4 ms·
>Since Nov 30, 2022 BC everything has become… more complex. FTFY Increasing complexity is the story of mankind. It's the story of civilization. Someone from
by pixl97 4mo ago
>Since Nov 30, 2022 BC everything has become… more complex.
FTFY
Increasing complexity is the story of mankind. It's the story of civilization.
Someone from 20,000 BC would wander around the earth trying to find food, trying not to freeze, and trying not to get eaten. Someone from 5,000 BC would be trying to grow food, hoping it rains, and hoping disease didn't wipe out the village. The second one increases the complexity from all the systems required to manage people and keep the land growing. Today the vast majority of people on earth don't grow their own food at all, and instead are busy in some way managing the complexity of a large society.
Someone from 1970-80 would think our software from pre-llm days was vastly more complex. They'd just code directly to the hardware with no abstraction layer. Now almost no one does that. We abstracted the hardware away in most cases. With cryptography libraries for the vast majority of people it's complexity is abstracted away and mostly people are told "don't try to write your own crypto because you will fuck it up".
The question now becomes, how quickly will LLMs be able to coordinate their understanding of the system they are changing?
- ButlerianJihad 4mo ago> IBM has entered the chat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system)
- qsera 4mo ago>LLMs be able to coordinate their understanding I think the next time I see "LLMs" and "Understanding" in the same sentence, I am going to lose it....
- pixl97 4mo ago[flagged]
- irishcoffee 4mo agoI'll meet you in the middle: an LLM "understands" words in the same way a toddler understands the phrases they say. "My want cookie!" The toddler has zero comprehension of what any of those words mean, but they know that saying them in that order might result in something desirable. An LLM has zero understanding of "my", "want", or "cookie" because an LLM has no id/ego, has never felt desire, and has never eaten a cookie.
- pixl97 4mo agoI believe you've made a category error in understanding, um, understanding. You've tied emotion into it. This to me are entirely different concepts where both happen to be wrapped up in meaty flesh that drives us humans. Now, these concepts are very important in sociology and human understanding of how we behave, but they also may have zero importance for the domain that encompases all understanding. HN would commonly recommend reading the book Blindsight here. Moreso, all you've done is recreate the Searle Chinese Room thought experiment which gets bounced around with no means of deciding if it reflects reality or not.
- irishcoffee 4mo agoNo I didn’t. You just don’t like the analogy so you rejected it with a lot of empty words.
- CamperBob2 4mo agoI'll meet you in the middle: an LLM "understands" words in the same way a toddler understands the phrases they say. How'd your toddler do at IMO last year?
- irishcoffee 4mo agoAsk an LLM for the difference between a definite and indefinite article, and then pronouns. Maybe just a whole run down of basic grammar. And then read the comment again.
- CamperBob2 4mo agoWhy don't you do that, since you're the one who has no idea what will happen?
- irishcoffee 4mo agoI was referring to you referencing “my toddler” but I suppose if reading is not your forte suggesting you use an LLM isn’t helpful. My mistake.
- a2dam 4mo agoYou should be less upset over semantics that everyone else has usefully settled on. LLMs understand things fine.
- slopinthebag 4mo agoRight and my math textbook understands integration.
- ithkuil 4mo agoAt least your math textbook was written by somebody who understood integration
- slopinthebag 4mo agoSaying an LLM understands something is like saying my biology textbook understands biology. It's a complete category error.
- sokka_h2otribe 4mo agoFor what it's worth, nomadism and agricultural systems are not necessarily more complex - that is, the complexity of a nomadic lifestyle can be quite high. Randomization, varied food sources, hybrid lifestyles, etc. The hierarchy is certainly higher in agriculture societies it seems, but the complexity is up for some debate