3 ms·

We very obviously are not just a series of weights for probable next tokens. Like seriously, you can even ask an LLM and it will tell you our brains work differ

We very obviously are not just a series of weights for probable next tokens. Like seriously, you can even ask an LLM and it will tell you our brains work differently to it, and that’s not even including the possibility that we have a soul or any other spiritual substrait.

fc417fc802 6mo ago
Our brains work differently, yes. What evidence do you have that our brains are not functionally equivalent to a series of weights being used to predict the next token? I'm not claiming that to be the case, merely pointing out that you don't appear to have a reasonable claim to the contrary. > not even including the possibility that we have a soul or any other spiritual substrait. If we're going to veer off into mysticism then the LLM discussion is also going to get a lot weirder. Perhaps we ought to stick to a materialist scientific approach?
- CPLX 6mo ago
  What evidence do you have that a sausage is not functionally equivalent to a cucumber?
  - fc417fc802 6mo ago
    I don't follow. If you provide criteria I can most likely provide evidence, unless your criteria is "vaguely cylindrical and vaguely squishy" in which case I obviously won't be able to. The person I replied to made a definite claim (that we are "very obviously not ...") for which no evidence has been presented and which I posit humanity is currently unable to definitively answer in one direction or the other.
    - CPLX 6mo ago
      When two things are obviously radically different (a squishy mass of trillions of interconnected carbon based blobs fed by some sort of continuous oxygen based chemical reaction, and a series of distributed transitors on silicon wafers) then the burden of proof shifts to the other guy to provide the clear and convincing evidence that they should be considered functionally the same thing.
      - fc417fc802 6mo ago
        But I made no such claim. I was explicit that my position is "humanity is currently unable to definitively answer in one direction or the other". Two things being physically different does not exclude their also having functional similarities. The argument presented amounts to A and B have large physical differences, A does X, therefore B does not do X. That doesn't follow.
  - trinsic2 6mo ago
    [flagged]
  - coldtea 6mo ago
    From certain aspects they're equivalent. Both have mass, have carbon based, both contain DNA/RNA, both are suprinsingly over 50% water, both are food, and both can be tasty when served right. From other aspects they are not. In many cases, one or the other would do. In other cases, you want something more special (e.g. more protein, or less fat).
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- nothinkjustai 6mo ago
  You are setting the bar in a way that makes “functional equivalence” unfalsifiable. If by “functionally equivalent” you mean “can produce similar linguistic outputs in some domains,” then sure we’re already there in some narrow cases. But that’s a very thin slice of what brains do, and thus not functionally equivalent at all. There are a few non-mystical, testable differences that matter: - Online learning vs. frozen inference: brains update continuously from tiny amounts of data, LLMs do not - Grounding: human cognition is tied to perception, action, and feedback from the world. LLMs operate over symbol sequences divorced from direct experience. - Memory: humans have persistent, multi-scale memory (episodic, procedural, etc.) that integrates over a lifetime. LLM “memory” is either weights (static) or context (ephemeral). - Agency: brains are part of systems that generate their own goals and act on the world. LLMs optimize a fixed objective (next-token prediction) and don’t have endogenous drives.
  - fc417fc802 6mo ago
    I did not claim the ability of current LLMs to be on par with that of humans (equivalently human brains). I objected that you have not presented evidence refuting the claim that the core functionality of human brains can be accomplished by predicting the next token (or something substantially similar to that). None of the things you listed support a claim on the matter in either direction.
skeledrew 6mo ago
Its really just a matter of degrees. There are 1 million, 1 million, 1 trillion parameter LLMs... and you keep scaling those parameters and you eventually get to humans. But it's still probable next tokens (decisions) based on previous tokens (experience).
- simonh 6mo ago
  They’re both neural networks, but the architectures built using those neural connections, and the way they are trained and operate are completely different. There are many different artificial neural network architectures. They’re not all LLMs. AlphaZero isn’t a LLM. There are Feed Forward networks, recurrent networks, convolutional networks, transformer networks, generative adversarial networks. Brains have many different regions each with different architectures. None of them work like LLMs. Not even our language centres are structured or trained anything like LLMs.
  - coldtea 6mo ago
    >AlphaZero isn’t a LLM. There are Feed Forward networks, recurrent networks, convolutional networks, transformer networks, generative adversarial networks. That's irrelevant though, since all the above are still prediction machines based on weights. If you're ok with the brain being that, then you just changed the architecture (from LLM-like), not the concept.
    - simonh 6mo ago
      That's a different statement, yes brains and LLMs are both neural networks. An LLM is a specific neural architectural structure and training process. Brains are also neural networks, but they are otherwise nothing at all like LLMs and don't function the ways LLMs do architecturally other than being neural networks.
  - skeledrew 6mo ago
    I'd argue that regardless of the architecture, the more sophisticated brain is still a (massive) language model. If you really think about it, language is the construct that allows brains to go beyond raw instinct and actually create concepts that're useful for "intelligently" planning for the future. The real difference is that brains are trained with raw sensory data (nerve impulses) while today's LLMs are trained with human-generated data (text, images, etc).
coldtea 6mo ago
>We very obviously are not just a series of weights for probable next tokens. How exactly? Except via handwaving? I refer to the "brain as prediction machine theory" which is the dominant one atm. >you can even ask an LLM and it will tell you our brains work differently to it It will just tell me platitudes based on weights of the millions of books and articles and such on its training. Kind of like what a human would tell me. >and that’s not even including the possibility that we have a soul or any other spiritual substrait. That's good, because I wasn't including it either.
- stonogo 6mo ago
  "brain as prediction machine theory" is dominant among whom, exactly? Is it for the same reason that the "watchmaker analogy" was 'dominant' when clockwork was the most advanced technology commonly available?

fc417fc802 6mo ago

Our brains work differently, yes. What evidence do you have that our brains are not functionally equivalent to a series of weights being used to predict the next token? I'm not claiming that to be the case, merely pointing out that you don't appear to have a reasonable claim to the contrary. > not even including the possibility that we have a soul or any other spiritual substrait. If we're going to veer off into mysticism then the LLM discussion is also going to get a lot weirder. Perhaps we ought to stick to a materialist scientific approach?

