4 ms·
Only more mental exercises to avoid reading the writing on the wall: LLM DO NOT REASON ! THEY ARE TOKEN PREDICTION MACHINES Thank you for your attention in t
by 0points 1y ago
Only more mental exercises to avoid reading the writing on the wall:
LLM DO NOT REASON !
THEY ARE TOKEN PREDICTION MACHINES
Thank you for your attention in this matter!
- __alexs 1y agoA distinction without a difference.
- ozgung 1y agoWhy not? What is so special about reasoning that you cannot achieve by predicting tokens aka. constructing sentences?
- 0points 1y agoIf you don't understand the difference between a LLM and yourself, then you should talk to a therapist, not me.
- ozgung 1y agoAt least LLMs attempt to answer the question. You just avoided it without any reasoning.
- wiseowise 1y agoBecause LLMs do no reason. They reply without a thought. Parent commenter, on the other hand, knows when to not engage a bullshit argument. Arguing with “philosophers” like you is like arguing with religious nut jobs. Repeat after me: 1) LLM do not reason 2) Human thought is infinitely more complex than any LLM algorithm 3) If I ever try to confuse both, I go outside and touch some grass (and talk to actual humans)
- simonw 1y agoI agree with your point 2. I can't decide if I agree with your point 1 unless you can explain what "reason" means.
- ozgung 1y agoI found few definitions. "Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth." Wikipedia This Wikipedia definition refers to The Routledge dictionary of philosophy which has a completely different definition: "Reason: A general faculty common to all or nearly all humans... this faculty has seemed to be of two sorts, a faculty of intuition by which one 'sees' truths or abstract things ('essences' or universals, etc.), and a faculty of reasoning, i.e. passing from premises to a conclusion (discursive reason). The verb 'reason' is confined to this latter sense, which is now anyway the commonest for the noun too" - The Routledge dictionary of philosophy, 2010 Google (from Oxford) provides simpler definitions: "Think, understand, and form judgements logically." "Find an answer to a problem by considering possible options." Cambridge: Reason (verb): "to try to understand and to make judgments based on practical facts" Reasoning (noun): "the process of thinking about something in order to make a decision" Wikipedia uses the word "consciously" without giving a reference and The Routledge talks about the reasoning as the human behavior. Other definitions point to an algorithmic or logical process that machines are capable of. The problematic concepts here are "Understanding" and "Judgement". It's still not clear if LLMs can really do these, or will be able to do in the future.
- bwfan123 1y agoheres mine.. 0) theory == symbolic representation of a world with associated rules for generating statements 1) understanding the why of anything == building a theory of it 2) intelligence == ability to build theories 3) reasoning == proving or disproving statements using a theory 4) math == theories of abstract worlds 5) science == theories of real world with associated real world actions to test statements If you use this framework, LLMs are just doing a mimicry of reasoning (from their training set), and a lot of people are falling for that illusion - because, our everyday reasoning jives very well with what the LLM does.
- jedimastert 1y agoPredicting tokens and constructing sentences are not the same thing. It cannot create its own sentences because it does not have a self
- welshwelsh 1y agoHumans also do not have a self, merely the illusion of a self.
- argestes 1y agoWhat is the definition of self in this context? What makes a human have a self? (I agree with you. I'm thinking the Ahamkara for the humans. I'm curious about your definition)
- LeoPanthera 1y agoPredicting the next token is reasoning.
- 0points 1y agoNo, that is statistics.
- LeoPanthera 1y agoI'm not convinced that human reasoning is not also statistics.
- kruxigt 1y ago[dead]
- zurfer 1y agoWhat is reasoning? And how is it apparent that LLMs can't reason? The reality for me is that they are not perfect at reasoning and have many quirks, but it seems to be that they are able to form new conclusions based on provided premises. Genuinely curious why you think they can't.
- 0points 1y ago> Genuinely curious why you think they can't. Show me _ANY_ example of novel thought by a LLM.
- briangriffinfan 1y agoWell... define "thought."
- zurfer 1y ago"Rick likes books from Tufte. Tufte is known for his work on data visualization. Is Rick interested in data visualizations?" (all frontier reasoning models get that right). -> This qualifies for me as a super simple reasoning task (one reasoning step). From that you can construct arbitrarily more complex context + task definitions (prompts). Is that "just" statistical pattern matching? I think so. Not sure what humans do, but probably you can implement the same capability in different ways.
- kayge 1y agoI'm sure this won't count as 'novel' or a 'thought', but I had an interesting conversation with Claude where I asked "If you, Claude, were given the ability to go out into the physical world to see and hear things on your own: where would you go, what would you do, and why?" The answer was a few paragraphs, but one interesting part was "I think what would drive me most would be experiencing the embodied knowledge that humans take for granted - how distance and scale actually feel, how textures differ, how sounds change as you move through space, and the subtle emotional resonances of being physically present with others. These dimensions of understanding seem fundamental to comprehending human experience in a deeper way." I followed up by asking "You mentioned that there are some experiences or knowledge that humans take for granted, why do you think that is?" Which led to a few more paragraphs, but these two caught my eye: "I think humans take certain experiences for granted because they're so fundamental to our existence that they become invisible background processing rather than conscious knowledge." (interesting use of the word 'our'...) "I think this embodied knowledge forms the substrate upon which humans build higher-level understanding, creating rich metaphorical thinking (like understanding abstract concepts through physical metaphors) that shapes cognition in ways that might be fundamentally different from how I process information." For people who still think this is 'just autocomplete', try this thought experiment: re-read my post but replace 'Claude' with 'my 10 year old son'. Then try again replacing 'Claude' with 'my hospital bed-bound, blind grandmother'. Is only 1 of those 3 scenarios a demonstration of "novel thought"? Or are all 3 of them just autocomplete because someone before them has written (or simply thought) something similar?
- pennaMan 1y agoprediction is the result of reasoning
- 0points 1y agoNo it's not. Prediction is the ability to predict something. Reasoning is the ability to reason.
- simonw 1y agoThat's a circular definition. Can you define "reason" or "reasoning" without using the other term? I think your definition of "reasoning" may be "think like a human" - in which case obviously LLMs can't reason because they aren't human.
- imhoguy 1y agoWhat LLMs lack is emotions, because thanks to emotions people build great fortresses (fear, insecurity) or break limits (courage, risk).
- easyThrowaway 1y ago"Any sufficiently advanced prediction is indistinguishable from reasoning" (/s... maybe.)
- silveraxe93 1y agoIt's ironic how people write this without a shred of reasoning. This is just _wrong_. LLMs are not simply token prediction machines since GPT-3. During pre-training, yeah they are. But there's a ton of RL being done on top after that. If you want to argue that they can't reason, hey fair be my guest. But this argument keeps getting repeated as a central reason and it's just not true for years.
- bearjaws 1y agoEvery time I read something like this, I just imagine it in "old man yells at cloud" meme format. Just because it is not reasoning doesn't mean it can't be quite good at its tasks.