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Here is my explanation why language seems to be, while not necessary, so useful for abstract thought: Thinking thoughts with abstract concepts takes up a lot of
by cubefox 2y ago
Here is my explanation why language seems to be, while not necessary, so useful for abstract thought: Thinking thoughts with abstract concepts takes up a lot of working memory. We can't hold many of those in mind at once. But if they are expressed in words they take very little memory. So we can have long winding and abstract thoughts because language compresses the parts of the thought complex we are not currently focusing on, so we can hold more of it in short term memory. In effect it increases our thinking cache.
- HL33tibCe7 2y agoI find the opposite. The more complex a thought, the harder it is to reason about using language in my head. Speaking as someone who has a constant inner monologue.
- cubefox 2y agoI'm not so much talking about "reasoning using language", I mean that if you have intermediate reasoning results, you can mentally express them in language, which means you can still remember them after you have focused on something else for a minute. Otherwise you might forget them very quickly. Because we apparently can't hold a lot of thoughts in mind, while we can easily store words in memory.
- dabei 2y agoYes. Similar to how "thinking step by step" helps LLMs achieve higher quality solution.