[satvikpendem]

They don't pretend they understand everything though, just as we do not "understand" everything about LLMs even though we know they run on electronic computer systems; some properties are simply emergent via structure, and the same properties can emerge via biological computers too, but again, to notice that fact does not mean we "pretend to understand."

[keybored]

All of the assumptions (and the metaphor) contained in that response of yours seems to contradict the statement itself.

By using “just” you’ve already asserted that there is nothing more of relative importance to figure out—it’s done, figured out.

[pjc50]

These days "just" is a huge red flag for me. It's saying "my thinking stops here, yours should too".

[satvikpendem]

Yes, by using "just," it is a thought terminating word. However, again, I do believe we have it figured out, based on how we understand the rest of the universe to be physically-based as well. It is, in my experience, human arrogance that leads us to believe that we are somehow more than physical structures. It makes people feel uneasy to believe that so they invent something to solve that cognitive dissonance.

[keybored]

The relevant comparison isn’t to people who think we are “more than physical structures”. It is to people who are a bit humbled by the complexity of the world and how when you seem to learn something new about it, ten more questions pop up. Which must be a forced attitude that some scientists have.

Contrast that with the arrogance of creating a neural network in your garage and thinking to yourself: “well I guess as a side-effect of this all of existence makes sense now.”

[satvikpendem]

None of that relates to what I said though. Physicalists do continue to do research of the natural world, in fact, that is actually what drives them more toward physicalism! I think you are arguing a strawman, since no one said anything about being arrogant.

[keybored]

> None of that relates to what I said though. Physicalists do continue to do research of the natural world,

If they do research and this viewpoint works for them then who am I to judge.

I’m more used to this viewpoint being presented when someone who doesn’t work in some area expresses some opinion (hot take) on it. That could be a physicist expressing an opinion on cognitive science e.g. (whatever cognitive science is about).

> Physicalists do continue to do research of the natural world, in fact, that is actually what drives them more toward physicalism!

I don’t understand what physicalism is supposed to be about[1] beyond explicitly denying God-of-the-gaps.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsLOVYTLt90

> I think you are arguing a strawman, since no one said anything about being arrogant.

Just like no one identified themselves as being arrogant because they believe that they are more than physical structures. Or even claimed that they believe that they are more than physical structures. (The reductionists will often barge in an identify anyone who disagrees with their opinion as someone who believes in the supra-physical, based on nothing.)

[satvikpendem]

> I’m more used to this viewpoint being presented when someone who doesn’t work in some area expresses some opinion (hot take) on it. That could be a physicist expressing an opinion on cognitive science e.g. (whatever cognitive science is about).

Seems like your comments are responding to a point in your head without anyone expressing such points. No one here is like the physicist in your example, so I am not even sure against whom you are arguing here.

[llamaimperative]

Sure some people believe that, but there’s still an interesting and worthwhile path of inquiry along the lines of: “it’s remarkable how such fundamentally simple systems can generate such profoundly complex and varied structures.”

The discovery of evolution in nature, for example, could be seen (and was seen by Darwin as) an increase in the wonder and awe we can find in the world.

[satvikpendem]

See my other comment, I don't deny that. By "figured it out," I mean that the general principle of physicalism versus dualism seems empirically established based on all of the tests we've done in cognitive biology. That is not to say that the general theory cannot be improved via further research.

[mistermann]

You have superb skills in leveraging often hard to spot ambiguity the English language offers, I think you would excel in sales of most any product, truth included.

[satvikpendem]

Thanks, indeed I do do sales, for SaaS specifically, my own as well as for others.

[llamaimperative]

Got it, yeah I think we're in the same boat here. It's clearly physical, and yet that ought to be the beginning, not the end of inquiry.

Dualism is probably one of the most intellectually destructive ideas we've managed to come up with.

[satvikpendem]

Yes, and I really think it stems from religious biases, of wanting to think ourselves as being a soul inhabiting a body instead of being the body in itself. There's a reason why Descartes was one of the prime motivators of dualism.

[paganel]

> biological computers

Using that as a metaphor is telling in itself, as we're far from being (just) "biological computers".

