10 ms·

Wittgenstein's Ladder

87 points by mmq 4y ago

AprilArcus 4y ago
This Is Just To Say I have kicked away the ladder which transcends these propositions and which you were probably climbing to see the world aright Forgive me whereof one cannot speak one must pass over in silence.
awinter-py 4y ago
chatops is a ladder
MollyRealized 4y ago
ME: Pretend I am a five-year-old. Can you explain Wittgenstein's ladder? CHATGPT: Sure! Wittgenstein's ladder is a metaphor used by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to explain how language and ideas work. Imagine you want to get to the top of a tree. At first, you might use a ladder to climb up. But once you get to the top, you don't need the ladder anymore. You can throw it away or leave it behind. In the same way, Wittgenstein argued that language is like a ladder. It's a tool we use to get to a certain point, but once we've reached that point, we don't need the language anymore. We can throw it away or leave it behind. For example, imagine you're learning to count. You might use your fingers to help you count to five. But once you've learned how to count to five, you don't need to use your fingers anymore. You can count to ten, twenty, or even a hundred without needing to use your fingers. Wittgenstein's ladder is a reminder that language is a tool we use to reach a certain goal, but it's not the goal itself. Once we've reached the goal, we don't need the language anymore. ME: Why is this concept useful? Don't we always need language, simply to communicate with those around us? CHATGPT: You're right that language is essential for communication, but Wittgenstein's ladder is more about the nature of language and how we use it to think and talk about the world around us. The ladder metaphor is useful because it highlights the idea that language is not fixed and unchanging. Rather, it's a flexible tool that we can use in different ways to achieve different goals. Sometimes, we need to use language in a precise, technical way to communicate complex ideas, while other times we might use language more loosely and creatively to express our emotions or share stories. Wittgenstein's ladder can also help us recognize when we're using language in a way that's no longer serving its original purpose. For example, if we're using technical jargon to communicate with someone who doesn't understand it, we might be climbing up the wrong ladder. We might need to switch to a different ladder (i.e., a different way of using language) that's more accessible and useful for the person we're communicating with. Ultimately, the concept of Wittgenstein's ladder reminds us that language is a tool we can use in different ways to achieve different goals. By being aware of how we're using language and why, we can become more effective communicators and thinkers.
- its_ethan 4y ago
  Assuming this is accurate, this was a much better explanation than the wikipedia page.
- skybrian 4y ago
  It reminds me a bit of David Chapman's view that language usage is often ad-hoc improvisation: > We use words as tools to get things done; and to get things done, we improvise, making use of whatever materials are ready to hand. If you want to whack a piece of sheet metal to bend it, and don’t know or care what the “right” tool is (if there even is one), you might take a quick look around the garage, grab a large screwdriver at the “wrong” end, and hit the target with its hard rubber handle. A hand tool may have one or two standard uses; some less common but pretty obvious ones; and unusual, creative ones. But these are not clearly distinct categories of usage. > Words go the same way. Almost any word can be used to mean almost anything, in some context. You could play this as a challenge game… How about “The eggplant is a straw hat, and the spinach is yelling about politics”? > We’re in the kitchen of a vegetarian restaurant. A table’s entrees are ready, and the server who took the order is explaining to the one who will deliver the meal which diner gets which dish. One customer’s flamboyant straw hat is a salient, unambiguously identifying feature; you can see it all the way across the room. The other probably needs to turn up a hearing aid; you can hear their opinions about cultural appropriation all the way across the room. https://metarationality.com/purpose-of-meaning https://metarationality.com/purpose-of-meaning
- extr 4y ago
  To apply this to philosophy, Wittgenstein argued that many of the "classical" problems of philosophy, like the meaning of life, beauty, truth, etc, are basically misappropriations of language. The reason they are intractable is because they are nonsense. The words "life", "beauty", "truth", and all other words, have meanings in certain contexts for a communicative purposes, to achieve some mutual understanding about a state of affairs in the world. But once you remove this purpose, you're playing word games with yourself. Past a certain point, it's a waste of time. That's probably an oversimplification and wrong in some way, happy for someone to correct me. But that was my takeaway from reading a ton of philosophy and eventually reading Wittgenstein and feeling "cured".
crazygringo 4y ago
