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Right, but the point is the scientific system is a cultural accomplishment, it didn't get hardcoded into our brains. We should hence not expect "only believe th

Right, but the point is the scientific system is a cultural accomplishment, it didn't get hardcoded into our brains. We should hence not expect "only believe things that are actually true" as a standard for AGI either, hence LLMs are not necessarily disqualified by being bad at it.

Jensson 3y ago
For living beings there is a class of errors that kills you, there is no coming back from that. Our brains were trained to figure out what facts it is willing to stake its life on, I am sure all bigger living beings has such a part of their brain, so I'd say that yes we have that programmed into us. The scientific method is just a way to make humans use that reliable part of their brain instead of the plausible part, even in situations that aren't life or death. I don't think it is possible to come up with something like the scientific method without having a built-in sense of what facts are.
- pixl97 3y ago
  >without having a built-in sense of what facts are. There is no such thing in 'higher intelligence' beyond protoception. Pretty much every mammal has the same built in sense that you do, and yet none of them are carting around human intelligence. More so, when human children are left feral and not raised around other humans we typically consider them mentally disabled. Again, they learn the protoception stuff just fine, but all the stuff that "puts us above" the mammals is missing, it is not inane. Your counting, reading, and tools use are all learned behaviors after birth and form a continuous chain of learned behaviors taught by people (and more recently books and computers). There is a reason that after development of the scientific method that most human endeavors experienced an exponential growth curve. It's because we don't recognise facts from fiction at a much higher rate than other animals, it's that we teach each other fact from fiction better than other animals.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    > Pretty much every mammal has the same built in sense that you do, and yet none of them are carting around human intelligence Having a sense of what are facts and what are assumptions doesn't mean you are smart, but not having it means you are pretty dumb. LLMs doesn't have that. Natural language is more powerful than programming languages since it lets us communicate assumptions, guesses, uncertainty etc, to other intelligent beings. So a good LLM needs to be able to consider certainty level of statements and act accordingly, todays LLMs doesn't do that so generate dumber responses than a human would since they lack a sanity checker.

Jensson 3y ago

For living beings there is a class of errors that kills you, there is no coming back from that. Our brains were trained to figure out what facts it is willing to stake its life on, I am sure all bigger living beings has such a part of their brain, so I'd say that yes we have that programmed into us. The scientific method is just a way to make humans use that reliable part of their brain instead of the plausible part, even in situations that aren't life or death. I don't think it is possible to come up with something like the scientific method without having a built-in sense of what facts are.

pixl97 3y ago
>without having a built-in sense of what facts are. There is no such thing in 'higher intelligence' beyond protoception. Pretty much every mammal has the same built in sense that you do, and yet none of them are carting around human intelligence. More so, when human children are left feral and not raised around other humans we typically consider them mentally disabled. Again, they learn the protoception stuff just fine, but all the stuff that "puts us above" the mammals is missing, it is not inane. Your counting, reading, and tools use are all learned behaviors after birth and form a continuous chain of learned behaviors taught by people (and more recently books and computers). There is a reason that after development of the scientific method that most human endeavors experienced an exponential growth curve. It's because we don't recognise facts from fiction at a much higher rate than other animals, it's that we teach each other fact from fiction better than other animals.
- Jensson 3y ago
  > Pretty much every mammal has the same built in sense that you do, and yet none of them are carting around human intelligence Having a sense of what are facts and what are assumptions doesn't mean you are smart, but not having it means you are pretty dumb. LLMs doesn't have that. Natural language is more powerful than programming languages since it lets us communicate assumptions, guesses, uncertainty etc, to other intelligent beings. So a good LLM needs to be able to consider certainty level of statements and act accordingly, todays LLMs doesn't do that so generate dumber responses than a human would since they lack a sanity checker.