6 ms·

Because there people (like Yann LeCun) who do not hear language in their head when they think, at all. Language is the last-mile delivery mechanism for what the

by antics 2y ago

Because there people (like Yann LeCun) who do not hear language in their head when they think, at all. Language is the last-mile delivery mechanism for what they are thinking. If you'd like a more detailed and in-depth summary of language and its relationship to cognition, I highly recommend Pinker's The Language Instinct, both for the subject and as perhaps the best piece of popular science writing ever.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> Because there people (like Yann LeCun) who do not hear language in their head when they think, at all. I straight-up don't believe this. Can you link to the claim so I can understand? Surely if "high-order thought" has any meaning it is defined by some form. Otherwise it's just perception and not "thought" at all. FWIW, I don't "hear" my thoughts at all, but it's no less linguistic. I can put a lot more effort into thinking and imagine what it would be like to hear it, but using an sensory analogy fundamentally seems like a bad way to describe thinking if we want to figure out what it thinking is. I of course have non-linguistic ways of evaluating stuff, but I wouldn't call that the same as thinking, nor a sufficient replacement for more advanced tools like engaging in logical reasoning. I don't think logical reasoning is even a meaningful concept without language—perhaps there's some other way you can identify contradictions, but that's at best a parallel tool to logical reasoning, which is itself a formal language.
- antics 2y ago
  [EDIT: this reply was written when the parent post was a single line, "I straight-up don't believe this. Can you link to the claim so I can understand?"] In the case of Yann, he said so himself[1]. In the case of people generically, this has been well-known in cognitive science and linguistics for a long time. You can find one popsci account here[2]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39709732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39709732 [2]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/not-everyone-has-an-inner-voice-streaming-through-their-head/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/not-everyone-has-...
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    I fundamentally think the terms here are too poorly defined to draw any sort of conclusion other than "people are really bad at describing mental processes, let alone asking questions about them". For instance: what does it mean to "hear" a thought in the first place? It's a nonsensical concept.
    - neom 2y ago
      Huh? All my thoughts are audio and video, my thinking is literally listening to a voice in my head. It's the same way my memories are dealt with.
      - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
        > my thinking is literally listening to a voice in my head What does this mean though? "Listening" is not a word that makes much sense to apply to something we can't both agree is audible.
        neom 2y ago
        I take your point that hearing externally cannot be the same as whatever I experience because of literal physics, but I still cannot deny that listening to someone talk, listening to myself think, and listening to a memory basically all feel exactly the same for me. I also have extreme dyslexia, and dyslexia is related to phonics, so I presume something in there is related to that as well?
        PittleyDunkin 2y ago
        > but I still cannot deny that listening to someone talk, listening to myself think, and listening to a memory basically all feel exactly the same for me. Surely one of these would involve using your input from your ears and one would not? Can you not distinguish these two phenomena?
        2y ago
- throw4847285 2y ago
  It's actually a very well trod field at the intersection of philosophy and cognitive science. The fundamental question is whether or not cognitive processes have the structure of language. There are compelling arguments in both directions. It's dense, but even skimming the SEP article is pretty fascinating: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    > The fundamental question is whether or not cognitive processes have the structure of language. Well that's easy—some do, some don't.
    - throw4847285 2y ago
      Wow you read the whole SEP article? So cool. How do you respond to the Connectionist challenge to Fodor's core framework?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