Generally I feel like I'm pretty good at understanding concepts. But after reading this Wikipedia page and then Googling it and then reading MollyRealized's ChatGPT explanation in a sibling comment... ...I have utterly no idea what the heck this is supposed to be. If this is about using nonsense to explain something in philosophy, that seems awfully silly. If this is about how e.g. high school students need simplified versions of how an electron works (a point) before college students learn the reality (a cloud), then it seems banal. If this is about achieving mystical realizations along the lines of zen koans, then OK but what has that got to do with Wittgenstein? And it seems like a Wikipedia article ought to mention this. So I'm baffled. I think I need a ladder to help me understand this ladder? And understand why this was submitted to HN in the first place?
- nomilk 4y ago
  > how high school students need simplified versions That's how I interpreted it. One problem with 'ladders' (i.e. intentional use of simplified explanations) is that if someone is taught the simplification but never realises there's more to it, they can think they know how something works when in fact they don't, which could be worse than not knowing at all. That set of qualities (being wrong but certain they're right) reminds me of the 'midwit' meme.
- skyechurch 4y ago
  The Tractatus is about the limits of language/thought/the world (as a formal logical system), and the primary result of the argument in the Tractatus is that you can technically say nothing sensible about meaning or the world itself from within it, and the natural result of this is that the Tractatus is, itself, as an attempt to describe the world/language/thought itself, from a formal point of view, nonsense. Having said that, there are points of view outside of formal logic, where the Tractatus apparently and essentially all "philosophical" questions, which perhaps we can view now (from the ladder), although we cannot and probably should not say anything about them, as it is impossible. This is somewhere between the End of Philosophy and mystical gibberish, and while it sounds like that's an important distinction to make, by the rules of the game it is a nonsense distinction, so here we are. Wittgenstein essentially rejected this view a decade later, so if he felt no obligation to abide by the paradoxical inconclusions of the Tractatus, neither should we. But it's a remarkable, frustrating little book in any case. ... >And understand why this was submitted to HN in the first place? The implications of this to formal logical systems is enormous: Gödel's theorem is rubbished*, AI consciousness is impossible*, the meaning of the world lies outside of the world and so our lives have to be oriented at some technically nonexistent point beyond the horizon of reality to have any hope of escaping the absurdity of sensibleness.* After writing this in a WW1 POW camp he quit philosophy (because he had ended it) and became a (very bad) elementary school teacher and then spent several years designing a doorknob[1], as one does. *one could argue https://www.nybooks.com/online/2016/05/24/wittgensteins-handles/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2016/05/24/wittgensteins-hand...
motohagiography 4y ago
I'm intuitively suspicious that what people call Theory today begins with "all map, no territory," and results in, "maps all the way down." This seems similar to a ladder of physical competence, but applied to philosophical reasoning. It's not clear to me that there is a there there outside of math, physics, (and increasingly computation) where you have to physically practice the calculations to arrive at the conclusions, whereas I don't think philosophy has an analogous objective competence. Ironically, some mysticisms like meditation (and perhaps even prayer) may even have a higher bar because they are a physically transformative competence akin to practicing music, whereas attaching yourself to an academic and fundamentally political consensus doesn't have the same honest signals or investment.
- astrange 4y ago
  > Ironically, some mysticisms like meditation (and perhaps even prayer) may even have a higher bar because they are a physically transformative competence akin to practicing music The issue there is that while meditating leads to "something" happening for sure, almost nobody is going to stop to check if it's the right "something" and the teacher can't look inside your mind. So you might just have a mental breakdown then decide that's proof you're "enlightened". (Was going to quote David Chapman here but someone already did in this thread. But I mean, it's how most cults or New Agey religious groups start.)
  - motohagiography 4y ago
    Even while I agree, the analogy to music is fairly consistent, as anyone can eventually bang out the notes, but the performance is going to be the effect of the practice. In the meditation case, anyone can say they are enlightened and maybe do some yoga poses, but their performance in life is going to be the effect of the practice as well. Conspicuously, there is no honorary enlightenment either.
abarker 4y ago
This reminds me of the Buddha's comparison of the Dhamma to a raft, which one does not carry around on his or her back after crossing over on it. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.than.html https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.than.html
- eternalban 4y ago
