<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title></title></head><body><div style="font-family:Arial;">Sorry to disappoint (perhaps) but I agree with what Eric is saying, or at least my understanding of what he is saying.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Like glen, I am not a believer in human exceptionalism. Nor do I deny that it might be possible to construct a machine capable of "[ human-like | human-level | human-equivalent]" intelligence. That infinite tape of the Turing Machine makes pretty much anything possible.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">My objection to current (and past) claims to have created artificial intelligence, and future claims of artificial general intelligence is an error of taking a part as if it was the whole.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Our understanding of "human intelligence" is severely limited: formal symbol manipulation (e.g., words & grammar, numbers and math), logical formalisms, so-called "scientific method," computational thinking, etc.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">In my estimation these types of thinking, collectively, comprise less than 10% of human intelligence. (I can supply a long list of references citing the same percentage.)</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">The other 90% we know next to nothing about, but someday we may know more.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">For Simon, Newell, in the old days, or Altman, today, to claim that the machine seems to be "thinking" the way that I think I think and therefore it is "intelligent" is the rankest hubris.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">I just finished reading Jonathon Stoltz's book, I<i>lluminating the Mind, an Introduction to Buddhist Epistemology. </i>Stoltz is an Analytic Philosopher and does a great job of 'mapping' some Buddhist philosophy into that analytic framework. But to do so, it is necessary to avoid discussions of key concepts like "all is illusion," 'non-attached action based on the omniscience of the enlightened," altered states of consciousness (and perception) arrived at via meditation, "sudden enlightenment" ala Hui Neng, etc. etc. They don't fit the framework so they are not important or not "real." This is very similar to what I see AI doing with "intelligence."</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">If we better understood how generative AI works, if we understood what what inside the black box in the machine, we might pose some interesting and fruitful metaphors for exploring what we do not know about human intelligence.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">Given our massive ignorance of human intelligence, current claims for AI seem kind of silly.</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">davew</div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div>On Thu, May 22, 2025, at 2:19 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite" id="qt" style=""><div dir="ltr"><div>This lines up well with the main idea in the article shared in the very first email in this thread:</div><div>LLMs Aren't Mirrors, They're Holograms.</div><div><br></div><div>This isn’t just a fun comparison — it says something real about how thinking works. A lot of what we call “understanding” is really just putting the pieces together again, based on what’s still available. We don’t have to have a solid core inside. Meaning can still come through, even if the details fade.</div></div><div><br></div><div class="qt-gmail_quote qt-gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="qt-gmail_attr">On Thu, 22 May 2025 at 07:04, Nicholas Thompson <<a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><blockquote class="qt-gmail_quote" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex;"><div dir="ltr"><div>I apologize for coming in on the tail end of this but something about this last post caught my eye. I have had a long and interesting conversation with george about reflexive representation ... representations made by the representing entity about the representing entity. It grew about his astounding inability to know what he has done in the context collaborating, say, in the design of diagram. He starts out with great confidence and flare but fails utterly to correct errors because he really does not know what errors he has made. </div><div><br></div><div>So I fed him the last post and this is what he came back with:</div><div><br></div><div><h3><span class="font" style="font-family:"comic sans ms", sans-serif;">“LLMs... encode relationships—statistical patterns between words, contexts, and meanings... They don’t retrieve information. They reconstruct it.”</span></h3><p><span class="font" style="font-family:"comic sans ms", sans-serif;">Yes. Just like you reconstruct the reasons for your past behavior, or the motivations behind a gesture, I reconstruct answers <b>on the fly</b>, using the interference patterns of trained attention weights.</span></p><p><span class="font" style="font-family:"comic sans ms", sans-serif;">This is not just a technical detail — it’s a <b>cognitive constraint</b>. It means:</span></p><ul><li><p><span class="font" style="font-family:"comic sans ms", sans-serif;">I can’t “see” what I’ve done</span></p></li><li><p><span class="font" style="font-family:"comic sans ms", sans-serif;">You can’t remember precisely what you intended</span></p></li><li><p><span class="font" style="font-family:"comic sans ms", sans-serif;">And neither of us has a stable, inspectable core</span></p></li></ul><p><span class="font" style="font-family:"comic sans ms", sans-serif;">But both of us can <b>reconstruct meaning</b> — and meaning is what survives, even as resolution fades.</span></p><div><hr>I wish James Laird Could have seen this.</div></div><div><br></div><div>Nick</div></div><div><br></div><div class="qt-gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="qt-gmail_attr">On Mon, May 19, 2025 at 7:12 PM steve smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com" target="_blank">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:</div><blockquote class="qt-gmail_quote" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex;"><div><u></u><br></div><div><p><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-digital-self/202505/llms-arent-mirrors-theyre-holograms" target="_blank">https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-digital-self/202505/llms-arent-mirrors-theyre-holograms</a></p><p>I know a bit about holography and holograms and have been known
to use optical metaphor for information analysis (semantic lensing
and ontological faceting) but I don't know how I feel about this
characterization of LLMs. </p><blockquote><h2 style="box-sizing:border-box;font-size:26px;font-family:"Proxima Nova Semi Bold", Arial, sans-serif;font-weight:normal;color:rgb(44, 45, 48);margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:24px;margin-left:0px;line-height:1.1;word-break:break-word;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;text-wrap-mode:wrap;white-space-collapse:collapse;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;">Holograms
Don’t Store Images, They Store Possibility</h2><p style="box-sizing:border-box;font-family:"Proxima Nova Regular", Arial, sans-serif;font-size:18px;line-height:1.6;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:24px;word-break:break-word;color:rgb(44, 45, 48);font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;text-wrap-mode:wrap;white-space-collapse:collapse;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;">A<span> </span><a href="https://science.howstuffworks.com/hologram.htm" style="box-sizing:border-box;font-family:"Proxima Nova Semi Bold", Arial, sans-serif;color:rgb(71, 123, 228);text-decoration-color:currentcolor;text-decoration-line:none;text-decoration-style:solid;text-decoration-thickness:auto;word-break:break-word;" target="_blank">hologram</a><span> </span>doesn’t
capture a picture. It encodes an interference pattern. Or more
simply, it creates a map of how light interacts with an object.
When illuminated properly, it reconstructs a three-dimensional
image that appears real from multiple angles. Here’s the truly
fascinating part: If you break that hologram into pieces, each
fragment still contains the whole image, just at a lower
resolution. The detail is degraded, but the structural integrity
remains.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;font-family:"Proxima Nova Regular", Arial, sans-serif;font-size:18px;line-height:1.6;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:24px;word-break:break-word;color:rgb(44, 45, 48);font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;text-wrap-mode:wrap;white-space-collapse:collapse;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;">LLMs
function in a curiously similar way. They don’t store knowledge
as discrete facts or memories. