4 ms·
> The silliest position, though, is a gnostic "no reasoning here" position. On the contrary - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That LLMs ar
by semi-extrinsic 2y ago
> The silliest position, though, is a gnostic "no reasoning here" position.
On the contrary - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That LLMs are performing a cognitive process similar to reasoning or intelligence is certainly an extraordinary claim, at least outside of VC hype circles. Making the model split its outputs into "answer" and "scratchpad", and then observing that these to parts are correlated, does not constitute extraordinary evidence.
- famouswaffles 2y ago>That LLMs are performing a cognitive process similar to reasoning or intelligence is certainly an extraordinary claim. It's not an extraordinary claim if the processes are achieving similar things under similar conditions. In fact, the extraordinary claim then becomes that it is not in fact reasoning or intelligent. Forces are required to move objects. If i saw something i thought was incapable of producing forces moving objects then the extraordinary claim starts being, "this thing cannot produce forces" not "this thing can move objects".
- semi-extrinsic 2y agoNope, that's not how it works. Correlation has never been proof of anything, despite how badly people want to believe so.
- famouswaffles 2y agoIt's not about correlation or proving anything. It's that something doing what you ascertained it never could changes what claims are and aren't extraordinary. You can handwave it away, i.e "the thing is moving objects by magic instead" but it's there and you can't keep acting like "this thing can produce forces" is still the extraordinary claim.