[soist]

LLMs can be whatever labels people choose to attribute to the system executing the instructions to generate "answers". It is fundamentally a category error to attribute any meaning to whatever arithmetic operations the hardware is executing because neither the hardware in the data center nor the software have any personal characteristics other than what people erroneously attribute to them because of confused ontologies and metaphysics about computers and software.

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

At which point would such attributions be accurate? Humans are fundamentally just computers too. A different medium, but still transforming electrical signals.

[soist]

Extremely weird to me when people compare themselves to computers. What is that philosophical stance called and do you have any references for long form writing which makes the case for why people are "just" computers?

[radarsat1]

It's definitely a philosophical position that exists beyond a random HN poster. See for example computational theory of mind https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/

[soist]

I am familiar with the computational theory of cognition. What I wanted to know was whether there were any people who actually claimed their thinking is nothing more than programmed computation. I am very curious to know if they have mapped out the instruction set for their mind along the lines of something like the SKI combinators.

[kybernetikos]

A mental instruction set would be extremely interesting. Unfortunately, nobody has that level of understanding of brain processes (and it might be quite difficult to formulate in such a linear way since the underlying mechanism is so very parallel), but the idea that human cognition is computable falls pretty naturally out of the idea that nature is computable which I think is a common position (sometimes called the Church Turing Deutsch principle).

[soist]

Yes, I understand why some scientists claim that nature is "just" some computer but no one still has given an answer to my very basic question: what is the instruction set that the people who claim they are computers are using to think? Surely there must be one if they are nothing more than programmable computers as they claim.

[prometheus76]

And wouldn't that language need to be able to account for different physiological states? Thinking when one is hungry or sleepy is quite different than thinking when one is well-fed or fully rested.

[soist]

Yes. To validate the claim would require not only a formal instruction set but also the code to account for all sorts of cognitive states and processes. I'm not ruling out that some people are indeed programmable computers but I would like to see some actual evidence presented by the people who make these claims about themselves.

[vidarh]

For us to not be would require brains to be able to compute functions that can not be computed by an artificial computer. That would seem to be an extraordinary suggestion given we have no indication of unusual physics in the brain.

[soist]

You'll have to define your terms first. Physicists now believe there is such a thing as dark matter and that there are objects so massive that no amount of observation can ever make sense of how massive they are because it is impossible to model it mathematically.

I am not the one making any extraordinary claims. Physicists themselves admit there are aspects of reality with no computational basis.

[vidarh]

These terms have well understood meanings, and dark matter or black holes are entirely irrelevant to what I said.

For brains not to be computers would mean the physical Church-Turing thesis is invalid, and proof of that would be extraordinary enough to be Nobel Prize material.

[soist]

Whether something is physical or not is orthognal to whether it computes or not. You're the one who brought up physics so that's why I showed why your logic was invalid. My contention was that calling something a computer without providing an instruction set was nonsensical and I wanted to know if someone had actually spent the time to rigorously think about what a computer without an instruction set would entail. So far it seems like no one has spent any time really thinking about it but that's probably for the best anyway. I'm sure an LLM will eventually figure out an instruction set for programming people and then take over the world.

[baq]

Occam’s razor - ‘just computers’ is enough to explain the mind, so why bother with more?

[soist]

Steam engines and gears were used for explaining the mind as well but those turned out to be incorrect metaphors.

[vidarh]

Steam engines and gears are a specific physical manifestation of computation. Computation does not have a single, specific physical manifestation - it can, and has, been done with organic matter, electronics, gears, pipes of water, light.

Per the Church-Turing thesis these can all compute the same set of functions, and unless you can demonstrate that brains and only brains can evoke unknown physics that allows brains to compute a set of functions that can not be computed by other means, the most logical assumption is that it holds, including for brains.

Especially given how much we measure brains without seeing any signs of unusual physics.

[soist]

I think I understand. So what you're saying is that every function that can be implemented with computers must be computable. Your claim is that the brain is actually a computable function, can you tell me which one it is using your favorite version of a Turing complete instruction set? Or maybe I misunderstood and what you're saying is that the brain is not the function but what it does is compute a specific function called your mind in some unknown instruction set?

[prometheus76]

Does your computer supply different answers if it is hungry, or tired?

[vidarh]

It would if it was programmed to. Modern OSs certainly takes into account environmental factors.