| > I must stress that the idea of "Science predicting facts" is a consolidated formula in Philosophy of Science. Respectfully, I'd suggest that you are misinterpreting it or using the wrong terminology. Science is not a thing, it is a process: A hypothesis is a prediction about the world, which is validated or disproven via experiment. A validated hypothesis -- like Newton's physics -- is a model for how the world works, which may later be superseded by more accurate models. Newton's physics, though a great stride in our understanding of the world, is not a fact, instead it is an approximation of reality. > * the predicting activities of a junkie under psychedelics and that of a lucid thinker are substantially different.* There's also a substantial difference between the predicting activities of a cat and those of a man. Scratch the surface, though, and the same type of thing is happening. Of course LLMs don't predict things exactly as you do. But at what they were trained to do -- in much the same way a cat was "trained" by long eons to hunt mice -- they're extremely capable, and they're extensible and capable of abstraction much as humans are, and much unlike cats. It's not even clear that, in the general case, how they work is any worse than how we work. It's still early. Your point, that they're structurally flawed, is noted -- but look at the average human and try to tell me that human reasoning is flawless. Human reasoning is perhaps even more unreliable. As for your detective game, how many humans, picked at random, could solve it? > You have the framework very very wrong: the point is not that we memorize, the point is that those LLMs don't check. Use DeepSeek R1 and try and tell me that it doesn't check. Not only does it check, it'll openly agonize over the answer it gives you. And at solving math problems for engineering purposes, it's in the 99.9th percentile of humans, if not far beyond, despite being ~1 year old. In edge cases, it's postgrad level. In the very near future, the successors of today's LLMs will be solving new theorems. Reasoning models, in general, disprove what you're trying to state here. It's more costly, but they're capable of procedural thinking. |
I have titles in the discipline. I know and I am supposed to know what you wrote there well. What I was telling you is that the use of 'predict' for the nature of Science is well established; of course it is a rhetoric simplification - but language in use is. Please see (I had to return to it a few weeks ago for another discussion) the article about Imre Lakatos in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lakatos/ .
> look at the average human
We do not look at the average human to determine a specific ability: we look at specimen that show and express that particular ability. There is a difference between John who has a keen ethical sense, Ron who does not exercise it, and Don who is a clinical psychopath with missing cerebral modules making it completely Values-blind.
> As for your detective game, how many humans, picked at random, could solve it?
And I would certainly not ask them advice. On the contrary, LLMs are there to give outputs... So,
> But at what they were trained to do -- in much the same way a cat was "trained" by long eons to hunt mice -- they're extremely capable
There may be a very great misunderstanding about what they are trained to do («predicting verisimility», telling a convincing story) and what we should expect them to do (producing outputs like those who «predict[] facts», i.e. reason subtly over a world model). In fact,
> structurally flawed
Until we know they are "_sober_", I'd exercise all care. "Sobriety" must be implemented.
> Use DeepSeek R1 and try and tell me that it doesn't check
I have used it. (I have used it before many of you: I am one who gave the alarm to this community(, ignored,) well before the stock market crash.) Those of the "detective" game used it, and it failed especially. This tells you that with LLMs we are still in the realms of the "oracular" that you supposed "dead and gone with Delphi".
Edit: and especially,
> Scratch the surface, though, and the same type of thing is happening
You may have "intuitions" and say that according to "your guts and best subconscious guesses", "that A is B". But if you then "believe" that intuition and consider it "final" instead of checking it, vetting it through conscious processes, to determine if it was correct and make it solid - then you are doing it wrong.