3 ms·
Think about this: The sum total of the human-generated knowledge was derived in a similar manner, with each generation learning from the one before and expandin
by chongli 2y ago
Think about this: The sum total of the human-generated knowledge was derived in a similar manner, with each generation learning from the one before and expanding the pool of knowledge incrementally.
Not true. No amount of such iteration gets you from buffalo cave paintings to particle accelerators.
Humans generate knowledge by acting in the world, not by dwelling on our thoughts. The empiricists won a very long time ago.
- brookst 2y agoIt’s not binary. Humans generate plenty of knowledge from pure abstract thought.
- kerkeslager 2y agoDo they? When I pursued creative writing in my teens and early 20s, it became clear to me that originality is extremely difficult. I am not entirely sure I have ever had an original thought--every idea I've put to paper thinking it was original, I later realized was a recombination of ideas I had come across somewhere else. The only exceptions I've found were places where I had a fairly unusual experience which I was able to interpret and relate, i.e. a unique interaction with the world. Perhaps more importantly, LLMs do not contain any mechanism which even attempts to perform pure abstract thought, so even if we accept the questionable assumption that humans can generate ideas ex nihilo, that doesn't mean that LLMs can.
- jiggawatts 2y agoUnless your argument is that all creative writing is inspired by God, or some similar "external" source, then clearly a closed system such as "humanity" alone is capable of generating new creative works.
- kerkeslager 2y agoDid you even read the post you're responding to?
- jiggawatts 2y agoYou’re right, we obtained the knowledge externally. It was aliens! I knew it!
- chongli 2y agoExternally, yes, we obtain knowledge from the world around us. We’re not brains in vats conjuring knowledge from the void of our isolated minds.