in mind about the limits of physical science). It's a valid position to take but not very fruitful for further conversation.

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keiferski 1036 days ago
No, I'm not talking about physicalism at all. I'm talking about reductionism and emergence. Even if it were shown that human thought processes operate at lower levels in ways similar to machines, that does not imply that human beings are equivalent to machines. That is a reductive argument.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/

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bondarchuk 1036 days ago
Now I don't understand at all anymore why you're disagreeing so strongly. I don't think anyone has proven that it's inherent to emergent properties that they can't be understood or explained in detail. One just has to explain the mechanisms of emergence in addition to explaining the component parts reductively (and if that is your objection to reductionist arguments I would be inclined to agree with you). But such an explanation of how intelligence can emerge from simple component parts is exactly what could potentially be provided by a better understanding of AI systems.
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