        There's only one definition of thought on that page so... what are we supposed to compare and discuss?
        throw4847285 2y ago
        That's not true. There's a whole section on challenges to that definition. See: 5. The Connectionist Challenge.
- antics 2y ago
  I think what you are saying is that language is deeply and perhaps inextricably tied to human thought. And, I think it's fair to say this is basically uniformly regarded as a fact. The reason I (and others) say that language is almost certainly preceded by (and derived from) high-order thought is because high-order thought exists in all of our close relatives, while language exists only in us. Perhaps the confusion is in the definition of high-order thought? There is an academic definition but I boil it down to "able to think about thinking as, e.g. all social great apes do when they consider social reactions to their actions."
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    > Perhaps the confusion is in the definition of high-order thought? There is an academic definition but I boil it down to "able to think about thinking as, e.g. all social great apes do when they consider social reactions to their actions." Yes, I think this is it. But now I am confused why "high-order thought" is termed this way when it doesn't include what we would consider "thinking" but rather "cognition". You don't need to have a "thought" to react to your own mental processes. Surely from the perspective of a human "thoughts" would constitute high-order thinking! Perhaps this is just humans' unique ability of evaluating recursive grammars at work.
    - antics 2y ago
      High-order thought can mean a bunch of things more generally, in this case I meant it to refer to thinking about thinking because "faking" alignment is (I assert) not scary without that. The reason why is: the core of the paper suggests that they trained a model and then fed it adversarial input, and it mostly (and selectively) kept to its training objectives. This is exactly what we'd expect and want. I think most people will hear that pretty much mostly not be alarmed at all, even lay people. It's only alarming if we say it is "faking" "alignment." So that's why I thought it would be helpful to scope the word in that way.
- nonameiguess 2y ago
  There are other lines of evidence. I don't know much about documented cases of feral children, but presumably there must have been at least one known case that developed to some meaningful age at which thought was obviously happening in spite of not having language. There are children with extreme developmental disorders delaying language acquisition that nonetheless still seem to have thoughts and be reasonably intelligent on the grand scale of all animals if not all humans. There is Helen Keller, who as far as I'm aware describes some phase change in her inner experience after acquiring language, but she still had inner experience before acquiring language. There's the unknown question of human evolutionary history, but at some point, a humanoid primate between Lucy and the two of us had no language but still had reasonably high-order thinking and cognitive capabilities that put it intellectually well above other primates. Somebody had to speak the first sentence, after all, and that was probably necessary for civilization to ever happen, but humans were likely quite intelligent with rich inner lives well before they had language.
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    > that nonetheless still seem to have thoughts We do not refer to all mental processes as "thoughts". What makes you believe this?
- fwip 2y ago
  I'm one of those people who claim not to "think in language," except specifically when composing sentences. It seems just as baffling to me that other people claim that they primarily do so. If I had to describe it, I would say I think primarily in concepts, connected/associated by relations of varying strengths. Words are usually tightly attached to those concepts, and not difficult to retrieve when I go to express my thoughts (though it is not uncommon that I do fail to retrieve the right word.) I believe that I was thinking before I learned words, and I imagine that most other people were too. I believe the "raised by wolves" child would be capable of thought and reasoning as well.
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    How do you evaluate a logical puzzle without some linguistic substrate to identify contradictions? I'm not even implying "english", but logic is inherently a product of formal language—how else would you even construct claims to evaluate?

