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> 2. People need to let go of this strange and erroneous idea that humans somehow have this privileged access to 'the real world'. You don't. You are denouncin

> 2. People need to let go of this strange and erroneous idea that humans somehow have this privileged access to 'the real world'. You don't. You are denouncing a claim that the comment you're replying to did not make.

famouswaffles 9mo ago
They made it implicitly, otherwise this: >(2) language only somewhat models the world is completely irrelevant. Everyone is only 'somewhat modeling' the world. Humans, Animals, and LLMs.
- D-Machine 9mo ago
  Completely relevant, because LLMs only "somewhat model" humans' "somewhat modeling" of the world...
  - famouswaffles 9mo ago
    LLMs aren't modeling "humans modeling the world" - they're modeling patterns in data that reflect the world directly. When an LLM learns physics from textbooks, scientific papers, and code, it's learning the same compressed representations of reality that humans use, not a "model of a model." Your argument would suggest that because you learned about quantum mechanics through language (textbooks, lectures), you only have access to "humans' modeling of humans' modeling of quantum mechanics" - an infinite regress that's clearly absurd.
    - D-Machine 9mo ago
      > LLMs aren't modeling "humans modeling the world" - they're modeling patterns in data that reflect the world directly. This is a deranged and factually and tautologically (definitionally) false claim. LLMs can only work with tokenizations of texts written by people who produce those text to represent their actual models. All this removal and all these intermediate representational steps make LLMs a priori obviously even more distant from reality than humans. This is all definitional, what you are saying is just nonsense. > When an LLM learns physics from textbooks, scientific papers, and code, it's learning the same compressed representations of reality that humans use, not a "model of a model." A model is a compressed representation of reality. Physics is a model of the mechanics of various parts of the universe, i.e. "learning physics" is "learning a physical model". So, clarifying, the above sentence is > When an LLM learns physical models from textbooks, scientific papers, and code, it's learning the model of reality that humans use, not a "model of a model." This is clearly factually wrong, as the model that humans actually use is not the summaries written in textbooks, but the actual embodied and symbolic model that they use in reality, and which they only translate in corrupted and simplified, limited form to text (and that latter diminished form of all things is all the LLM can see). It is also not clear the LLM learns to actually do physics: it only learns how to write about physics like how humans do, but it doesn't mean it can run labs, interpret experiments, or apply models to novel contexts like humans can, or operate at the same level as humans. It clearly is learning something different from humans because it doesn't have the same sources of info. > Your argument would suggest that because you learned about quantum mechanics through language (textbooks, lectures), you only have access to "humans' modeling of humans' modeling of quantum mechanics" - an infinite regress that's clearly absurd. There is no infinite regress: humans actually verify that the things they learn and say are correct and provide effects, and update models accordingly. They do this by trying behaviours consistent with the learned model, and seeing how reality (other people, the physical world) responds (in degree and kind). LLMs have no conception of correctness or truth (not in any of the loss functions), and are trained and then done. Humans can't learn solely from digesting texts either. Anyone who has done math knows that reading a textbook doesn't teach you almost anything, you have to actually solve the problems (and attempted-solving is not in much/any texts) and discuss your solutions and reasoning with others. Other domains involving embodied skills, like cooking, require other kinds of feedback from the environment and others. But LLMs are imprisoned in tokens. EDIT: No serious researcher thinks LLMs are the way to AGI, this hasn't been a controversial opinion even among enthusiasts since about mid-2025 or so. This stuff about language is all trivial and basic stuff accepted by people in the field, and why things like V-JEPA-2 are being researched. So the comments here attempting to argue otherwise are really quite embarrassing.
