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She certainly fell into the rage bait trap, and I don't really like her these days, but this video seems fine - no ranting, just a nice piece of science communi

She certainly fell into the rage bait trap, and I don't really like her these days, but this video seems fine - no ranting, just a nice piece of science communication.

maegul 1y ago
Rings true for my impression too. In the end, she’s a YouTuber now, for better or worse, but still puts out what look like thoughtful and informative enough videos, whatever personal vendettas she holds grudges over. I suspect for many who’ve touched the academic system, a popular voice that isn’t anti-intellectual or anti-expertise (or out to trumpet their personal theory), but critical of the status quo, would be viewed as a net positive.
Xmd5a 1y ago
[flagged]
- kgwgk 1y ago
  > [Quantum Cognition] is a real field with dozen of collaborators and even a textbook. Flat Earth is also a real field, with conferences with hundreds of attendees.
  - Xmd5a 1y ago
    Have you visited Busemeyer's website ? Here's the textbook he wrote, 2nd edition https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/psychology/cognition/quantum-models-cognition-and-decision-principles-and-applications-2nd-edition?format=PB https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/psycho... Looks totally respectable. Why do you feel the need to ridicule it?
    - kgwgk 1y ago
      https://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.5673 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.5673 > Decision making – When people are given a chance to play a particular gamble twice, if they think they won the first play, or alternatively if they think they lost the first play, then the majority chooses to play again on the second round. Given these preferences, they should also play the second round even if they don’t think about the outcome of the first round. Yet people do just the opposite in the latter case (Tversky & Shafir, 1992). This finding violates the law of total probability, yet it can be explained as a quantum interference effect I wouldn't say that "it can be explained as a quantum interference effect" for any respectable definition of "explained" but your mileage may vary. > The Contextual Nature of Concepts and their Combinations – When quantum entities become entangled, they form a new entity with properties different from either constituent, and one cannot manipulate one constituent without simultaneously affecting the other. The mathematics of entanglement has been used to model the nonmonotonic relations observed among concepts when they are combined to form a new concepts such as STONE LION https://scispace.com/pdf/the-emergence-and-evolution-of-integrated-worldviews-3l4lgs2rm2.pdf https://scispace.com/pdf/the-emergence-and-evolution-of-inte... > Different possible ways of looking at this combination exist, and a positive answer to both questions ‘is STONE LION a LION’ and ‘is STONE LION a STONE’ make sense. Hence a better approach is to consider both as entities, and use Fock space for a two entity situation, and forgo the more simple model of considering one of them as a context. Vanilla Quantum Models of Cognition and Decision are not enough. One really needs Quantum Field Theory Models of Cognition and Decision. "The genuine structure of quantum field theory is needed to match predictions with experimental data." https://arxiv.org/pdf/0705.1740 https://arxiv.org/pdf/0705.1740
      - Xmd5a 1y ago
        I don't think this cursory look at the abstracts and first pages of these papers is achieving the effect you intended. The first quote summarize the findings (page 4) of Tversky & Shafir, 1992. Google indicates this paper has 978 citations. >is STONE LION a STONE This is called a typicality test. Jurafsky, Lecun & two more fellows dropped this paper recently: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.17117 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.17117 (emphasis mine) >This work aims to bridge this gap by integrating cognitive psychology, information theory, and modern NLP. We pose three central research questions to guide our investigation: [RQ1]: To what extent do concepts emergent in LLMs align with human-defined conceptual categories? [RQ2]: Do LLMs and humans exhibit similar internal geometric structures within these concepts, ESPECIALLY CONCERNING ITEM TYPICALITY? RQ3]: How do humans and LLMs differ in their strategies for balancing representational compression with the preservation of semantic fidelity when forming concepts? It would be interesting to try to reproduce Hampton's original experiment on typicality with LLMs and run the same analysis as https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.2362 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.2362. Anyway thanks for the exchange. Running these thoughts once more in my head allowed me to reconsider some stuff I found about Zipf distributions that might tie into the tradeoff between compression and meaning Lecun is talking about. The quantum zipf stuff is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.06845 https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.06845 It's here too: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1061920806030071 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1061920806030071 >quantum field theory Chomsky is working on Hopf Algebra. https://magazine.caltech.edu/post/math-language-marcolli-noam-chomsky https://magazine.caltech.edu/post/math-language-marcolli-noa...
        kgwgk 1y ago
        > I don't think this cursory look at the abstracts and first pages of these papers is achieving the effect you intended. The only effect intended was my own amusement. I doubted anyone would ever read the comment. > Jurafsky, Lecun & two more fellows dropped this paper recently Somehow they missed that quantum field theory formalism is essential to explain such things.
        Xmd5a 1y ago
        >Somehow they missed that quantum field theory formalism Yet to reach this conclusion you have to notice they stand on the same ground (typicality tests). I'd wagger that they could substitue it with question ordering effects and reach similar conclusions.