  It's a common motif in spiritual systems. Compare with archangel Gabriel ('the intellect') accompanying Muhammad on his mystical ascension (Miraj) stopping at the boundary of the 'central tree' and claiming he could go no further as it would burn its wings. (In a continuing series of cosmic winks please note that this ascension is called 'The Ladder' in Arabic and we also have a tree ...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidrat_al-Muntaha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidrat_al-Muntaha
- passion__desire 4y ago
  This is worth reading. Nagarjuna had similar ideas, going beyond the metaphor of raft. 1] Nāgārjuna, Nietzsche, and Rorty’s Strange Looping Trick Philosophers have lots of tools and tricks up their sleeves. They, of course, can use formal argumentation, they can employ all sorts of thought experiments to elicit various intuitions, they can lay out examples, dilemmas, dialectics, and do a whole host of other things. But I want to talk about one particular trick that only a select few philosophers have employed. This trick involves wrapping everything up in a philosophical system only to have that system knock itself down by its own internal means, and doing all in order to produce some sort of anti-philosophical result. I’ve come to call this the “looping” trick, and it’s one of the most philosophically curious things that I’ve ever stumbled upon. [1] : https://absoluteirony.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/nagarjuna-nietzsche-rorty-and-their-strange-looping-trick/ https://absoluteirony.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/nagarjuna-nie...
aahs 4y ago
I've heard professors preface generalisation or metaphors with, "What I'm about to say isn't exactly true but it should be helpful in apprehending the central concept." Basically to include extensive caveats and exceptions in the first explanation is to risk overwhelming the novice. I think that's what this is. Sort of just moving from a high level understanding to a lower level one. Is there more to it?
- sdwr 4y ago
  Yeah, those concepts agree with each other, so there's still some value to the simplification once you know the complex explanation. This is more of a sabotage mission, where the examples are meant to convince of their own inadequacy (and the inadequacy of rigid logical thought).
dvt 4y ago
For those that are uninitiated, Wittgenstein's Ladder is essentially the conclusion of his extreme logical positivist view of language specifically, but reality more generally; it's kind of far out, so we don't really have a term for it, but it's probably something like "materialist positivism" or "logical realism†." It's extremely fringe and essentially does away with all metaphysics, which is very problematic because we have a lot of metaphysical problems in philosophy. Even if we ignore the more "pedestrian" moral quandaries, we'll quickly need to deal with things like the metaphysics of causation[1] or modality[2]. Full disclosure, I'm not a fan of Wittgenstein at all (I wish he were less studied in universities), and I think his Tractatus is nonsense (though not because I'm climbing his ladder) and an abject failure. † Which is a real thing, but I'm not sure if it's completely correct to use here. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics/ [2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/
- galaxyLogic 4y ago
  There is a correspondence between words and reality. When you explain something you do it with words and then you must define those words. Once you understand some "model" it does not matter what are the words you gave to the components of the whole and the relations between them. You would create such a model out of colored wires. You could attach a note to each wire giving it a name. But the name does not really matter, the connections between the wires are an accurate presentation of reality. Once you have such a wire-model you can throw out the words.
- tiberious726 4y ago
  Even early Wittgenstein was never a positivist. One of the reasons he quit philosophy for so long was his frustration at that interpretation of works (see some of the interactions between him and Russell for example). What you are describing is exactly the opposite of what he was trying to say. If you're interested in another (much better) take on him, look into "the resolute reading", especially Cora Diamond and James Conant. The lead editor of the SEP is a big Frege guy, and unfortunately, the site is extremely biased on anything tangentially related to Frege, and unfortunately this is one of those areas.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jschveibinz 4y ago
My interpretation is that the words written down are just pointers or triggers to other thoughts, ideas, and interpretations. The words themselves (the ladder) can be thrown away and it is no longer important to know how you got to your current state of mind. I’m not completely in agreement with this philosophy if indeed my interpretation holds water. A related concept to this interpretation is Eno’s oblique strategies deck or random word decks.
placebo 4y ago
I wonder if Wittgenstein's knew about the Buddha's Raft Parable...
niemandhier 4y ago
To understand modern LLMs we all should study more Wittgenstein. I have been contemplating the use theory of meaning recently, and it’s direct implications for generative language models.
anothernewdude 4y ago
If you're floating in mid air, and construct a ladder beneath you, you're still floating in mid air.