      - famouswaffles 9mo ago
        >This is a deranged and factually and tautologically (definitionally) false claim. Strong words for a weak argument. LLMs are trained on data generated by physical processes (keystrokes, sensors, cameras), not telepathically extracted "mental models." The text itself is the artifact of reality and not just a description of someone's internal state. If a sensor records the temperature and writes it to a log, is the log a "model of a model"? No, it’s a data trace of a physical reality. >All this removal and all these intermediate representational steps make LLMs a priori obviously even more distant from reality than humans. You're conflating mediation with distance. A photograph is "mediated" but can capture details invisible to human perception. Your eye mediates photons through biochemical cascades-equally "removed" from raw reality. Proximity isn't measured by steps in a causal chain. >The model humans use is embodied, not the textbook summaries - LLMs only see the diminished form You need to stop thinking that a textbook is a "corruption" of some pristine embodied understanding. Most human physics knowledge also comes from text, equations, and symbolic manipulation - not direct embodied experience with quantum fields. A physicist's understanding of QED is symbolic, not embodied. You've never felt a quark. The "embodied" vs "symbolic" distinction doesn't privilege human learning the way you think. Most abstract human knowledge is also mediated through symbols. >It's not clear LLMs learn to actually do physics - they just learn to write about it This is testable and falsifiable - and increasingly falsified. LLMs: Solve novel physics problems they've never seen Debug code implementing physical simulations Derive equations using valid mathematical reasoning Make predictions that match experimental results If they "only learn to write about physics," they shouldn't succeed at these tasks. The fact that they do suggests they've internalized the functional relationships, not just surface-level imitation. >They can't run labs or interpret experiments like humans Somewhat true. It's possible but they're not very good at it - but irrelevant to whether they learn physics models. A paralyzed theoretical physicist who's never run a lab still understands physics. The ability to physically manipulate equipment is orthogonal to understanding the mathematical structure of physical law. You're conflating "understanding physics" with "having a body that can do experimental physics" - those aren't the same thing. >humans actually verify that the things they learn and say are correct and provide effects, and update models accordingly. They do this by trying behaviours consistent with the learned model, and seeing how reality (other people, the physical world) responds (in degree and kind). LLMs have no conception of correctness or truth (not in any of the loss functions), and are trained and then done. Gradient descent is literally "trying behaviors consistent with the learned model and seeing how reality responds." The model makes predictions The Data provides feedback (the actual next token) The model updates based on prediction error This repeats billions of times That's exactly the verify-update loop you describe for humans. The loss function explicitly encodes "correctness" as prediction accuracy against real data. >No serious researcher thinks LLMs are the way to AGI... accepted by people in the field Appeal to authority, also overstated. Plenty of researchers do think so and claiming consensus for your position is just false. LeCunn has been on that train for years so he's not an example of a change of heart. So far, nothing has actually come out of it. Even META isn't using V-JEPA to actually do anything, nevermind anyone else. Call me when these constructions actually best transformers.
- canadiantim 9mo ago
  You're wrong about this: "People need to let go of this strange and erroneous idea that humans somehow have this privileged access to the 'real world'. You don't." People do have a privileged access to the 'real world' compared to, for example, LLMs and any future AI. It's called: Consciousness and it is how we experience and come to know and understand the world. Consciousness is the privileged access that AI will never have.
  - pixl97 8mo ago
    > It's called: Consciousness Ok, explain its mechanism and why it gives privileged access. Furthermore I'd go for the Nobel prize and describe the elementary mechanics of consciousness and where the state change from non-conscious versus conscious occurs. It would be enlightening to read your paper.
    - canadiantim 8mo ago
      Actually consciousness has been well studied and many papers already exist describing the elementary mechanics of consciousness. Look up neuroscience papers on qualia, for example and you’ll find your answers as to why consciousness is a privileged access not available to AI or any machine. Eg humans have qualia, which are fundamentally irreducible, while AI does not and cannot.
      - pixl97 8mo ago
        >which are fundamentally irreducible Just no, please stop making things up because you feel like it. Trying to say one of the most hotly debated ideals in neuroscience has been decided or even well understood is absolutely insane. Even then you get into, animals have qualia right? But they are not expressive as human qualia, which means it is reducible.
        canadiantim 8mo ago
        It's literally part of the definition. Qualia is a well recognized term in neuroscience. I suspect maybe you haven't done much research into this area? Qualia is pretty well established and has been for a long time. Animals may have qualia, that's true. Though we can only be sure of our own qualia, because that's all we have access to. Qualia is the constituent parts that make up our subjective conscious experience, the atomized subjective experience, like the color red or the taste of sour.

