[fc417fc802]

Our brains work differently, yes. What evidence do you have that our brains are not functionally equivalent to a series of weights being used to predict the next token?

I'm not claiming that to be the case, merely pointing out that you don't appear to have a reasonable claim to the contrary.

> not even including the possibility that we have a soul or any other spiritual substrait.

If we're going to veer off into mysticism then the LLM discussion is also going to get a lot weirder. Perhaps we ought to stick to a materialist scientific approach?

[nothinkjustai]

You are setting the bar in a way that makes “functional equivalence” unfalsifiable.

If by “functionally equivalent” you mean “can produce similar linguistic outputs in some domains,” then sure we’re already there in some narrow cases. But that’s a very thin slice of what brains do, and thus not functionally equivalent at all.

There are a few non-mystical, testable differences that matter:

- Online learning vs. frozen inference: brains update continuously from tiny amounts of data, LLMs do not

- Grounding: human cognition is tied to perception, action, and feedback from the world. LLMs operate over symbol sequences divorced from direct experience.

- Memory: humans have persistent, multi-scale memory (episodic, procedural, etc.) that integrates over a lifetime. LLM “memory” is either weights (static) or context (ephemeral).

- Agency: brains are part of systems that generate their own goals and act on the world. LLMs optimize a fixed objective (next-token prediction) and don’t have endogenous drives.

[fc417fc802]

I did not claim the ability of current LLMs to be on par with that of humans (equivalently human brains). I objected that you have not presented evidence refuting the claim that the core functionality of human brains can be accomplished by predicting the next token (or something substantially similar to that). None of the things you listed support a claim on the matter in either direction.

[CPLX]

What evidence do you have that a sausage is not functionally equivalent to a cucumber?

[coldtea]

From certain aspects they're equivalent.

Both have mass, have carbon based, both contain DNA/RNA, both are suprinsingly over 50% water, both are food, and both can be tasty when served right.

From other aspects they are not.

In many cases, one or the other would do. In other cases, you want something more special (e.g. more protein, or less fat).

[fc417fc802]

I don't follow. If you provide criteria I can most likely provide evidence, unless your criteria is "vaguely cylindrical and vaguely squishy" in which case I obviously won't be able to.

The person I replied to made a definite claim (that we are "very obviously not ...") for which no evidence has been presented and which I posit humanity is currently unable to definitively answer in one direction or the other.

[CPLX]

When two things are obviously radically different (a squishy mass of trillions of interconnected carbon based blobs fed by some sort of continuous oxygen based chemical reaction, and a series of distributed transitors on silicon wafers) then the burden of proof shifts to the other guy to provide the clear and convincing evidence that they should be considered functionally the same thing.

[fc417fc802]

But I made no such claim. I was explicit that my position is "humanity is currently unable to definitively answer in one direction or the other".

Two things being physically different does not exclude their also having functional similarities. The argument presented amounts to A and B have large physical differences, A does X, therefore B does not do X. That doesn't follow.