5 ms·

All words are metaphors, now add Western languages are agentic, Japanese is not. The problem CS ignored in language is that the arbitrariness in language leaves

All words are metaphors, now add Western languages are agentic, Japanese is not. The problem CS ignored in language is that the arbitrariness in language leaves remarkably unmappable spaces between metaphors. In a way, LLMs are magic acts that expose language's Oz like tricks. Scaffolding idiomatic expressions inside that initial mess only reveals the trick's problem further. Literal words don't mean anything specifically unless they have a context, which is idiosyncratic. LLMs never are able to resolve the double whammy of lexemes and the conduit metaphor paradox. That's how they need constant specific supervision. They're babblers that have no idea what they're saying. Coders can't debate this, this is the inherent problem to language that generative and NLP waves away in a sleight of hand trick. Study the initial conditions to language folks: language doesn't really mean anything.

nyeah 1y ago
That appears to be meaningless. Please explain without using language.
- mallowdram 1y ago
  If you understand the nature of language fully, then its ultimate function is to refute itself. In other words, all our use of arbitrary signals leads eventually to specific signals. To make that simpler, each statement in any existing language is about replacing language.
  - the_af 1y ago
    I'll try to say this as politely as I can: I think this is a bot account. Not only your two posts above read like word-salad, I went through your comments history and almost every comment of yours reads like this (except maybe a couple). If so, could you maybe stop your experiment? I wasted time trying to parse your comment as if it was generated by a human.
    - mallowdram 1y ago
      I'm not a bot, I'm a neurobiologist with a start up that's about replacing the symbolic. and I'm pretty stunned at how inert CS is regarding language. You can find plenty of typos in my posts, and they're not all about this, they're about myth, causality, the symbolic. To accuse a human of being a bot is really poor manners. Far from word salads, they are based in deep theories from empirical demonstrations that words are our most fundamental illusions. If you want the deep research we use internally (about 100 citations) start here. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cXtU97SCjxaHCrf8UVeQGYajatFQ_MU69MBDmIFe58I/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cXtU97SCjxaHCrf8UVeQGYaj... I suggest that CS has little ability to debates the scientific reality of language if posters are going to complain scientific statements that are defined and defendable are word salads. That's a warning CS hasn't done its homework.
      - the_af 1y ago
        > I'm a neurobiologist with a start up that's about replacing the symbolic What's your startup? What are your publications? That Google doc link is more word-salad and random quotes and citations. What on earth is a "start up that's about replacing the symbolic"? > If you understand the nature of language fully, then its ultimate function is to refute itself. In other words, all our use of arbitrary signals leads eventually to specific signals. To make that simpler, each statement in any existing language is about replacing language. This is word salad, for example. You're not trying to "make it simpler", you're trying to obfuscate (or it's just random). > That's a warning CS hasn't done its homework. What's a "CS"?
        mallowdram 1y ago
        I don't disclose affiliations here, that's the beauty of HN. I get to keep my anonymity to explore. A start-up that replaces the symbolic engages with specifics in signals in the record (animals, entoptics, onomatopoeia, calendrical signs, action-syntax externals, cinematic action-glyphs) and figures out what representations veer referential and offers concatenation. The idea that language refutes itself is as old as the pre-socratics. I won't go into the detailed history here, but there are 1000s of reference for this statement. I'll use Cassirer's, which is pretty succinct. ..at some point a direct contact must occur between knowledge and reality. If we succeed in freeing ourselves from all these interpretations – if we above all succeed in removing the veil of words, which conceals the true essence of things, then at one stroke we shall find ourselves face to face with the original perceptions.. Ernst Cassirer The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Freeing ourselves from the veil of words is theoretically equivalent to language's ultimate function is to refute itself. CS is computer science. btw it's clear the drive to encapsulate in plain English was and is the achilles heel to CS, coders are forced to finger point using characterizations of "word salad" at scientifically complex theories and analytic ideas.
  - glitchc 1y ago
    > each statement in any existing language is about replacing language. I found that difficult to parse. Moreover, it's a strong claim. Can you provide some evidence as to why it's true? I can find some trivial counter-examples. For instance, which part of "I like oranges." evolves English as a language?
    - mallowdram 1y ago
      Language as a self-refuting system, doesn't evolve, or evolve us, it devolves towards increasing arbitariness, the faster it's used, particularly once automated. “We refute (based on empirical evidence) claims that humans use linguistic representations to think.” Ev Fedorenko Language Lab MIT 2024 .at some point a direct contact must occur between knowledge and reality. If we succeed in freeing ourselves from all these interpretations – if we above all succeed in removing the veil of words, which conceals the true essence of things, then at one stroke we shall find ourselves face to face with the original perceptions.. Ernst Cassirer The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms
jrowen 1y ago
I wouldn't say words are metaphors, I think of a metaphor as like a pointer, words are the actual mapping of arbitrary sounds to concepts that are relatively universally relatable to human experience. Children can learn language easily by associating those sounds with contemporaneous objects and situations from their experience. I feel like AIs will continue to be regurgitative borg-brains-in-a-vat until they have some semblance of a relatable, "lived" experience that they can map words to instead of just analyzing the patterns.
- mallowdram 1y ago
  That's folk science, you've not studied linguistics.
  - jrowen 1y ago
    That's a fallacy, you've not studied logic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority Besides, I was largely agreeing and building on what you said (with a quibble over one word choice), so I'm not really sure what you're objecting to.
    - mallowdram 1y ago
      Of course I've studied logic, particularly Eastern lack of requirement of logic. Language is inherently paradoxical, its inception, development defies logic in its endless contradictions. It can't be revealed by logic. The very idea that language has something called words that are scientifically visible in the label conduit metaphor paradox indicates that language is probably our biggest contradiction.
      - Antibabelic 1y ago
        Logic shows that you can prove anything from a contradiction. No logic means everything is true. So I don't think the rejection of logic is conductive to constructive conversation.
Antibabelic 1y ago
I think you're making a mistake in placing "meaning" within "context", rather than intent. This is why language works. Yes, it is "vague", but it's often enough for us to understand what our interlocutor wants from us.
- mallowdram 1y ago
  There is no such thing as intent. That's retrofitted. Meaning only emerges from the variations of task demands. We know this now from allocortex studies. Sure we can simulate meaning from our PFC, but that makes little difference if the simulation has zip to do with the action and mapping. The real problem is where does the post-hoc nature of words interact with the world of actions? They're highly separable. In one hand we have conscious will created by words, on the other is the wordless world of memory integration, consolidation, cognitive mapping, planning. All thought is wordless, we know this as of 2016 in aphasia studies, the question is if the words are arbitrary, what we doing using them in place of thought? Are we dumb, insane, or just wiling to live in slumber using them to go nowhere? If you look around carefully, nowhere is where we're going, and fast.
  - Antibabelic 1y ago
    Of course there is such a thing as intent. When you're hungry, you formulate a plan about getting something to eat, which you then execute. It's more correct to say that there is no such thing as a "statement". People don't go around declaring "The sky is blue.", "My dog's name is Zeus". People go around influencing the world to achieve their goals, including with language. When you say "There is no such thing as intent", this is less of a statement about the state of affairs, as much as an attempt to alter the reader's model of the world to align with yours, one that apparently doesn't include the concept of "intent". Same goes for all the statements I've made here. Language is an API for indirectly manipulating people's cognitive states.
    - mallowdram 1y ago
      There is no such thing as intent. That's folk science you're describing. Thoughts aren't about things, they are things. “We refute (based on empirical evidence) claims that humans use linguistic representations to think.” Ev Fedorenko Language Lab MIT 2024 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7415918/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7415918/ btw the levels of folk science inhabiting engineering is tsunami. the whole field needs to be taught how to deal with the contradictions in scientific practice and discourse to get out of the vortex you've built for our species.

