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Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces (2025)

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201–210 of 296 posts

Re: Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces (2025)

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> conscious The problem with that term is that it is hardly meaningful. Why would you use it? It does not add much, and no clarity, to what it is attributed to.

And on the flip side if it hardly means anything why would you be so concerned when it’s uttered? Just ignore it

> why would you be so concerned when it’s uttered

When I am told "beware of the xyphucymmon", I do beware, though not of the xyphucymmon.

Re: Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces (2025)

#202
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is anthropomorphizing a real problem? Yes. Actual real people believe that LLMs are actual, thinking, intelligences, perhaps even with consciousness. Your bit with MySQL is harmless because it's obvious that a database isn't a sentient lifeform. But LLMs can look like they're the real deal, and people believe it is. Using terminology like "thinking" and "reasoning" to describe what they do only reinforces this. Hav…

> Actual real people believe The problem with rapists is mental development, not "those sexy tables and chairs and pots and everything". It's not that if people do not understand metaphors we should stop using them. It 's not that if people faint when they hear words we should stop using them. It is not that the free unduly associations in a large shared by many "collective subconscious" should hinder us...

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Re: Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces (2025)

#203
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is terrifying is the propensity of people hoping for a mechanical slave to do everything possible to avoid touching on the possibility for being-ness of the technology they are desperately hoping will work as a basis for that implementation.

Cyberpsychosis. A next token predictor is not a being. Stop posting these things. Stop thinking these things.

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Re: Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces (2025)

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a working definition of "conscious"?

We do have entry and exit conditions. We can disrupt it and study the dynamics of the disruption. We have a good sense of the many mechanisms at play that undergird it. What we lack is a full map of the exact process from sensation to consciousness across all modalities. And I’m afraid when it comes to interception, we can’t unless we observe every one of the 36 trillion or so cells in a human body, as well as the 36…

None of this is an explanation of what consciousness is, either physically, logically or philosophically. (Maybe some physically)

Fundamentally it comes down to an objective decision about what that is. If you say it is “feelings” based on inputs and feedback mechanisms from the brain, then we can do the philosophical discussion around that.

“If the claim is that consciousness is limited to those with a specific type of cell behaving in a given way” thats just a coping mechanism hoping to use a mechanical definition to shield you from the reality that eventually all of these inputs, outputs and feedback mechanisms can be reliably reproduced in a different form.

Re: Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces (2025)

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> conscious The problem with that term is that it is hardly meaningful. Why would you use it? It does not add much, and no clarity, to what it is attributed to.

And on the flip side if it hardly means anything why would you be so concerned when it’s uttered? Just ignore it

[dead]

Re: Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces (2025)

#206
post #147
post #28

Is anthropomorphizing a real problem? From what I know, none of the serious LLM researchers believe it has anything to do with human reasoning, apart from Anthropic with their click-baity terminology like "LLM biology". It's just a metaphor. "Reasoning tokens" is simpler to say than "learned prompt augmentation tokens". I used to (and still do) anthropomorphize things long before LLMs, and I've seen my colleagues do…

> Is anthropomorphizing a real problem? Yes. Actual real people believe that LLMs are actual, thinking, intelligences, perhaps even with consciousness. Your bit with MySQL is harmless because it's obvious that a database isn't a sentient lifeform. But LLMs can look like they're the real deal, and people believe it is. Using terminology like "thinking" and "reasoning" to describe what they do only reinforces this. Hav…

> Yes. Actual real people believe that LLMs are actual, thinking, intelligences, perhaps even with consciousness.

It's starkly ironic that the species that finds it easy to think (or to be conditioned by market forces to accept) that a computer is smart/introspective/sentient is the same species that will dehumanise actual living human beings because of differences in appearance, social status, or political affiliation.

Re: Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces (2025)

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on the flip side if it hardly means anything why would you be so concerned when it’s uttered? Just ignore it

> why would you be so concerned when it’s uttered When I am told "beware of the xyphucymmon", I do beware, though not of the xyphucymmon .

And this means nothing, yet I’m not complaining endlessly about it on social media, or harassing my coworkers about it. Curious

Re: Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces (2025)

#208
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that your colossal overreaction to a small invitation to discuss a somewhat interesting hypothetical is what warrants medical attention

I've been going through comment revisions here, and none of them really cut it, but all of them wasted time. But regardless, you're using this as an insult. I did not. There is no debate to be had here. Just a bad faith shouting match

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Re: Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces (2025)

#209
post #147
post #28

Is anthropomorphizing a real problem? From what I know, none of the serious LLM researchers believe it has anything to do with human reasoning, apart from Anthropic with their click-baity terminology like "LLM biology". It's just a metaphor. "Reasoning tokens" is simpler to say than "learned prompt augmentation tokens". I used to (and still do) anthropomorphize things long before LLMs, and I've seen my colleagues do…

> Is anthropomorphizing a real problem? Yes. Actual real people believe that LLMs are actual, thinking, intelligences, perhaps even with consciousness. Your bit with MySQL is harmless because it's obvious that a database isn't a sentient lifeform. But LLMs can look like they're the real deal, and people believe it is. Using terminology like "thinking" and "reasoning" to describe what they do only reinforces this. Hav…

I dunno, sometimes I encounter humans who lack actual, thinking, intelligence, perhaps even consciousness. I still treat them like people.

Re: Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces (2025)

#210
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice Unthinkable Topic you have there.

As I said, context. In the right space with real people, worthy of a debate. On HN? No. Not like this. Not here. Not without filtering the participants for real human beings.

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