[clooper]

How are people lookup tables? In the case of neural networks the representation of the table is obvious, it's just numbers. What would be the equivalent table for the liver?

My argument isn't abstract. Neural networks really are just numerical functions which can be expanded into their equivalent graph representations.

[josh-stylo]

Not sure what he's referring to in terms of modern physics saying we're just a lookup table but at the very least, you could say the same thing about the conversation that we're having now. You read words, those words map to meaning representation in our heads, we then generate a response.

[clooper]

Obviously if we are interacting over a digital medium then the responses will be encoded as numbers but there is no way to reduce an entire person to a lookup table. Measured output of human behavior can be expressed as lists of numbers but thinking is not the same as the list of numbers, unlike in the case of neural networks where the graph and the network are actually equivalent.

[mewpmewp2]

You could represent all the input on different levels as numbers, e.g. all EM waves hitting our eyes, then all the physical output from our body also as numbers, and everything that causes this output from input within is what you would consider to be a lookup table.

[clooper]

What are the dimension of the input and output spaces involved in this idealization? In the case of a neural network there is no idealization. The network is software, it's a number. It's inputs and outputs are all bounded and can be expressed as a table of bounded tuples.

[mewpmewp2]

You could pick a very large number depending on a reasonable processing capability a human has, which represents all the significant physical interactions on a human body over a certain amount of time. Then take the output over a certain amount of time, being all movements of the body.

If you wanted to focus on thoughts alone, you might want to skip few layers/systems, to give input directly to whatever causes thoughts to happen.

All particles and their interactions could also be represented as numbers. But it just depends on what level we do this, and at what level what kind of complex logic is required.

[clooper]

Ok so give me some concrete number.

[ccozan]

I think the OP is right. All the input to a human brain can be expressed as numbers, at any given time a specific radiation, vibration, or chemical reaction is hitting our "sensors" and by the law of physics this is just numbers ( in terms of differentiation, brain does not know absolute values ).

Our output ( mechanical and vibrations ) is also fully quantifiable, thus numbers.

One giant lookup table.

[clooper]

Provide some concrete numbers for solar radiation then as a lookup table. You guys are confusing abstraction and idealization with what it means to be a thinking person. There is no such abstraction and idealization happening with software. The software is really just a number, there is no idealization or abstraction happening when I claim that GPT is a sequence of bits representing a numerical function.

[bubblyworld]

People really are just stacks of molecules that can be broken down into their causal properties - moreover, we know those causal properties to a high degree of accuracy these days.

I'm suggesting that for any given human/environment pair, there is a lookup table that produces that person's actual behaviour in that situation. Modern physics lets us approximate this lookup table, and presumably better physics would give us a better lookup table.

Since human behaviour can in principle be described with a lookup table, I see this as a bad reason to rule out a system as "thinking".

Perhaps there is another way to describe neural nets, one that does not use the language of lookup tables, that makes it feel more like thinking and less like lookups.

One such approach I've seen is looking for embedded world models in neural nets.