87 points by mmq 4y ago

This Is Just To Say I have kicked away the ladder which transcends these propositions and which you were probably climbing to see the world aright Forgive me whereof one cannot speak one must pass over in silence.

awinter-py 4y ago

chatops is a ladder

MollyRealized 4y ago

ME: Pretend I am a five-year-old. Can you explain Wittgenstein's ladder? CHATGPT: Sure! Wittgenstein's ladder is a metaphor used by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to explain how language and ideas work. Imagine you want to get to the top of a tree. At first, you might use a ladder to climb up. But once you get to the top, you don't need the ladder anymore. You can throw it away or leave it behind. In the same way, Wittgenstein argued that language is like a ladder. It's a tool we use to get to a certain point, but once we've reached that point, we don't need the language anymore. We can throw it away or leave it behind. For example, imagine you're learning to count. You might use your fingers to help you count to five. But once you've learned how to count to five, you don't need to use your fingers anymore. You can count to ten, twenty, or even a hundred without needing to use your fingers. Wittgenstein's ladder is a reminder that language is a tool we use to reach a certain goal, but it's not the goal itself. Once we've reached the goal, we don't need the language anymore. ME: Why is this concept useful? Don't we always need language, simply to communicate with those around us? CHATGPT: You're right that language is essential for communication, but Wittgenstein's ladder is more about the nature of language and how we use it to think and talk about the world around us. The ladder metaphor is useful because it highlights the idea that language is not fixed and unchanging. Rather, it's a flexible tool that we can use in different ways to achieve different goals. Sometimes, we need to use language in a precise, technical way to communicate complex ideas, while other times we might use language more loosely and creatively to express our emotions or share stories. Wittgenstein's ladder can also help us recognize when we're using language in a way that's no longer serving its original purpose. For example, if we're using technical jargon to communicate with someone who doesn't understand it, we might be climbing up the wrong ladder. We might need to switch to a different ladder (i.e., a different way of using language) that's more accessible and useful for the person we're communicating with. Ultimately, the concept of Wittgenstein's ladder reminds us that language is a tool we can use in different ways to achieve different goals. By being aware of how we're using language and why, we can become more effective communicators and thinkers.

its_ethan 4y ago
Assuming this is accurate, this was a much better explanation than the wikipedia page.
skybrian 4y ago
It reminds me a bit of David Chapman's view that language usage is often ad-hoc improvisation: > We use words as tools to get things done; and to get things done, we improvise, making use of whatever materials are ready to hand. If you want to whack a piece of sheet metal to bend it, and don’t know or care what the “right” tool is (if there even is one), you might take a quick look around the garage, grab a large screwdriver at the “wrong” end, and hit the target with its hard rubber handle. A hand tool may have one or two standard uses; some less common but pretty obvious ones; and unusual, creative ones. But these are not clearly distinct categories of usage. > Words go the same way. Almost any word can be used to mean almost anything, in some context. You could play this as a challenge game… How about “The eggplant is a straw hat, and the spinach is yelling about politics”? > We’re in the kitchen of a vegetarian restaurant. A table’s entrees are ready, and the server who took the order is explaining to the one who will deliver the meal which diner gets which dish. One customer’s flamboyant straw hat is a salient, unambiguously identifying feature; you can see it all the way across the room. The other probably needs to turn up a hearing aid; you can hear their opinions about cultural appropriation all the way across the room. https://metarationality.com/purpose-of-meaning https://metarationality.com/purpose-of-meaning
extr 4y ago
To apply this to philosophy, Wittgenstein argued that many of the "classical" problems of philosophy, like the meaning of life, beauty, truth, etc, are basically misappropriations of language. The reason they are intractable is because they are nonsense. The words "life", "beauty", "truth", and all other words, have meanings in certain contexts for a communicative purposes, to achieve some mutual understanding about a state of affairs in the world. But once you remove this purpose, you're playing word games with yourself. Past a certain point, it's a waste of time. That's probably an oversimplification and wrong in some way, happy for someone to correct me. But that was my takeaway from reading a ton of philosophy and eventually reading Wittgenstein and feeling "cured".