CPLX 6mo ago
What evidence do you have that a sausage is not functionally equivalent to a cucumber?
- fc417fc802 6mo ago
  I don't follow. If you provide criteria I can most likely provide evidence, unless your criteria is "vaguely cylindrical and vaguely squishy" in which case I obviously won't be able to. The person I replied to made a definite claim (that we are "very obviously not ...") for which no evidence has been presented and which I posit humanity is currently unable to definitively answer in one direction or the other.
  - CPLX 6mo ago
    When two things are obviously radically different (a squishy mass of trillions of interconnected carbon based blobs fed by some sort of continuous oxygen based chemical reaction, and a series of distributed transitors on silicon wafers) then the burden of proof shifts to the other guy to provide the clear and convincing evidence that they should be considered functionally the same thing.
    - fc417fc802 6mo ago
      But I made no such claim. I was explicit that my position is "humanity is currently unable to definitively answer in one direction or the other". Two things being physically different does not exclude their also having functional similarities. The argument presented amounts to A and B have large physical differences, A does X, therefore B does not do X. That doesn't follow.
- trinsic2 6mo ago
  [flagged]
- coldtea 6mo ago
  From certain aspects they're equivalent. Both have mass, have carbon based, both contain DNA/RNA, both are suprinsingly over 50% water, both are food, and both can be tasty when served right. From other aspects they are not. In many cases, one or the other would do. In other cases, you want something more special (e.g. more protein, or less fat).
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
nothinkjustai 6mo ago
You are setting the bar in a way that makes “functional equivalence” unfalsifiable. If by “functionally equivalent” you mean “can produce similar linguistic outputs in some domains,” then sure we’re already there in some narrow cases. But that’s a very thin slice of what brains do, and thus not functionally equivalent at all. There are a few non-mystical, testable differences that matter: - Online learning vs. frozen inference: brains update continuously from tiny amounts of data, LLMs do not - Grounding: human cognition is tied to perception, action, and feedback from the world. LLMs operate over symbol sequences divorced from direct experience. - Memory: humans have persistent, multi-scale memory (episodic, procedural, etc.) that integrates over a lifetime. LLM “memory” is either weights (static) or context (ephemeral). - Agency: brains are part of systems that generate their own goals and act on the world. LLMs optimize a fixed objective (next-token prediction) and don’t have endogenous drives.
- fc417fc802 6mo ago
  I did not claim the ability of current LLMs to be on par with that of humans (equivalently human brains). I objected that you have not presented evidence refuting the claim that the core functionality of human brains can be accomplished by predicting the next token (or something substantially similar to that). None of the things you listed support a claim on the matter in either direction.

skeledrew 6mo ago

Its really just a matter of degrees. There are 1 million, 1 million, 1 trillion parameter LLMs... and you keep scaling those parameters and you eventually get to humans. But it's still probable next tokens (decisions) based on previous tokens (experience).

simonh 6mo ago
They’re both neural networks, but the architectures built using those neural connections, and the way they are trained and operate are completely different. There are many different artificial neural network architectures. They’re not all LLMs. AlphaZero isn’t a LLM. There are Feed Forward networks, recurrent networks, convolutional networks, transformer networks, generative adversarial networks. Brains have many different regions each with different architectures. None of them work like LLMs. Not even our language centres are structured or trained anything like LLMs.
- coldtea 6mo ago
  >AlphaZero isn’t a LLM. There are Feed Forward networks, recurrent networks, convolutional networks, transformer networks, generative adversarial networks. That's irrelevant though, since all the above are still prediction machines based on weights. If you're ok with the brain being that, then you just changed the architecture (from LLM-like), not the concept.
  - simonh 6mo ago
    That's a different statement, yes brains and LLMs are both neural networks. An LLM is a specific neural architectural structure and training process. Brains are also neural networks, but they are otherwise nothing at all like LLMs and don't function the ways LLMs do architecturally other than being neural networks.
- skeledrew 6mo ago
  I'd argue that regardless of the architecture, the more sophisticated brain is still a (massive) language model. If you really think about it, language is the construct that allows brains to go beyond raw instinct and actually create concepts that're useful for "intelligently" planning for the future. The real difference is that brains are trained with raw sensory data (nerve impulses) while today's LLMs are trained with human-generated data (text, images, etc).

coldtea 6mo ago

>We very obviously are not just a series of weights for probable next tokens. How exactly? Except via handwaving? I refer to the "brain as prediction machine theory" which is the dominant one atm. >you can even ask an LLM and it will tell you our brains work differently to it It will just tell me platitudes based on weights of the millions of books and articles and such on its training. Kind of like what a human would tell me. >and that’s not even including the possibility that we have a soul or any other spiritual substrait. That's good, because I wasn't including it either.

stonogo 6mo ago
"brain as prediction machine theory" is dominant among whom, exactly? Is it for the same reason that the "watchmaker analogy" was 'dominant' when clockwork was the most advanced technology commonly available?