Why Fei-Fei Li and Yann LeCun are both betting on "world models"

I note that you keep saying "cogito" without the "ergo."

"I think therefore I am" is invalid, and what's wrong with it is the "therefore," the idea that you knew one thing, and you drew a "logical" conclusion from it, in a "prior to language" environment where words have no meaning, where "true" and "false" are indistinguishable, and logic is impossible.

Logic requires words. "Logical" means "verbal," from the Greek logos (λόγος). You can't have a logical argument (you can't draw a conclusion) from the instantaneous standpoint of someone "experiencing" cogito, where words mean whatever you want, or nothing at all.

The experience you're having is not a logical argument. As a sentence, "cogito ergo sum" is invalidated as soon as you write it down in a shared language.

I'm sure it feels right to you! But you can't actually say anything true about it in English, or Latin, or any other shared language.

Thereof, you simply must remain silent.

    For, on the one hand, there is the real world, and on the other,
    a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds.
    These are very very useful symbols; all civilization depends on them;
    but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the
    principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality,
    just as we confuse money with actual wealth; and our names about
    ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, our images of ourselves, *with*
    ourselves.

    Now of course, reality, from a philosopher's point of view, is a
    dangerous word. A philosopher will ask me, what do I mean by reality?
    Am I talking about the physical world of nature, or am I talking about
    a spiritual world, or what?
    
    And to that I have a very simple answer. When we talk about the material
    world, that is actually a philosophical concept - so in the same way, if
    I say that reality is spiritual, that's also a philosophical concept -
    and reality itself is not a concept.

    Reality is - [...]

    ... and we won't give it a name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w

See also: "the TAO that can be named is not the true TAO;" or, Crowley in Konx om Pax on the "fools who mistake names for things."

This view of simulation is just wrong and does not correspond at all to human perception.

Firstly, games aren't mathematics. They are low quality models of physics. Mathematics can not say what will happen in reality, mathematics can only describe a model and say what happens in the model. Just mathematics can not say anything about the real world, so a world model just doing mathematics can not say anything about the world either.

Secondly, and far worse for your premise, is that humans do not need these mathematical models. I do not understand the extremely complex mechanical problem of opening a door, to open a door. A world model which tries to understand the world based on mathematics has to. This makes any world model based on mathematics strictly inferior and totally unsuited to the goals.

The problem with making universal assertions as opposed to existential assertions is that a single counterexample is all that is necessary to prove the assertion is incorrect or wrong.

> That's not what I'm arguing.

Okay; your argument is difficult to digest because, unlike most philosophy arguments, you neither lead nor end with the actual thesis; you present a book-length text as support for a thesis that is never stated.

> The argument is that "cogito ergo sum" is invalid, which is part of an argument against the existence of a "mind" above and beyond what the brain does in a living body. The atoms are all there is.

What's your thesis, then? "Cogito ergo sum is invalid" is hardly a thesis. Maybe you are asserting that there is no "mind" above and beyond the living brain, which will be a universal claim not an existential one.

If that is indeed your claim, then it's not a testable/falsifiable one anyway; you are going to require instead a sequence of premises that are each accepted by the audience you wish to sway, with intermediate conclusions that are likewise accepted by the audience, before you present your final conclusion based exclusively on the premises list.

A narrative is not a good way to present a philosophical argument, especially when it is a counter argument to an argument that was presented (even if only verbally at the time) in the standard logical format I described.

A better way to convince that any formally presented logic (as Cogito ergo sum was) is invalid (or unsound) is to attack the premises. It is not normal to ignore the premises of the original argument and present premises of your own.

(PS. It's been a long time since I was in a formal logic philosophy class and maybe things have changed, but they haven't (I hope!) changed so much that logic is completely thrown out the window in favour of narrative)

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