She certainly fell into the rage bait trap, and I don't really like her these days, but this video seems fine - no ranting, just a nice piece of science communication.

maegul 1y ago

Rings true for my impression too. In the end, she’s a YouTuber now, for better or worse, but still puts out what look like thoughtful and informative enough videos, whatever personal vendettas she holds grudges over. I suspect for many who’ve touched the academic system, a popular voice that isn’t anti-intellectual or anti-expertise (or out to trumpet their personal theory), but critical of the status quo, would be viewed as a net positive.

Xmd5a 1y ago

[flagged]

kgwgk 1y ago
> [Quantum Cognition] is a real field with dozen of collaborators and even a textbook. Flat Earth is also a real field, with conferences with hundreds of attendees.
- Xmd5a 1y ago
  Have you visited Busemeyer's website ? Here's the textbook he wrote, 2nd edition https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/psychology/cognition/quantum-models-cognition-and-decision-principles-and-applications-2nd-edition?format=PB https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/psycho... Looks totally respectable. Why do you feel the need to ridicule it?
  - kgwgk 1y ago
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.5673 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.5673 > Decision making – When people are given a chance to play a particular gamble twice, if they think they won the first play, or alternatively if they think they lost the first play, then the majority chooses to play again on the second round. Given these preferences, they should also play the second round even if they don’t think about the outcome of the first round. Yet people do just the opposite in the latter case (Tversky & Shafir, 1992). This finding violates the law of total probability, yet it can be explained as a quantum interference effect I wouldn't say that "it can be explained as a quantum interference effect" for any respectable definition of "explained" but your mileage may vary. > The Contextual Nature of Concepts and their Combinations – When quantum entities become entangled, they form a new entity with properties different from either constituent, and one cannot manipulate one constituent without simultaneously affecting the other. The mathematics of entanglement has been used to model the nonmonotonic relations observed among concepts when they are combined to form a new concepts such as STONE LION https://scispace.com/pdf/the-emergence-and-evolution-of-integrated-worldviews-3l4lgs2rm2.pdf https://scispace.com/pdf/the-emergence-and-evolution-of-inte... > Different possible ways of looking at this combination exist, and a positive answer to both questions ‘is STONE LION a LION’ and ‘is STONE LION a STONE’ make sense. Hence a better approach is to consider both as entities, and use Fock space for a two entity situation, and forgo the more simple model of considering one of them as a context. Vanilla Quantum Models of Cognition and Decision are not enough. One really needs Quantum Field Theory Models of Cognition and Decision. "The genuine structure of quantum field theory is needed to match predictions with experimental data." https://arxiv.org/pdf/0705.1740 https://arxiv.org/pdf/0705.1740
    - Xmd5a 1y ago
      I don't think this cursory look at the abstracts and first pages of these papers is achieving the effect you intended. The first quote summarize the findings (page 4) of Tversky & Shafir, 1992. Google indicates this paper has 978 citations. >is STONE LION a STONE This is called a typicality test. Jurafsky, Lecun & two more fellows dropped this paper recently: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.17117 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.17117 (emphasis mine) >This work aims to bridge this gap by integrating cognitive psychology, information theory, and modern NLP. We pose three central research questions to guide our investigation: [RQ1]: To what extent do concepts emergent in LLMs align with human-defined conceptual categories? [RQ2]: Do LLMs and humans exhibit similar internal geometric structures within these concepts, ESPECIALLY CONCERNING ITEM TYPICALITY? RQ3]: How do humans and LLMs differ in their strategies for balancing representational compression with the preservation of semantic fidelity when forming concepts? It would be interesting to try to reproduce Hampton's original experiment on typicality with LLMs and run the same analysis as https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.2362 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.2362. Anyway thanks for the exchange. Running these thoughts once more in my head allowed me to reconsider some stuff I found about Zipf distributions that might tie into the tradeoff between compression and meaning Lecun is talking about. The quantum zipf stuff is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.06845 https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.06845 It's here too: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1061920806030071 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1061920806030071 >quantum field theory Chomsky is working on Hopf Algebra. https://magazine.caltech.edu/post/math-language-marcolli-noam-chomsky https://magazine.caltech.edu/post/math-language-marcolli-noa...
      - kgwgk 1y ago
        > I don't think this cursory look at the abstracts and first pages of these papers is achieving the effect you intended. The only effect intended was my own amusement. I doubted anyone would ever read the comment. > Jurafsky, Lecun & two more fellows dropped this paper recently Somehow they missed that quantum field theory formalism is essential to explain such things.
        Xmd5a 1y ago
        >Somehow they missed that quantum field theory formalism Yet to reach this conclusion you have to notice they stand on the same ground (typicality tests). I'd wagger that they could substitue it with question ordering effects and reach similar conclusions.