crazygringo 4y ago

Generally I feel like I'm pretty good at understanding concepts. But after reading this Wikipedia page and then Googling it and then reading MollyRealized's ChatGPT explanation in a sibling comment... ...I have utterly no idea what the heck this is supposed to be. If this is about using nonsense to explain something in philosophy, that seems awfully silly. If this is about how e.g. high school students need simplified versions of how an electron works (a point) before college students learn the reality (a cloud), then it seems banal. If this is about achieving mystical realizations along the lines of zen koans, then OK but what has that got to do with Wittgenstein? And it seems like a Wikipedia article ought to mention this. So I'm baffled. I think I need a ladder to help me understand this ladder? And understand why this was submitted to HN in the first place?

nomilk 4y ago
> how high school students need simplified versions That's how I interpreted it. One problem with 'ladders' (i.e. intentional use of simplified explanations) is that if someone is taught the simplification but never realises there's more to it, they can think they know how something works when in fact they don't, which could be worse than not knowing at all. That set of qualities (being wrong but certain they're right) reminds me of the 'midwit' meme.
skyechurch 4y ago
The Tractatus is about the limits of language/thought/the world (as a formal logical system), and the primary result of the argument in the Tractatus is that you can technically say nothing sensible about meaning or the world itself from within it, and the natural result of this is that the Tractatus is, itself, as an attempt to describe the world/language/thought itself, from a formal point of view, nonsense. Having said that, there are points of view outside of formal logic, where the Tractatus apparently and essentially all "philosophical" questions, which perhaps we can view now (from the ladder), although we cannot and probably should not say anything about them, as it is impossible. This is somewhere between the End of Philosophy and mystical gibberish, and while it sounds like that's an important distinction to make, by the rules of the game it is a nonsense distinction, so here we are. Wittgenstein essentially rejected this view a decade later, so if he felt no obligation to abide by the paradoxical inconclusions of the Tractatus, neither should we. But it's a remarkable, frustrating little book in any case. ... >And understand why this was submitted to HN in the first place? The implications of this to formal logical systems is enormous: Gödel's theorem is rubbished*, AI consciousness is impossible*, the meaning of the world lies outside of the world and so our lives have to be oriented at some technically nonexistent point beyond the horizon of reality to have any hope of escaping the absurdity of sensibleness.* After writing this in a WW1 POW camp he quit philosophy (because he had ended it) and became a (very bad) elementary school teacher and then spent several years designing a doorknob[1], as one does. *one could argue https://www.nybooks.com/online/2016/05/24/wittgensteins-handles/ https://www.nybooks.com/online/2016/05/24/wittgensteins-hand...

motohagiography 4y ago

I'm intuitively suspicious that what people call Theory today begins with "all map, no territory," and results in, "maps all the way down." This seems similar to a ladder of physical competence, but applied to philosophical reasoning. It's not clear to me that there is a there there outside of math, physics, (and increasingly computation) where you have to physically practice the calculations to arrive at the conclusions, whereas I don't think philosophy has an analogous objective competence. Ironically, some mysticisms like meditation (and perhaps even prayer) may even have a higher bar because they are a physically transformative competence akin to practicing music, whereas attaching yourself to an academic and fundamentally political consensus doesn't have the same honest signals or investment.

astrange 4y ago
> Ironically, some mysticisms like meditation (and perhaps even prayer) may even have a higher bar because they are a physically transformative competence akin to practicing music The issue there is that while meditating leads to "something" happening for sure, almost nobody is going to stop to check if it's the right "something" and the teacher can't look inside your mind. So you might just have a mental breakdown then decide that's proof you're "enlightened". (Was going to quote David Chapman here but someone already did in this thread. But I mean, it's how most cults or New Agey religious groups start.)
- motohagiography 4y ago
  Even while I agree, the analogy to music is fairly consistent, as anyone can eventually bang out the notes, but the performance is going to be the effect of the practice. In the meditation case, anyone can say they are enlightened and maybe do some yoga poses, but their performance in life is going to be the effect of the practice as well. Conspicuously, there is no honorary enlightenment either.