by antics 2y ago

PittleyDunkin 2y ago

> Because there people (like Yann LeCun) who do not hear language in their head when they think, at all. I straight-up don't believe this. Can you link to the claim so I can understand? Surely if "high-order thought" has any meaning it is defined by some form. Otherwise it's just perception and not "thought" at all. FWIW, I don't "hear" my thoughts at all, but it's no less linguistic. I can put a lot more effort into thinking and imagine what it would be like to hear it, but using an sensory analogy fundamentally seems like a bad way to describe thinking if we want to figure out what it thinking is. I of course have non-linguistic ways of evaluating stuff, but I wouldn't call that the same as thinking, nor a sufficient replacement for more advanced tools like engaging in logical reasoning. I don't think logical reasoning is even a meaningful concept without language—perhaps there's some other way you can identify contradictions, but that's at best a parallel tool to logical reasoning, which is itself a formal language.

antics 2y ago
[EDIT: this reply was written when the parent post was a single line, "I straight-up don't believe this. Can you link to the claim so I can understand?"] In the case of Yann, he said so himself[1]. In the case of people generically, this has been well-known in cognitive science and linguistics for a long time. You can find one popsci account here[2]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39709732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39709732 [2]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/not-everyone-has-an-inner-voice-streaming-through-their-head/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/not-everyone-has-...
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  I fundamentally think the terms here are too poorly defined to draw any sort of conclusion other than "people are really bad at describing mental processes, let alone asking questions about them". For instance: what does it mean to "hear" a thought in the first place? It's a nonsensical concept.
  - neom 2y ago
    Huh? All my thoughts are audio and video, my thinking is literally listening to a voice in my head. It's the same way my memories are dealt with.
    - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
      > my thinking is literally listening to a voice in my head What does this mean though? "Listening" is not a word that makes much sense to apply to something we can't both agree is audible.
      - neom 2y ago
        I take your point that hearing externally cannot be the same as whatever I experience because of literal physics, but I still cannot deny that listening to someone talk, listening to myself think, and listening to a memory basically all feel exactly the same for me. I also have extreme dyslexia, and dyslexia is related to phonics, so I presume something in there is related to that as well?
        PittleyDunkin 2y ago
        > but I still cannot deny that listening to someone talk, listening to myself think, and listening to a memory basically all feel exactly the same for me. Surely one of these would involve using your input from your ears and one would not? Can you not distinguish these two phenomena?
        2y ago
throw4847285 2y ago
It's actually a very well trod field at the intersection of philosophy and cognitive science. The fundamental question is whether or not cognitive processes have the structure of language. There are compelling arguments in both directions. It's dense, but even skimming the SEP article is pretty fascinating: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > The fundamental question is whether or not cognitive processes have the structure of language. Well that's easy—some do, some don't.
  - throw4847285 2y ago
    Wow you read the whole SEP article? So cool. How do you respond to the Connectionist challenge to Fodor's core framework?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
      There's only one definition of thought on that page so... what are we supposed to compare and discuss?
      - throw4847285 2y ago
        That's not true. There's a whole section on challenges to that definition. See: 5. The Connectionist Challenge.
antics 2y ago
I think what you are saying is that language is deeply and perhaps inextricably tied to human thought. And, I think it's fair to say this is basically uniformly regarded as a fact. The reason I (and others) say that language is almost certainly preceded by (and derived from) high-order thought is because high-order thought exists in all of our close relatives, while language exists only in us. Perhaps the confusion is in the definition of high-order thought? There is an academic definition but I boil it down to "able to think about thinking as, e.g. all social great apes do when they consider social reactions to their actions."
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > Perhaps the confusion is in the definition of high-order thought? There is an academic definition but I boil it down to "able to think about thinking as, e.g. all social great apes do when they consider social reactions to their actions." Yes, I think this is it. But now I am confused why "high-order thought" is termed this way when it doesn't include what we would consider "thinking" but rather "cognition". You don't need to have a "thought" to react to your own mental processes. Surely from the perspective of a human "thoughts" would constitute high-order thinking! Perhaps this is just humans' unique ability of evaluating recursive grammars at work.
  - antics 2y ago
    High-order thought can mean a bunch of things more generally, in this case I meant it to refer to thinking about thinking because "faking" alignment is (I assert) not scary without that. The reason why is: the core of the paper suggests that they trained a model and then fed it adversarial input, and it mostly (and selectively) kept to its training objectives. This is exactly what we'd expect and want. I think most people will hear that pretty much mostly not be alarmed at all, even lay people. It's only alarming if we say it is "faking" "alignment." So that's why I thought it would be helpful to scope the word in that way.
nonameiguess 2y ago
There are other lines of evidence. I don't know much about documented cases of feral children, but presumably there must have been at least one known case that developed to some meaningful age at which thought was obviously happening in spite of not having language. There are children with extreme developmental disorders delaying language acquisition that nonetheless still seem to have thoughts and be reasonably intelligent on the grand scale of all animals if not all humans. There is Helen Keller, who as far as I'm aware describes some phase change in her inner experience after acquiring language, but she still had inner experience before acquiring language. There's the unknown question of human evolutionary history, but at some point, a humanoid primate between Lucy and the two of us had no language but still had reasonably high-order thinking and cognitive capabilities that put it intellectually well above other primates. Somebody had to speak the first sentence, after all, and that was probably necessary for civilization to ever happen, but humans were likely quite intelligent with rich inner lives well before they had language.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > that nonetheless still seem to have thoughts We do not refer to all mental processes as "thoughts". What makes you believe this?
fwip 2y ago
I'm one of those people who claim not to "think in language," except specifically when composing sentences. It seems just as baffling to me that other people claim that they primarily do so. If I had to describe it, I would say I think primarily in concepts, connected/associated by relations of varying strengths. Words are usually tightly attached to those concepts, and not difficult to retrieve when I go to express my thoughts (though it is not uncommon that I do fail to retrieve the right word.) I believe that I was thinking before I learned words, and I imagine that most other people were too. I believe the "raised by wolves" child would be capable of thought and reasoning as well.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  How do you evaluate a logical puzzle without some linguistic substrate to identify contradictions? I'm not even implying "english", but logic is inherently a product of formal language—how else would you even construct claims to evaluate?