nyeah 1y ago

That appears to be meaningless. Please explain without using language.

mallowdram 1y ago
If you understand the nature of language fully, then its ultimate function is to refute itself. In other words, all our use of arbitrary signals leads eventually to specific signals. To make that simpler, each statement in any existing language is about replacing language.
- the_af 1y ago
  I'll try to say this as politely as I can: I think this is a bot account. Not only your two posts above read like word-salad, I went through your comments history and almost every comment of yours reads like this (except maybe a couple). If so, could you maybe stop your experiment? I wasted time trying to parse your comment as if it was generated by a human.
  - mallowdram 1y ago
    I'm not a bot, I'm a neurobiologist with a start up that's about replacing the symbolic. and I'm pretty stunned at how inert CS is regarding language. You can find plenty of typos in my posts, and they're not all about this, they're about myth, causality, the symbolic. To accuse a human of being a bot is really poor manners. Far from word salads, they are based in deep theories from empirical demonstrations that words are our most fundamental illusions. If you want the deep research we use internally (about 100 citations) start here. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cXtU97SCjxaHCrf8UVeQGYajatFQ_MU69MBDmIFe58I/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cXtU97SCjxaHCrf8UVeQGYaj... I suggest that CS has little ability to debates the scientific reality of language if posters are going to complain scientific statements that are defined and defendable are word salads. That's a warning CS hasn't done its homework.
    - the_af 1y ago
      > I'm a neurobiologist with a start up that's about replacing the symbolic What's your startup? What are your publications? That Google doc link is more word-salad and random quotes and citations. What on earth is a "start up that's about replacing the symbolic"? > If you understand the nature of language fully, then its ultimate function is to refute itself. In other words, all our use of arbitrary signals leads eventually to specific signals. To make that simpler, each statement in any existing language is about replacing language. This is word salad, for example. You're not trying to "make it simpler", you're trying to obfuscate (or it's just random). > That's a warning CS hasn't done its homework. What's a "CS"?
      - mallowdram 1y ago
        I don't disclose affiliations here, that's the beauty of HN. I get to keep my anonymity to explore. A start-up that replaces the symbolic engages with specifics in signals in the record (animals, entoptics, onomatopoeia, calendrical signs, action-syntax externals, cinematic action-glyphs) and figures out what representations veer referential and offers concatenation. The idea that language refutes itself is as old as the pre-socratics. I won't go into the detailed history here, but there are 1000s of reference for this statement. I'll use Cassirer's, which is pretty succinct. ..at some point a direct contact must occur between knowledge and reality. If we succeed in freeing ourselves from all these interpretations – if we above all succeed in removing the veil of words, which conceals the true essence of things, then at one stroke we shall find ourselves face to face with the original perceptions.. Ernst Cassirer The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Freeing ourselves from the veil of words is theoretically equivalent to language's ultimate function is to refute itself. CS is computer science. btw it's clear the drive to encapsulate in plain English was and is the achilles heel to CS, coders are forced to finger point using characterizations of "word salad" at scientifically complex theories and analytic ideas.
- glitchc 1y ago
  > each statement in any existing language is about replacing language. I found that difficult to parse. Moreover, it's a strong claim. Can you provide some evidence as to why it's true? I can find some trivial counter-examples. For instance, which part of "I like oranges." evolves English as a language?
  - mallowdram 1y ago
    Language as a self-refuting system, doesn't evolve, or evolve us, it devolves towards increasing arbitariness, the faster it's used, particularly once automated. “We refute (based on empirical evidence) claims that humans use linguistic representations to think.” Ev Fedorenko Language Lab MIT 2024 .at some point a direct contact must occur between knowledge and reality. If we succeed in freeing ourselves from all these interpretations – if we above all succeed in removing the veil of words, which conceals the true essence of things, then at one stroke we shall find ourselves face to face with the original perceptions.. Ernst Cassirer The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms

jrowen 1y ago

I wouldn't say words are metaphors, I think of a metaphor as like a pointer, words are the actual mapping of arbitrary sounds to concepts that are relatively universally relatable to human experience. Children can learn language easily by associating those sounds with contemporaneous objects and situations from their experience. I feel like AIs will continue to be regurgitative borg-brains-in-a-vat until they have some semblance of a relatable, "lived" experience that they can map words to instead of just analyzing the patterns.

mallowdram 1y ago
That's folk science, you've not studied linguistics.
- jrowen 1y ago
  That's a fallacy, you've not studied logic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority Besides, I was largely agreeing and building on what you said (with a quibble over one word choice), so I'm not really sure what you're objecting to.
  - mallowdram 1y ago
    Of course I've studied logic, particularly Eastern lack of requirement of logic. Language is inherently paradoxical, its inception, development defies logic in its endless contradictions. It can't be revealed by logic. The very idea that language has something called words that are scientifically visible in the label conduit metaphor paradox indicates that language is probably our biggest contradiction.
    - Antibabelic 1y ago
      Logic shows that you can prove anything from a contradiction. No logic means everything is true. So I don't think the rejection of logic is conductive to constructive conversation.

Antibabelic 1y ago

I think you're making a mistake in placing "meaning" within "context", rather than intent. This is why language works. Yes, it is "vague", but it's often enough for us to understand what our interlocutor wants from us.

mallowdram 1y ago
There is no such thing as intent. That's retrofitted. Meaning only emerges from the variations of task demands. We know this now from allocortex studies. Sure we can simulate meaning from our PFC, but that makes little difference if the simulation has zip to do with the action and mapping. The real problem is where does the post-hoc nature of words interact with the world of actions? They're highly separable. In one hand we have conscious will created by words, on the other is the wordless world of memory integration, consolidation, cognitive mapping, planning. All thought is wordless, we know this as of 2016 in aphasia studies, the question is if the words are arbitrary, what we doing using them in place of thought? Are we dumb, insane, or just wiling to live in slumber using them to go nowhere? If you look around carefully, nowhere is where we're going, and fast.
- Antibabelic 1y ago
  Of course there is such a thing as intent. When you're hungry, you formulate a plan about getting something to eat, which you then execute. It's more correct to say that there is no such thing as a "statement". People don't go around declaring "The sky is blue.", "My dog's name is Zeus". People go around influencing the world to achieve their goals, including with language. When you say "There is no such thing as intent", this is less of a statement about the state of affairs, as much as an attempt to alter the reader's model of the world to align with yours, one that apparently doesn't include the concept of "intent". Same goes for all the statements I've made here. Language is an API for indirectly manipulating people's cognitive states.
  - mallowdram 1y ago
    There is no such thing as intent. That's folk science you're describing. Thoughts aren't about things, they are things. “We refute (based on empirical evidence) claims that humans use linguistic representations to think.” Ev Fedorenko Language Lab MIT 2024 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7415918/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7415918/ btw the levels of folk science inhabiting engineering is tsunami. the whole field needs to be taught how to deal with the contradictions in scientific practice and discourse to get out of the vortex you've built for our species.