famouswaffles 9mo ago

They made it implicitly, otherwise this: >(2) language only somewhat models the world is completely irrelevant. Everyone is only 'somewhat modeling' the world. Humans, Animals, and LLMs.

D-Machine 9mo ago
Completely relevant, because LLMs only "somewhat model" humans' "somewhat modeling" of the world...
- famouswaffles 9mo ago
  LLMs aren't modeling "humans modeling the world" - they're modeling patterns in data that reflect the world directly. When an LLM learns physics from textbooks, scientific papers, and code, it's learning the same compressed representations of reality that humans use, not a "model of a model." Your argument would suggest that because you learned about quantum mechanics through language (textbooks, lectures), you only have access to "humans' modeling of humans' modeling of quantum mechanics" - an infinite regress that's clearly absurd.
  - D-Machine 9mo ago
    > LLMs aren't modeling "humans modeling the world" - they're modeling patterns in data that reflect the world directly. This is a deranged and factually and tautologically (definitionally) false claim. LLMs can only work with tokenizations of texts written by people who produce those text to represent their actual models. All this removal and all these intermediate representational steps make LLMs a priori obviously even more distant from reality than humans. This is all definitional, what you are saying is just nonsense. > When an LLM learns physics from textbooks, scientific papers, and code, it's learning the same compressed representations of reality that humans use, not a "model of a model." A model is a compressed representation of reality. Physics is a model of the mechanics of various parts of the universe, i.e. "learning physics" is "learning a physical model". So, clarifying, the above sentence is > When an LLM learns physical models from textbooks, scientific papers, and code, it's learning the model of reality that humans use, not a "model of a model." This is clearly factually wrong, as the model that humans actually use is not the summaries written in textbooks, but the actual embodied and symbolic model that they use in reality, and which they only translate in corrupted and simplified, limited form to text (and that latter diminished form of all things is all the LLM can see). It is also not clear the LLM learns to actually do physics: it only learns how to write about physics like how humans do, but it doesn't mean it can run labs, interpret experiments, or apply models to novel contexts like humans can, or operate at the same level as humans. It clearly is learning something different from humans because it doesn't have the same sources of info. > Your argument would suggest that because you learned about quantum mechanics through language (textbooks, lectures), you only have access to "humans' modeling of humans' modeling of quantum mechanics" - an infinite regress that's clearly absurd. There is no infinite regress: humans actually verify that the things they learn and say are correct and provide effects, and update models accordingly. They do this by trying behaviours consistent with the learned model, and seeing how reality (other people, the physical world) responds (in degree and kind). LLMs have no conception of correctness or truth (not in any of the loss functions), and are trained and then done. Humans can't learn solely from digesting texts either. Anyone who has done math knows that reading a textbook doesn't teach you almost anything, you have to actually solve the problems (and attempted-solving is not in much/any texts) and discuss your solutions and reasoning with others. Other domains involving embodied skills, like cooking, require other kinds of feedback from the environment and others. But LLMs are imprisoned in tokens. EDIT: No serious researcher thinks LLMs are the way to AGI, this hasn't been a controversial opinion even among enthusiasts since about mid-2025 or so. This stuff about language is all trivial and basic stuff accepted by people in the field, and why things like V-JEPA-2 are being researched. So the comments here attempting to argue otherwise are really quite embarrassing.
