3 ms·

I agree that System 1/2 doesn't map directly onto the right/left brain. One of McGilchrist's points is that our society has almost completely turned to relying

I agree that System 1/2 doesn't map directly onto the right/left brain. One of McGilchrist's points is that our society has almost completely turned to relying on analytical and critical thinking. As a programmer, for example, we are often taught to quantify our problems (e.g. gather metrics), and then use reason/logic/rationality to arrive at efficient solutions. For that reason, I think it is hard for us to even understand what is being talked about by "right brain" kind of activities. One example that is helpful is to consider walking down a dark street at night. All of a sudden you feel uneasy and you become alert and you start to carefully examine your surroundings. It is that "feeling of unease" that is being pointed to, the sense of something being brought into your awareness. Another example is how an artist, for example a painter, will stand back and look at a painting in progress and decide "is this done?". If you are at the stage of "solve a leetcode problem" you are already 100% in left brain territory. Perhaps consider moments as a programmer where you get a feeling "something here isn't right". I don't mean, some test is obviously failing, I mean you suddenly feel some aspect of a situation is "off" and you realize you need to direct your attention towards it without any external warning. Then consider: could an LLM have that same kind of intuition?

SonOfLilit 2y ago
I don't think this is different than me looking at a leetcode problem and thinking "this has to be a binary tree of subproducts" (totally wrong solution in that case). Which is why I think it's the only kind of thinking LLMs are good at. Remember how we used to ask GPT3.5 "how much is 42*35?" and it would reply "The answer is 1305. Lets do the math:" and then come up with a calculation with enough mistakes to be able to arrive at that wrong final solution it guessed at first? That first guess is exactly System 1.

SonOfLilit 2y ago

I don't think this is different than me looking at a leetcode problem and thinking "this has to be a binary tree of subproducts" (totally wrong solution in that case). Which is why I think it's the only kind of thinking LLMs are good at. Remember how we used to ask GPT3.5 "how much is 42*35?" and it would reply "The answer is 1305. Lets do the math:" and then come up with a calculation with enough mistakes to be able to arrive at that wrong final solution it guessed at first? That first guess is exactly System 1.