[satvikpendem]

> as we're far from being (just) "biological computers".

What part is? Or rather, how can you show that we are not? Note that I use "computer" in the general sense, that which computes, by taking in input and emitting output.

[walterbell]

Start with the work of Heinz von Foerster and his Biological Computer Laboratory, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_Computer_Laboratory

> The focus of research at BCL was systems theory and specifically the area of self-organizing systems, bionics, and bio-inspired computing; that is, analyzing, formalizing, and implementing biological processes using computers. BCL was inspired by the ideas of Warren McCulloch and the Macy Conferences, as well as many other thinkers in the field of cybernetics.

1969 zine from BCL students, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34825918

2003 essay collection, "Understanding Understanding", http://www.alice.id.tue.nl/references/foerster-2003.pdf

  In the late 1940s a group of people had begun meeting every year in New York under the auspices of the Josiah Macy Foundation to discuss “circular causal and feedback mechanisms” .. The group included Norbert Wiener, who had coined the term “cybernetics”; Claude Shannon, the inventor of information theory; Warren McCullough, one of the leading neuropsychiatrists—he called himself an “experimental epistemologist”; Gregory Bateson, the philosopher and anthropologist; his wife Margaret Mead, the anthropologist who made Samoa famous; John von Neuman, one of the people who started the computer revolution..

[satvikpendem]

This seems the opposite of what I'm asking. I am not asking how biological processes can be modeled by silicon based computers, I am asking in the general sense how one cannot say that biological machines compute just as silicon based computers do.

[paganel]

In that vein you can also ask lots of similar things, as in, why we're not refrigerators, or washing machines, or any other inanimate objects which carry out some mechanical-related stuff.

Trying to come up with a compelling reason for why we're not "biological computers" (and this "trying" in itself is half-giving away of one's point in this types of discussions) would involve long discussions going all the way back to the French Enlightenment and the likes of La Mettrie, not sure any online discussion would get to the end of it.

[satvikpendem]

Sure, those all compute as well, hence are computers and therefore fall within my question. Just because one is only familiar with silicon based computers does not mean that that which takes in input and emits output by other means is not itself a sort of computer. That is in fact part of my question, as, why biological systems are not given the same scrutiny.

This is part of why I don't see any compelling evidence why we are not biological computers, much as it pains people to admit so.

[mistermann]

You can say it (and if you use language persuasively, and repeat it often enough, you can even cause it to appear to be true [1], the effects of which can usually be seen in any thread like this), but you cannot say it soundly (known to be necessarily conclusive):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_and_sufficiency

Plus, there are identifiable differences (disproving the "just as"): LLM's can reliably acknowledge epistemic unsoundness in their prior claims without aversion and rhetoric.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect

[satvikpendem]

Your links do not support your conclusions (actually, I don't believe there are any in your comment). Yes, while you can repeat something often enough for it to appear true, it may not actually be true; this is a vacuous statement that does not need to be stated. My comment about LLMs are generally analogistic, they are not meant to be taken concretely on current implementations.

You have not actually answered my question however, your comment is a deflection of what I'm asking, so I will ask again, why are biological beings not considered computational? They do the same thing a general computer can do. And again, by "computer," I do not necessarily mean silicon-based, Von Neumann architecture computers.

[walterbell]

> This seems

If you're going to casually dismiss twenty years of funded research on the topic you asked about, then this is a self-regulating thread.

https://constructivist.info/riegler/pub/riegler05foerster.ht...

> Artificial neural networks were one of the “hot” topics at the BCL. They combine engineering.. and empirical science.. As early as in 1960, the BCL developed a neural network prototype called “Numa-Rete,” which could count objects irrespective of their shape and size.

https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=12098476

  The reductionist eventually comes to know everything about nothing (by way of distinction) - the wholist eventually comes to know nothing about everything (by way of generalization).

[satvikpendem]

> If you're going to casually dismiss twenty years of funded research on the topic you asked about, then this is a self-regulating thread.

Again you misunderstand what I am asking for. There is no use in me asking for the color blue and you talking about the color red, then when I say, I am asking about blue, you tell me that there has been 20 years of research on red. That may be true but that is not what I am asking about.