[wizzwizz4]

GPT-4o didn't describe this properly.

Plato's Cave is about a group of people chained up, facing shadows on a cave wall, mistaking those for reality, and trying to build an understanding of the world based only on those shadows, without access to the objects that cast them. (If someone's shackles came loose, and they did manage to leave the cave, and see the real world and the objects that cast those shadows… would they even be able to communicate that to those who knew only shadows? Who would listen?) https://existentialcomics.com/comic/222 is an entirely faithful rendition of the thought experiment / parable, in comic form.

The analogy to LLMs should now be obvious: an ML system operating only on text strings (a human-to-human communication medium), without access to the world the text describes, or even a human mind with which to interpret the words, is as those in the cave. This is not in principle an impossible task, but neither is it an easy one, and one wouldn't expect mere hill-climbing to solve it. (There's reason to believe "understanding of prose" isn't even in the GPT parameter space.)

It's not about "discerning reality from representation": I'm not confident those four words actually mean anything. It's not about "superficial appearances" or "deeper truth", either. The computer waxes lyrical about philosophy, but it's mere technobabble. Any perceived meaning exists only in your mind, not on paper, and different people will see different meanings because the meaning isn't there.

[repeekad]

This is a genuinely interesting perspective that I think nails my original point and fear of AI being used as “spark notes” for complex topics. To me, LLMs are like a calculator for language, except the math is always changing (if that makes sense), and I’m not sure I like where that’s heading as the first cohorts of AI tutored kids learn from these kinds of procedurally generated output rather than reading the original historical texts, or maybe it’s fine that not everyone reads Plato but more people at least have heard of his concepts? Idk philosophy is pretty far outside my expertise, maybe I should open a book

[Jarwain]

The allegory of the cave is pretty short, read it if you want!

The wild thing about it, and other allegories or poems like frost's "the road not taken" , is that it can mean different things to a person depending on where they are in life because those experiences will lead to different interpretations of the poem.

A key concept in journalism is to focus on the source material as beat you can. Cliff notes are helpful, but one misses Details that they wouldn't have missed if they read the whole thing.

Whether those details Matter depends on what the thing Is.

But yeah, thinking about it this way kinda scares me too, and can lead some people down weird roads where their map can diverge further and further from reality

[Jerrrrrrry]

  > an ML system operating only on text strings (a human-to-human communication medium), without access to the world the text describes, or even a human mind with which to interpret the words, is as those in the cave. This is not in principle an impossible task, but neither is it an easy one, and one wouldn't expect mere hill-climbing to solve it

Blind people can literally not picture red. They can describe red, with likely even more articulateness than most, but have never seen it themselves. They infer it's properties from other contexts, and communicated a description that would match a non-blind person. But they can see it.

I would link to the Robert Miles video, but it is just blatant.

It has read every physics book, and can infer the Newtonian laws even if it didn't.

Micheal Crichton's Timeline, "the time machine drifts, sure. It returns. Just like a plate will remain on a table, even when you are not looking at it."

It also knows Timeline is a book, time machines are fictional, and that Micheal Crichton is the best author.

These are all just words, maybe with probability weights.

  > I'm not confident those four words actually mean anything. I...The computer waxes lyrical ... mere technobabble. Any perceived meaning exists only in your mind... people will see different meanings because the meaning isn't there.

Meaning only means something to people, which you are. That is axiomatically correct, but not very productive, as self-references are good but countering proofs.

The whole "what is the purpose to life?" is a similar loaded question; only humans have purpose, as it is entirely in their little noggins, no more present materially then the flesh they inhabit.

Science cannot answer "Why?", only "How?"; "Why?" is a question of intention, which would be to anthropomorphize, which only Humans do.

The computers can infer, and imply, then reply.

[wizzwizz4]

> It has read every physics book, and can infer the Newtonian laws even if it didn't.

You're confusing "what it is possible to derive, given the bounds of information theory" with "how this particular computer system behaves". I sincerely doubt that a transformer model's training procedure derives Newton's Third Law, no matter how many narrative descriptions it's fed: letting alone what the training procedure actually does, that's the sort of thing that only comes up when you have a quantitative description available, such as an analogue sensorium, or the results of an experiment.

[Jerrrrrrry]

  >when you have a quantitative description available, such as an analogue sensorium, or the results of an experiment.

Textbooks uniting the mathematical relationships between physics, raw math, and computer science - including vulnerabilities.

oeis.org and wikipedia and stackforums alone would approximate a 3D room with gravity and wind force.

now add appendixes and indices of un-parsed, un-told, un-realized mathematical errata et trivia minutiae, cross-transferred knowledge from other regions that have still have not conquered the language barrier for higher-ordered arcane concepts....

The models thought experiments are more useful than our realized experiments - if not at an individualized scale now, will be when subject to more research.

There could be a dozen faster inverse sqrt / 0x5F3759DF functions barely under our noses, and the quantifier and qualifier havent intersected yet.