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Position: LLMs Can't Jump

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Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#171

Post by goodmythical »

gabbagool wrote: post #161
throwaway0123_5 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been to a few natural wonders (including the Grand Canyon) that I saw in advance on video. At least for me it isn't close at all. Even if audiovisual elements could be near-perfectly reproduced by video (imo not even close with modern tech, no screen is capturing the brilliance of sunlight), you aren't capturing the temperature, the feel of wind or rain, the smell of the plants around you, etc.

Well, I've never been to the Grand Canyon myself, but what you said perfectly aligns with my intuition. Also, you touched on how even modern tech still falls short of the true experience. Just look at the history of motion picture since the early 1900s. We have added sound, color, bigger screens, faster refresh rates, more pixels, 3D (sort of), surround sound, spatial audio, IMAX, etc. Almost seems like video leaves…

4d gaussian splats are going to be a major revolution in vicarious experiences

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#172

Post by walrus01 »

gabbagool wrote: post #143

Probably too late for this, but I have argued before that language is a fundamentally lossy encoding of the human experience. We do our best to describe what we're seeing and experiencing using language, which is fantastically expressive, but it has its limits. I think we see glimpses of this when we find ourselves saying things such as, "it's impossible to put it into words" or we overload certain words when we mean…

> Probably too late for this, but I have argued before that language is a fundamentally lossy encoding of the human experience. We do our best to describe what we're seeing and experiencing using language, which is fantastically expressive, but it has its limits.

Yes, and sometimes this is very intentional. Take for example a short poem which if you sit and really think about it for a long time, you could go off on a mental tangent of imagining what sort of kingdom or empire created a statue that is now "two vast and trunkless legs of stone", for instance. Being terse and allowing for human interpretation is kind of the entire point of something being written like this.

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#173

Post by nativeit »

HelloUsername wrote: post #23
nativeit wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49136070

You posted this twice now. Why not just edit your original comment?

I don’t need to edit my original comment, it doesn’t contain any mistakes. All six of the links across three comments are each distinct, separate posts going to either the same article, or others with identical headlines.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#174

Post by Hammershaft »

yk wrote: post #102

The paper is from the 30th of April this year, openAi announced the counter example to the unit distance problem on the 20th of May. That is to say this paper seems to have aged not much but quite poorly.

I'm skeptical a counterexample is good evidence of creative intuition.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#176

Post by JacobAsmuth »

emp17344 wrote: post #138
killerstorm wrote: post #124

This is literally an opinion of one dude which is not backed by any kind of quantitative evidence. It's actually possible to answer this question rigorously: 1. Define a scientific result which qualifies as a "jump". They should be frequent enough that they happen every year - otherwise one might say humans can't jump either. 2. Identify all such "jumps" in articles published in 2026, and use LLM with 2025 knowledge…

LLMs most definitely are limited. What’s your position, that LLMs have no limits? That’s obviously wrong, and the fact you hold such an unreasonable position may be why you react so strongly to pieces like this one.

You're hallucinating facts again.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#177

Post by notduncansmith »

goodmythical wrote: post #170
air7 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this context that isn't the right question. Rather one should ask "Would you be able to answer any question and fulfill any request about the Grand Canyon given to you by others in a way that will be indistinguishable from someone who has been to the Grand Canyon"

What is the current ratio of opened to unopened cans of soda in the canyon, and how has that ratio developed over the last thirty days? I'd be fantastically surprised if you could provide a precise answer to any such question without extensive security footage that doesn't exist. An estimate, perhaps, but you probably couldn't even answer a simpler "how many people are currently in the canyon" without resorting to es…

I suspect the same limitations apply to Grand Canyon visitors

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#178

Post by andai »

gabbagool wrote: post #143

Probably too late for this, but I have argued before that language is a fundamentally lossy encoding of the human experience. We do our best to describe what we're seeing and experiencing using language, which is fantastically expressive, but it has its limits. I think we see glimpses of this when we find ourselves saying things such as, "it's impossible to put it into words" or we overload certain words when we mean…

> The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be “voluntarily” reproduced and combined… The above-mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will.

—Albert Einstein

Quoted in Using Spaced Repetition Systems to See Through a Piece of Mathematics,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18895613

which describes the author's experience that if you approach a field obsessively enough, eventually you begin to understand it at a level deeper than language.

If an LLM is big enough, I imagine something similar is happening.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#179

Post by strken »

air7 wrote: post #163
gabbagool wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, ask yourself the following question: If you read every single book there is about The Grand Canyon, and watched every single video and/or documentary about The Grand Canyon, do you believe that you have fully experienced The Grand Canyon? Or do you just have to be there to fully experience it. I dunno. Substitute in whatever you want for "The Grand Canyon". Maybe climbing Mount Everest or walking on the Moon. The…

In this context that isn't the right question. Rather one should ask "Would you be able to answer any question and fulfill any request about the Grand Canyon given to you by others in a way that will be indistinguishable from someone who has been to the Grand Canyon"

This is setting up a contrast between long term memory and an LLM.

You might equally contrast someone who is physically in the Grand Canyon with an LLM given access to a drone with sensory attachments. I'd bet that if you told groups of humans and drone-controlling AIs to find something interesting, the humans would be more variable and cover a wider range of interesting discoveries but often just give up on the task, while the AI would be more likely to find something but would cluster around certain discoveries and make fewer overall.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#180

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #168
throwaway0123_5 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only worth so much. Worth... quite a lot imo. First, in the slightly objective sense of "What is this place like in real life, under X conditions." But, more subjectively, watching a video of a glacier and imagining the wind/rain/cold doesn't even approach 5% of the intensity and awe of climbing up a mountain yourself to see a seemingly endless expanse of ice, struggling to stand steady because of the wind, shiveri…

There's so much natural wonder in the world in and around your home. It's not that the value of the grand canyon is low in an absolute sense, it's that in a relative sense the gap between "empty numb void" and "hiking at home (plus grand canyon videos)" is far far greater than the gap between "hiking at home (plus grand canyon videos)" and "actual grand canyon".

> in a relative sense the gap between "empty numb void" and "hiking at home (plus grand canyon videos)" is far far greater than the gap between "hiking at home (plus grand canyon videos)" and "actual grand canyon".

Have you ever been to a place which is really high up? You're above the trees and can not only see as far as the curvature of the earth allows you to, but are high enough that the curvature of the earth allows you to see for miles. The air is thinner so it's easier to take a breath yet harder to catch it. Your sweat evaporates faster but a breeze doesn't cool you as much. The sun is brighter, rises earlier and sets later. The wildlife makes unfamiliar sounds and sound itself is changed. Even the same food tastes different.

It's not something you can get by sitting at home and changing the background on your computer.

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