abarker 4y ago

This reminds me of the Buddha's comparison of the Dhamma to a raft, which one does not carry around on his or her back after crossing over on it. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.than.html https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.than.html

eternalban 4y ago
It's a common motif in spiritual systems. Compare with archangel Gabriel ('the intellect') accompanying Muhammad on his mystical ascension (Miraj) stopping at the boundary of the 'central tree' and claiming he could go no further as it would burn its wings. (In a continuing series of cosmic winks please note that this ascension is called 'The Ladder' in Arabic and we also have a tree ...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidrat_al-Muntaha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidrat_al-Muntaha
passion__desire 4y ago
This is worth reading. Nagarjuna had similar ideas, going beyond the metaphor of raft. 1] Nāgārjuna, Nietzsche, and Rorty’s Strange Looping Trick Philosophers have lots of tools and tricks up their sleeves. They, of course, can use formal argumentation, they can employ all sorts of thought experiments to elicit various intuitions, they can lay out examples, dilemmas, dialectics, and do a whole host of other things. But I want to talk about one particular trick that only a select few philosophers have employed. This trick involves wrapping everything up in a philosophical system only to have that system knock itself down by its own internal means, and doing all in order to produce some sort of anti-philosophical result. I’ve come to call this the “looping” trick, and it’s one of the most philosophically curious things that I’ve ever stumbled upon. [1] : https://absoluteirony.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/nagarjuna-nietzsche-rorty-and-their-strange-looping-trick/ https://absoluteirony.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/nagarjuna-nie...

aahs 4y ago

I've heard professors preface generalisation or metaphors with, "What I'm about to say isn't exactly true but it should be helpful in apprehending the central concept." Basically to include extensive caveats and exceptions in the first explanation is to risk overwhelming the novice. I think that's what this is. Sort of just moving from a high level understanding to a lower level one. Is there more to it?

sdwr 4y ago
Yeah, those concepts agree with each other, so there's still some value to the simplification once you know the complex explanation. This is more of a sabotage mission, where the examples are meant to convince of their own inadequacy (and the inadequacy of rigid logical thought).

dvt 4y ago

For those that are uninitiated, Wittgenstein's Ladder is essentially the conclusion of his extreme logical positivist view of language specifically, but reality more generally; it's kind of far out, so we don't really have a term for it, but it's probably something like "materialist positivism" or "logical realism†." It's extremely fringe and essentially does away with all metaphysics, which is very problematic because we have a lot of metaphysical problems in philosophy. Even if we ignore the more "pedestrian" moral quandaries, we'll quickly need to deal with things like the metaphysics of causation[1] or modality[2]. Full disclosure, I'm not a fan of Wittgenstein at all (I wish he were less studied in universities), and I think his Tractatus is nonsense (though not because I'm climbing his ladder) and an abject failure. † Which is a real thing, but I'm not sure if it's completely correct to use here. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics/ [2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/

galaxyLogic 4y ago
There is a correspondence between words and reality. When you explain something you do it with words and then you must define those words. Once you understand some "model" it does not matter what are the words you gave to the components of the whole and the relations between them. You would create such a model out of colored wires. You could attach a note to each wire giving it a name. But the name does not really matter, the connections between the wires are an accurate presentation of reality. Once you have such a wire-model you can throw out the words.
tiberious726 4y ago
Even early Wittgenstein was never a positivist. One of the reasons he quit philosophy for so long was his frustration at that interpretation of works (see some of the interactions between him and Russell for example). What you are describing is exactly the opposite of what he was trying to say. If you're interested in another (much better) take on him, look into "the resolute reading", especially Cora Diamond and James Conant. The lead editor of the SEP is a big Frege guy, and unfortunately, the site is extremely biased on anything tangentially related to Frege, and unfortunately this is one of those areas.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jschveibinz 4y ago

My interpretation is that the words written down are just pointers or triggers to other thoughts, ideas, and interpretations. The words themselves (the ladder) can be thrown away and it is no longer important to know how you got to your current state of mind. I’m not completely in agreement with this philosophy if indeed my interpretation holds water. A related concept to this interpretation is Eno’s oblique strategies deck or random word decks.

placebo 4y ago

I wonder if Wittgenstein's knew about the Buddha's Raft Parable...

niemandhier 4y ago

To understand modern LLMs we all should study more Wittgenstein. I have been contemplating the use theory of meaning recently, and it’s direct implications for generative language models.

anothernewdude 4y ago

If you're floating in mid air, and construct a ladder beneath you, you're still floating in mid air.