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Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards

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Re: Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards

#151

Post by avensec »

I find the comment section interesting. There is so much discussion about the dichotomy of consciousness, in support and opposition as discussed by the author. Some of the "rights" and "wrongs" feel way more combative than, simply noticing where the author is currently at.

I see the temporal disconnected strong here. The author is young-ish, and appears to be exploring ideas of many that have come before him. And, that he'll likely continue to explore on his journey. You can see his thoughts and see echos of long debated thoughts about consciousness, language, meaning, bottom-Up/top-down processing, not being our thoughts, etc..

Thanks to those who are leaving their knowledge, book references, quotes, and etc., to help myself and others who are somewhere along the continuum of understanding ourselves more thoroughly!

Re: Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards

#152

Post by rolph »

devmor wrote: post #58
estearum wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's far more likely that people don't agree on what it means to "have an internal monologue" than that people actually bifurcate that dramatically on cognition. Surely there are some people with an actual difference from baseline, but I don't think it's the near-equal split that seems to appear when you just ask people about internal monologue This is in contrast with aphantasia (complete lack of mental imagery)…

This is in the same vein to what I wanted to say here as well - I find it very likely that people with no internal monologue are executing similar mental processes, just without them being so “front and center” in the mind.

Metacognition

https://oecs.mit.edu/pub/zjuzickv

not everyone is aware of the "methodology", they just think it through, some however have an executive layer to cognition vs reflex.

imnot sure enough to form an opinion quite yet but thinking about thinking, modifying the methods of cognition, may be a learned skill, perhaps with a developmental window.

a comparison between extroverts and introverts [1] for perceived modality of cognition might be interesting.

it may very well be that a difference in neural development is the cause of this disparity.

1] this is about focus on internal conceptualization vs external perceptualization.

myself, i think in terms of a mono/dialogue if i am preparing to disseminate.

if i am thinking for my own benefit i percieve it as idetic imagery and run thought experiments to qualify for IRL candidacy.

Re: Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards

#153

Post by triprjt »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #68

This person is just making stuff up that feels true to them. Caveat lector. There are reams of grown up scientific research and philosophy on the relationship between language, thought, neurobiology, and inference. It's nice to hear how one person feels they think, but there is no weight to it if they don't know page one of the syllabus.

would second you on this.

Re: Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards

#154

Post by pixl97 »

Festro wrote: post #34

"At its core, it is a big pile of words that predicts the next word, using some maths the computers figured out." "An LLM predicts the next word based on all the words before it. That is the whole story. There is no idea sitting underneath. The words are everything." This is just flat out wrong. Words are used as training data, to build a system of vector embeddings. The LLM contains no words. That was the training d…

Heck, they even ignore the studies that show that conscious thought is a lagging indicator of 'thinking'. Much like you don't tell your heart to beat or your stomach to digest there is a fair amount of neural activity that occurs either before you're aware of it, or outside of your consciousness at all.

With any articles like this I take any claims with a grain of salt. We don't have the needed information to make any bold claims on what consciousness is other than a bunch of electrical signals we can see occur in the brain.

Re: Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards

#155

Post by vitamark »

saltcured wrote: post #150
vitamark wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I can't say for the general population, but for me there's just nothing unless I actively try to think of words, sentences and other things. One moment you don't have an idea and the next you do, like a state switch. I really feel like humans argue too much about how computer programs think and at the same time too little about how humans think. The topic is criminally underresearched and the existing research…

You make it sound like there are no ideas until words arrive? For me, my normal ground state is full of thinking that is not linguistic. My mode switch is more like having to turn on the whole language subsystem and pay attention to it, often to the detriment of my native concentration. When I do think with words, it is usually something I am manipulating with a purpose. It is not the thoughts themselves. I have a th…

No, I actually say that there are no words unless I think of them. Ideas appear out of nowhere and are made of nothing, like they just are integral part of my mind state

Re: Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards

#156

Post by waffletower »

"An LLM predicts the next word based on all the words before it. That is the whole story. There is no idea sitting underneath." At most, and I will argue for less, that is half the story. This egregious over-simplification doesn't account for training and the massive dimensional space of thought it forms. Given that frontier models likely have trillions of parameters, the combinatorial space of ideas within approaches the infinite -- hardly zero.

Re: Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards

#157

Post by idiotsecant »

infinite_spin wrote: post #136
estearum wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's far more likely that people don't agree on what it means to "have an internal monologue" than that people actually bifurcate that dramatically on cognition. Surely there are some people with an actual difference from baseline, but I don't think it's the near-equal split that seems to appear when you just ask people about internal monologue This is in contrast with aphantasia (complete lack of mental imagery)…

I'm very reluctant to believe people when they say they don't have an internal monologue. Studies on the matter all appear to rely on self-reported data, not objective measurements. It's been shown that electromyography can be used to measure myoelectric signals produced when a person subvocalizes their speech (i.e. an inner monologue). It works well enough to reconstruct and synthesize that speech. So we could test…

I'm not sure what you think all these people have to gain from tricking you. I have no internal monologue. None whatsoever. If I have something like an internal monologue I don't have any conscious access to it at all. When I want to think through a spatial type problem, I can visualize shapes, images, rotations, relationships, etc but it has no verbal component. If I want to think through a text or verbal heavy task, like perhaps planning some code, I type it out. I do have intrusive thoughts but they are in the form of memories of a thing that happened or simulations of something that could happen, I guess. I most surely do not have an internal narrator or anything that approaches any kind of inner verbal life.

Re: Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards

#158

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

Fraterkes wrote: post #146
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or that anything at all is not conscious?

Because we are, in our life, not always conscious.

When you say "we" you're referring to something besides our minds?

Because sure, when we get knocked out, we're out. That's not an observation, it's a tautology. But there's nothing indicating that whatever remains doesn't have its own kind of consciousness.

Re: Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards

#159

Post by mjd »

michael1999 wrote: post #10

It is not all obvious that consciousness precedes language. Hellen Keller provides a vivid description of her pre-verbal mental state as something less than reflective conscious. > Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or…

In “The Origin of Consciousness” Julian James argues that human consciousness substantially predates language and even writing.

For example he contrasts the language in the Iliad (which he claims was written before the development of consciousness) and the Odyssey (which came after).

Re: Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards

#160

Post by DevarshRanpara »

avensec wrote: post #151

I find the comment section interesting. There is so much discussion about the dichotomy of consciousness, in support and opposition as discussed by the author. Some of the "rights" and "wrongs" feel way more combative than, simply noticing where the author is currently at. I see the temporal disconnected strong here. The author is young-ish, and appears to be exploring ideas of many that have come before him. And, th…

You are 100% right, I am still exploring (and also learning from all these comments). I have just started to explore these things now. Thank you for understanding author's mindset.
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