3 ms·

It's fun to see people endlessly make this point while providing no mechanisms for how it works. We might say "it surely must be this way" but we haven't shown

by __loam 3y ago

It's fun to see people endlessly make this point while providing no mechanisms for how it works. We might say "it surely must be this way" but we haven't shown it affirmatively in any sense. Until a mechanism is shown, I think it's really irresponsible to make statements like this. You really have no clue what it's doing.

crazygringo 3y ago
There's no requirement that a mechanism be known in order to show that something is true. There are lots of other ways of deriving and inferring facts. There's nothing irresponsible about it whatsoever.
- __loam 3y ago
  It does feel like if the "fact" being shown is that our basic cognition is "like" a computing system, the burden of proof is a lot higher. When we make statements about how people are "just" doing compression in their brains, that's incredibly dehumanizing. Be careful with this line of thinking, it doesn't lead to nice places.
cwillu 3y ago
We know memories are essentially recreated when remembered, we know that eye-witness testimony is spectacularly prone to hallucinatory-details-in-the-llm-sense, we know that focusing attention on one aspect of a video will cause participants to simply not see remarkably obvious and noteworthy details of that video. No, I think it's safe to say that it's been shown pretty affirmatively. Wings were inspired by birds, and although they mechanically function in a manner entirely unlike a bird's wing, the aerodynamics of aircraft wings fully explain why birds can fly.
- __loam 3y ago
  Bird wings are actually quite a bit more sophisticated than aircraft wings. Don't let that distract you from your point about belittling human cognition though.
  - famouswaffles 3y ago
    Did he say otherwise ? The point is...who cares ? Planes fly and they so very very well. They even fly faster than any bird will ever be able to. So who cares that bird wings are "quite a bit more sophisticated". Sophistication is not and never was the goal.
    - __loam 3y ago
      We should care because we're all meat. Do you want to live in a society where people are devalued because a computer program approximates memory (badly)? Humans ought to be treated exceptionally regardless of how good a computer is able to do things. Computers are already ridiculously better at arithmetic than us, that doesn't devalue human rights. If you think you've got a system close to cognition, you better be god damn sure because the alternative is an enormous amount of human suffering.
  - cwillu 3y ago
    Yes, that was exactly the point. Technology developed in imitation of a much more sophisticated and incompletely understood animal example, for which a more complete theory was developed. And that more complete theory eventually became sophisticated enough to comprehensively explain the biological artifact. (And in spite of that, we still keep birds around, because not everything of value about birds is captured by an aerodynamic analysis of a bird's wing. Obviously.)
mattstir 3y ago
I mean, surely you can just apply your very own experience to the matter, right? Try this: remember what you were doing at this time last week, down to the minute, as though you were currently experiencing it. Every sight, every sound, every movement and every sensation. Can you easily do that? What were your eyes focusing on as they moved 2-3 times per second on average? Can you remember each movement? But okay, you say, you weren't actually learning or "focused" or whatever at that point, so that doesn't count. Alright, try this: recall the times table you learned in grade school. Go ahead and say them out loud in whichever order you memorized them in. When you were doing that, what was happening in your mind? Did you picture that crusty old laminated times table that was up on the wall across from you, hearing the sounds of the other children writing and moving in their seats? Did you feel the hard plastic seat under you as you desperately tried to instill that 7x12 was 84? Or did you just remember the abstract concept?

by __loam 3y ago

crazygringo 3y ago

There's no requirement that a mechanism be known in order to show that something is true. There are lots of other ways of deriving and inferring facts. There's nothing irresponsible about it whatsoever.

__loam 3y ago
It does feel like if the "fact" being shown is that our basic cognition is "like" a computing system, the burden of proof is a lot higher. When we make statements about how people are "just" doing compression in their brains, that's incredibly dehumanizing. Be careful with this line of thinking, it doesn't lead to nice places.

cwillu 3y ago

We know memories are essentially recreated when remembered, we know that eye-witness testimony is spectacularly prone to hallucinatory-details-in-the-llm-sense, we know that focusing attention on one aspect of a video will cause participants to simply not see remarkably obvious and noteworthy details of that video. No, I think it's safe to say that it's been shown pretty affirmatively. Wings were inspired by birds, and although they mechanically function in a manner entirely unlike a bird's wing, the aerodynamics of aircraft wings fully explain why birds can fly.

__loam 3y ago
Bird wings are actually quite a bit more sophisticated than aircraft wings. Don't let that distract you from your point about belittling human cognition though.
- famouswaffles 3y ago
  Did he say otherwise ? The point is...who cares ? Planes fly and they so very very well. They even fly faster than any bird will ever be able to. So who cares that bird wings are "quite a bit more sophisticated". Sophistication is not and never was the goal.
  - __loam 3y ago
    We should care because we're all meat. Do you want to live in a society where people are devalued because a computer program approximates memory (badly)? Humans ought to be treated exceptionally regardless of how good a computer is able to do things. Computers are already ridiculously better at arithmetic than us, that doesn't devalue human rights. If you think you've got a system close to cognition, you better be god damn sure because the alternative is an enormous amount of human suffering.
- cwillu 3y ago
  Yes, that was exactly the point. Technology developed in imitation of a much more sophisticated and incompletely understood animal example, for which a more complete theory was developed. And that more complete theory eventually became sophisticated enough to comprehensively explain the biological artifact. (And in spite of that, we still keep birds around, because not everything of value about birds is captured by an aerodynamic analysis of a bird's wing. Obviously.)

mattstir 3y ago

I mean, surely you can just apply your very own experience to the matter, right? Try this: remember what you were doing at this time last week, down to the minute, as though you were currently experiencing it. Every sight, every sound, every movement and every sensation. Can you easily do that? What were your eyes focusing on as they moved 2-3 times per second on average? Can you remember each movement? But okay, you say, you weren't actually learning or "focused" or whatever at that point, so that doesn't count. Alright, try this: recall the times table you learned in grade school. Go ahead and say them out loud in whichever order you memorized them in. When you were doing that, what was happening in your mind? Did you picture that crusty old laminated times table that was up on the wall across from you, hearing the sounds of the other children writing and moving in their seats? Did you feel the hard plastic seat under you as you desperately tried to instill that 7x12 was 84? Or did you just remember the abstract concept?