Talking About Large Language Models

Unlike you?

All the answers looked good, used several of the correct terms, and one even referenced the project I worked on, but they just contained flat out wrong information.

You reach a point, where when you ask a ML model to generate text given the internet as a corpus, where there just isn't enough text to make something that is both true and convincing. In niche fields, this is just where we are at.

The section on emergence makes a very convincing point about how such systems might, at least in theory, be doing absolutely anything, including "real" cognition, internally and then goes right ahead and dismisses this entirely on the basis of the system not having conversational intent. who cares if it has conversational intent? If it was shown to be doing "the real thing" (how ever you might want to define that) internally that would still be a big deal wether the part you interact with gives you direct access to that or not.

Then it goes on to argue that these systems can't possibly actually believe anything because they can't update believes. Frankly I'm neither convinced that the general use of the word "believe" matches the narrow definition they seem to be using here nor that even their narrow definition could not in principle still be taking place internally for the reasons laid out in the emergence section.

I agree people should probably be mindful of overly anthropomorphic language but at the same time we really shouldn't be so sure that a thing is definitely not doing certain things that we can't even really define beyond "I know it when I see it" and that it sure looks like it's doing.

beyond that I'm not even really sure there is a good philosophical grounding for insisting that "what's really going on inside" matters, like, at all. The core thing with the turing test isn't the silly and outdated test protocol but the notion that, if something is indistinguishable by observation from a conscious system, there is simply no meaningful basis to claim it isn't one.

all that said the current state of the art probably doesn't warrant a lot of anthropomorphizing but that might well change in the future without any change to the kinda of systems used that would be relevant to the arguments made in the paper

Read the conversation. You are accusing me of something vile which the GP started. GP Literally said that science was something elementary school level shit implying that I was so damn stupid I was uneducated. You're only taking his side because You agree with him, you are not seeing who drew first blood and you are burning the witch because it serves your own agenda. He insulted me DELIBERATELY. I'm also not technically insulting him. I don't think he knew what I told him.

>You fundamentally misunderstand the scientific method which includes falsifiability but is not limited to it

This is fundamentally incorrect. You are just like the GP. You lack of knowledge. Did you not see the quote from Einstein? My statements are legitimate.

The highest most definitive statement one can make in science is falsification. The next highest form of statement is causality and the next is correlative and everything after that is just informal qualitative stuff. That's it. After falsification everything becomes dependent on the sample and all statements are open to being proved completely wrong at any point in time. Causative and correlative statements are never definitive. But falsification is definitive.

Let me repeat. The only definitive claims science can make about reality is falsification. That's it.

There is no form of provable claims in science. None. If a scientist makes such a claim in a scientific paper, it is not technically science. It is simply a speculative claim on an academic paper. This is not philosophy this is science in it's most fundamental form.

>What is ironic is you hiding behind throwaway accounts

Hiding behind throw away accounts? Are you joking? What is there to hide that everyone else is hiding here? Are you implying you're not hiding, why don't you tell me your real full name if your not hiding as well? The only reason why I made a new account is because I wanted to comment here. That's it. Are you demanding I put my name here?

>moved the goalpost away from peer review for journals

Let me quote what was said in GP's FIRST sentence and FIRST post.

"I am NLP researcher who volunteers for peer review often and the anthropomorphisms in papers are indeed very common and very wrong. "

There are TWO GOAL POSTS listed here. anthropomorphisms LISTED in papers and anthropomorphisms being "VERY WRONG." I did not move a goal post. I am simply refuting a goal post that the GP listed himself and that YOU missed.

>while fundamentally misunderstanding the issue of positive claims in science.

Positivism in science is largely a philosophy. It's abstract enough such that it's not worth talking about. This is actual philosophy. Falsification is fundamental enough that it is intrinsic to understanding the scientific method. It's not "just" a philosophy any more then logic or math is a "philosophy". Literally. If you don't get that the entire scientific method and reality in itself is ONLY subject to falsification, you then you don't understand science.

I'll repeat Einsteins quote:

"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

Literally the man is saying that there is no science in the universe that can prove any of his theories right. If you don't understand the meaning behind why he said this, again, you don't understand science. This is fundamental it is basic. Not fundamental in the sense that everyone should understand it, but fundamental in terms of foundational to reality, to science itself.