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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

#181

Post by RaftPeople »

estearum wrote: post #119
amalcon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think a bifurcation of cognition is necessary to explain this. You get both people who claim to always think with words (to the point where they don't understand how it's possible to think without one), and people who claim never to outside of linguistic tasks like writing (to the point where they need "internal monologue" explained to them). In my experience, if you get down to it -- most people will have ex…

I still think it's far more likely that people aren't describing the same thing. People are very, very bad at interpreting and experiencing their mind's inner workings. Then getting them to describe and compare those inner workings is, IMO, largely a fool's errand. I'll wait until someone develops an external validation of this to believe it. I say this as someone who pays a lot of attention to my mind's inner workin…

> I still think it's far more likely that people aren't describing the same thing. People are very, very bad at interpreting and experiencing their mind's inner workings.

Are you thinking that the term "internal monologue" is being interpreted too literally and that any system of organized thought, even one without the apparent usage of words, could still be considered an internal monologue?

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

#182

Post by bluefirebrand »

yieldcrv wrote: post #177
bluefirebrand wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's down voted because we didn't stochastic parrot ourselves into landing on the moon and building the internet and modern highways and skyscrapers Dismissing humanity that was is absurd

LLMs with reality interfaces (aka a body) can do those things, add world models and they'll do all those things better in our world, the first time and better than us. because the failures would have happened inside the world model

The point is that they cannot do that to themselves. They cannot decide to add world models and build exoskeletons and make that happen without our intervention

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

#183

Post by estearum »

RaftPeople wrote: post #181
estearum wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think it's far more likely that people aren't describing the same thing. People are very, very bad at interpreting and experiencing their mind's inner workings. Then getting them to describe and compare those inner workings is, IMO, largely a fool's errand. I'll wait until someone develops an external validation of this to believe it. I say this as someone who pays a lot of attention to my mind's inner workin…

> I still think it's far more likely that people aren't describing the same thing. People are very, very bad at interpreting and experiencing their mind's inner workings. Are you thinking that the term "internal monologue" is being interpreted too literally and that any system of organized thought, even one without the apparent usage of words, could still be considered an internal monologue?

I think that is one of many dimensions of ambiguity and therefore of confusion on this topic, yes.

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

#184

Post by lowbloodsugar »

Fraterkes wrote: post #141
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise, what reason do we have to assume that any given human is conscious?

I don’t know why I’m consciousness, but I know that I am. Other people are outwardly very similar to me, so I assume the same is broadly true inwardly. A rock is outwardly pretty similar to me; in that it exists in the world, has obvious physical boundaries, and is affected by the passage of time. But it is not so outwardly similar that I assume consciousness. An LLM is also outwardly similar to me, in that it can ex…

People talk to you, and you assume the are conscious. Computers talk to you, and you assume they are not conscious. The difference is that they aren't similar to you in certain metrics. This argument has been used before, in history, about people.

I find LLM frighteningly like many humans I meet: spouting "facts" that they have been taught. Like humans, when I ask an LLM to engage in critical thinking, the more advanced ones can.

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

#185

Post by [deleted] »

tsss wrote: post #33

No, I don't think so. Language is intimately intertwined with our understanding of the world. Many people make the mistake to think that languages are about the spelling or the sound or maybe the grammar. But in reality they are about how words are defined only on relation to each other. A symbol is defined by what it is not. This relationship between symbols structures how we think about the world and how we fantasi…

[deleted]

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

#186

Post by justbees »

estearum wrote: post #127
justbees wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mom has aphantasia and we were both shocked to discover it even exists. She saw something about it online and then started asking everyone in the family if they could picture an apple in their mind. We all said - yes of course, what are you talking about? And she said, "When you say the word apple, I think of the concept of an apple. It's juicy. It's crisp. It's red, etc, but I don't SEE an apple. I just know what…

Yeah this was my experience too as a near-complete aphantasic. Doing the apple test around the dinner table was enlightening, and it also made a whole lot of other things make sense through my life as well: I have virtually no concrete memories from a first-person point of view (I remember the fact that events happened, I do not remember subjectively being there ) It's unfortunately very insulting when someone says,…

That's so interesting to me! I actually have a terrible memory for events and names so my answer is almost always - sort of. So I can visualize an apple, but if you say - remember that time we went apple picking with Greg? I might only vaguely remember that, and not know who Greg is. But, if you showed me a picture of Greg I would probably say - oh that's that guy we went apple picking with. Why did we do that?

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

#187

Post by bunderbunder »

bryant wrote: post #165
bunderbunder wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are real questions about the veracity of some of these Helen Keller quotes, and reason to believe that a lot of it was really coming from Anne Sullivan. There are really three main observations that give pause. First, after she started working with Sullivan, Keller apparently developed a writing style and nuanced opinions reminiscent of a college-educated person virtually overnight. That’s pretty surprising for…

TL;DR: I think while Sullivan did add context, much of the context could've been "decompression" in an almost technical sense. This would've made Helen's exact words more palatable for the world to consume, and Sullivan could've been running the same intuitive algorithm in reverse to make the broader communication of the world accessible to Helen. This probably affects other disciplines as well, e.g business. Of cour…

Regardless of what happens when you play with an LLM, I hope you can see how there’s room for an interpreter to choose words in a way that’s technically consistent with what Keller really said, but somehow still manages to radically embellish upon it.

Which I think then warrants being cautious about reading too literally into a quote that is certainly evocative, but some of what it evokes are rather Victorian ideas about people with neurological disabilities that might be considered ableist from a modern perspective.

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

#188

Post by yieldcrv »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #182
yieldcrv wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs with reality interfaces (aka a body) can do those things, add world models and they'll do all those things better in our world, the first time and better than us. because the failures would have happened inside the world model

The point is that they cannot do that to themselves. They cannot decide to add world models and build exoskeletons and make that happen without our intervention

Stochastically parroting a moving goal post that wasn’t presented as a point at all earlier, imo

I can play devils advocate too. The first agents running LLMs and other models that get a capable exoskeleton can do the same for the other LLMs that will be tasked to execute the guidance, agentically

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

#189

Post by JKCalhoun »

Yeah, disagree with many of the points this article takes for granted.

Do I have a thought and the words follow? I'm not sure that is the case.

My sense is that I have a glimmer of an idea when I begin to speak—but not fully fleshed out as yet. As I start to assemble words and speak them, the idea begins to coalesce—the words providing something like a scaffolding for my thinking.

(Of course, I might not be the most reliable narrator: analyzing my own thoughts.)

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