Dear Gary, that's a lovely way to put it, 'statistics over understanding'!
The statistics are derivative in nature, dependent on word order, pixel order, syllable/tone order... , which have no *inherent* meaning [foreign languages are foreign, when the symbols and utterances mean nothing to those who weren't taught their meaning; same w/ …
Dear Gary, that's a lovely way to put it, 'statistics over understanding'!
The statistics are derivative in nature, dependent on word order, pixel order, syllable/tone order... , which have no *inherent* meaning [foreign languages are foreign, when the symbols and utterances mean nothing to those who weren't taught their meaning; same w/ music, math, chemical formulae, nautical charts, circuit diagrams, floor plans...].
Symbols have no inherent meaning, they only have shared meaning. And we can impart such meaning to an AI that shares the world with us, like we do with humans and animals that share the world with us - physically. Everything else is just DATA, ie DOA.
I believe that meaning frequently depends on what we can do with items. Of course, the reference needs to be shared socially. However, to even assign meaning requires someone who cares about the thing. And why do we care? Because of the actionable quality of the thing the symbol refers to.
We often conceptualize the world in terms of our perceptions and cognitive representations; we should not forget that much of our survival depends on how we can change the world to match our goals.
'A responsible caregiver' is usually who teaches infants - moms, other fam members, nannies... then it's pre-school teachers and classmates, then it's society at-large... Without all of this, learning about the world is difficult if not impossible [animal behavior and instincts aside]. Even the sense of Self might be induced via others, possibly.
"Responsible caregiver", I love that. It reminds me of a theme from "The Little Prince".
"You are not special yet. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. My fox was like you. He was like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique."
Everything in the world can be unique, and given a name, but doing so is difficult without a purpose. Very high level, but personally, I believe that's also behind cognitive impairment in major depression. If nothing has a purpose, nothing has a meaning. Naming, taming, selecting one thing over another becomes impossible because there is no reason to do so. Perception, attention, memory retrieval: all atrophy because they need to be applied because of something, not just to something.
Nice! That quote from 'The Little Prince' (and the entire book in fact) is 'fire', lol.
You hit the nail on the head, about 'purpose', including how lack of it could stem from depression. The reverse might be true too - inability to lead a meaningful/purposeful life might lead to boredom, withdrawal, anger and a bunch of other feelings (eg in societies with high unemployment, lack of opportunities, corrupt governments that don't care about society's progress etc).
Scientific exploration is also driven by a 'need' to find meaning in nature, to understand it, benefit from its phenomena etc. The search for 'meaning' at a deeper level can occur even in the most dire circumstances, eg as documented in Viktor Frankl's amazing work [eg. described in https://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/viktor-frankl/].
Now when we compare all these aspects about being 'human', with something like an LLM that does dot products, with its practitioners claiming parity... Lol.
Dear Gary, that's a lovely way to put it, 'statistics over understanding'!
The statistics are derivative in nature, dependent on word order, pixel order, syllable/tone order... , which have no *inherent* meaning [foreign languages are foreign, when the symbols and utterances mean nothing to those who weren't taught their meaning; same w/ music, math, chemical formulae, nautical charts, circuit diagrams, floor plans...].
Symbols have no inherent meaning, they only have shared meaning. And we can impart such meaning to an AI that shares the world with us, like we do with humans and animals that share the world with us - physically. Everything else is just DATA, ie DOA.
I believe that meaning frequently depends on what we can do with items. Of course, the reference needs to be shared socially. However, to even assign meaning requires someone who cares about the thing. And why do we care? Because of the actionable quality of the thing the symbol refers to.
We often conceptualize the world in terms of our perceptions and cognitive representations; we should not forget that much of our survival depends on how we can change the world to match our goals.
100%.
'A responsible caregiver' is usually who teaches infants - moms, other fam members, nannies... then it's pre-school teachers and classmates, then it's society at-large... Without all of this, learning about the world is difficult if not impossible [animal behavior and instincts aside]. Even the sense of Self might be induced via others, possibly.
ALL of this requires a body.
"Responsible caregiver", I love that. It reminds me of a theme from "The Little Prince".
"You are not special yet. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. My fox was like you. He was like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique."
Everything in the world can be unique, and given a name, but doing so is difficult without a purpose. Very high level, but personally, I believe that's also behind cognitive impairment in major depression. If nothing has a purpose, nothing has a meaning. Naming, taming, selecting one thing over another becomes impossible because there is no reason to do so. Perception, attention, memory retrieval: all atrophy because they need to be applied because of something, not just to something.
Nice! That quote from 'The Little Prince' (and the entire book in fact) is 'fire', lol.
You hit the nail on the head, about 'purpose', including how lack of it could stem from depression. The reverse might be true too - inability to lead a meaningful/purposeful life might lead to boredom, withdrawal, anger and a bunch of other feelings (eg in societies with high unemployment, lack of opportunities, corrupt governments that don't care about society's progress etc).
Scientific exploration is also driven by a 'need' to find meaning in nature, to understand it, benefit from its phenomena etc. The search for 'meaning' at a deeper level can occur even in the most dire circumstances, eg as documented in Viktor Frankl's amazing work [eg. described in https://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/viktor-frankl/].
Now when we compare all these aspects about being 'human', with something like an LLM that does dot products, with its practitioners claiming parity... Lol.