    - famouswaffles 9mo ago
      >This is a deranged and factually and tautologically (definitionally) false claim. Strong words for a weak argument. LLMs are trained on data generated by physical processes (keystrokes, sensors, cameras), not telepathically extracted "mental models." The text itself is the artifact of reality and not just a description of someone's internal state. If a sensor records the temperature and writes it to a log, is the log a "model of a model"? No, it’s a data trace of a physical reality. >All this removal and all these intermediate representational steps make LLMs a priori obviously even more distant from reality than humans. You're conflating mediation with distance. A photograph is "mediated" but can capture details invisible to human perception. Your eye mediates photons through biochemical cascades-equally "removed" from raw reality. Proximity isn't measured by steps in a causal chain. >The model humans use is embodied, not the textbook summaries - LLMs only see the diminished form You need to stop thinking that a textbook is a "corruption" of some pristine embodied understanding. Most human physics knowledge also comes from text, equations, and symbolic manipulation - not direct embodied experience with quantum fields. A physicist's understanding of QED is symbolic, not embodied. You've never felt a quark. The "embodied" vs "symbolic" distinction doesn't privilege human learning the way you think. Most abstract human knowledge is also mediated through symbols. >It's not clear LLMs learn to actually do physics - they just learn to write about it This is testable and falsifiable - and increasingly falsified. LLMs: Solve novel physics problems they've never seen Debug code implementing physical simulations Derive equations using valid mathematical reasoning Make predictions that match experimental results If they "only learn to write about physics," they shouldn't succeed at these tasks. The fact that they do suggests they've internalized the functional relationships, not just surface-level imitation. >They can't run labs or interpret experiments like humans Somewhat true. It's possible but they're not very good at it - but irrelevant to whether they learn physics models. A paralyzed theoretical physicist who's never run a lab still understands physics. The ability to physically manipulate equipment is orthogonal to understanding the mathematical structure of physical law. You're conflating "understanding physics" with "having a body that can do experimental physics" - those aren't the same thing. >humans actually verify that the things they learn and say are correct and provide effects, and update models accordingly. They do this by trying behaviours consistent with the learned model, and seeing how reality (other people, the physical world) responds (in degree and kind). LLMs have no conception of correctness or truth (not in any of the loss functions), and are trained and then done. Gradient descent is literally "trying behaviors consistent with the learned model and seeing how reality responds." The model makes predictions The Data provides feedback (the actual next token) The model updates based on prediction error This repeats billions of times That's exactly the verify-update loop you describe for humans. The loss function explicitly encodes "correctness" as prediction accuracy against real data. >No serious researcher thinks LLMs are the way to AGI... accepted by people in the field Appeal to authority, also overstated. Plenty of researchers do think so and claiming consensus for your position is just false. LeCunn has been on that train for years so he's not an example of a change of heart. So far, nothing has actually come out of it. Even META isn't using V-JEPA to actually do anything, nevermind anyone else. Call me when these constructions actually best transformers.
canadiantim 9mo ago
You're wrong about this: "People need to let go of this strange and erroneous idea that humans somehow have this privileged access to the 'real world'. You don't." People do have a privileged access to the 'real world' compared to, for example, LLMs and any future AI. It's called: Consciousness and it is how we experience and come to know and understand the world. Consciousness is the privileged access that AI will never have.
- pixl97 8mo ago
  > It's called: Consciousness Ok, explain its mechanism and why it gives privileged access. Furthermore I'd go for the Nobel prize and describe the elementary mechanics of consciousness and where the state change from non-conscious versus conscious occurs. It would be enlightening to read your paper.
  - canadiantim 8mo ago
    Actually consciousness has been well studied and many papers already exist describing the elementary mechanics of consciousness. Look up neuroscience papers on qualia, for example and you’ll find your answers as to why consciousness is a privileged access not available to AI or any machine. Eg humans have qualia, which are fundamentally irreducible, while AI does not and cannot.
    - pixl97 8mo ago
      >which are fundamentally irreducible Just no, please stop making things up because you feel like it. Trying to say one of the most hotly debated ideals in neuroscience has been decided or even well understood is absolutely insane. Even then you get into, animals have qualia right? But they are not expressive as human qualia, which means it is reducible.
      - canadiantim 8mo ago
        It's literally part of the definition. Qualia is a well recognized term in neuroscience. I suspect maybe you haven't done much research into this area? Qualia is pretty well established and has been for a long time. Animals may have qualia, that's true. Though we can only be sure of our own qualia, because that's all we have access to. Qualia is the constituent parts that make up our subjective conscious experience, the atomized subjective experience, like the color red or the taste of sour.