3 ms·

> I'll admit that I find this discussion a bit navel-gazy. It has become a question of semantics not a question of actual functionality Ah, so you're more in t

> I'll admit that I find this discussion a bit navel-gazy. It has become a question of semantics not a question of actual functionality Ah, so you're more in the Investor mindset than the Scientist mindset. All you care about is results, not how it got there. There's a whiff of "hey, it's magic!" to that.

andrewla 2mo ago
No, that's stupid. The question of how LLMs (and "LRM"'s, an unfortunate and by the article's own admission, already outdated term) accomplish what they accomplish is fascinating. The question of whether they reason is meaningless. Most of the article is about the latter, with tiny tiny tiny bits of the former.
- mdp2021 2mo ago
  > The question of whether they reason ... Most of the article is about ... I read it as: the content of the explicit verbalized reasoning may not be that important to the outcome. I'd say that raises most important questions.
- fc417fc802 2mo ago
  > The question of whether they reason is meaningless. It is often (but not always) meaningless (or at least largely pointless) to quibble about which particular semantic bin a concrete object or process ought to be placed in. Asking how one thing differs from another is not that. Confusingly, the two activities often appear the same when glanced at superficially. The question "do current LLMs reason" is ambiguous in this regard. It might be a question of submarines swimming or it might be a question about how the mechanisms underlying the process or the overall performance or some other aspect compare to those of human reasoning. Also even the semantic question can occasionally have some value. Such as attempting to articulate where we ought to place the goalposts which necessarily leads to hammering out the specifics of various definitions which is an exercise in furthering our understanding of a given concept. (Basically arguing about goalposts can be productive if the field in which they are being placed isn't yet well understood. It becomes increasingly pointless as understanding increases, gradually devolving into nothing more than word games and a contest of wills.)
- Windchaser 2mo ago
  > The question of whether they reason is meaningless. I'd disagree. Reason is the most reliable way we currently have of drawing conclusions (fewest false negatives, at least), so if we want to build AI that can draw similarly strong conclusions, it could be useful for them to reason. It also helps to reframe our ideas of what they're doing - i.e., don't call it "reasoning" if it's not actually that reliable, because it builds a false trust in their conclusions. And last - epistemologically, is there a connection between what LRMs are doing now and actual reasoning? Is it possible to smoothly transition from one to the other? Exploring different types of cognition and the connections between them mathematically is pretty damn interesting
ux266478 2mo ago
Word games aren't scientific in the slightest, and as Hume says on verbal arguments in general, they "cannot possibly be of any importance."

andrewla 2mo ago

No, that's stupid. The question of how LLMs (and "LRM"'s, an unfortunate and by the article's own admission, already outdated term) accomplish what they accomplish is fascinating. The question of whether they reason is meaningless. Most of the article is about the latter, with tiny tiny tiny bits of the former.

mdp2021 2mo ago
> The question of whether they reason ... Most of the article is about ... I read it as: the content of the explicit verbalized reasoning may not be that important to the outcome. I'd say that raises most important questions.
fc417fc802 2mo ago
> The question of whether they reason is meaningless. It is often (but not always) meaningless (or at least largely pointless) to quibble about which particular semantic bin a concrete object or process ought to be placed in. Asking how one thing differs from another is not that. Confusingly, the two activities often appear the same when glanced at superficially. The question "do current LLMs reason" is ambiguous in this regard. It might be a question of submarines swimming or it might be a question about how the mechanisms underlying the process or the overall performance or some other aspect compare to those of human reasoning. Also even the semantic question can occasionally have some value. Such as attempting to articulate where we ought to place the goalposts which necessarily leads to hammering out the specifics of various definitions which is an exercise in furthering our understanding of a given concept. (Basically arguing about goalposts can be productive if the field in which they are being placed isn't yet well understood. It becomes increasingly pointless as understanding increases, gradually devolving into nothing more than word games and a contest of wills.)
Windchaser 2mo ago
> The question of whether they reason is meaningless. I'd disagree. Reason is the most reliable way we currently have of drawing conclusions (fewest false negatives, at least), so if we want to build AI that can draw similarly strong conclusions, it could be useful for them to reason. It also helps to reframe our ideas of what they're doing - i.e., don't call it "reasoning" if it's not actually that reliable, because it builds a false trust in their conclusions. And last - epistemologically, is there a connection between what LRMs are doing now and actual reasoning? Is it possible to smoothly transition from one to the other? Exploring different types of cognition and the connections between them mathematically is pretty damn interesting

ux266478 2mo ago

Word games aren't scientific in the slightest, and as Hume says on verbal arguments in general, they "cannot possibly be of any importance."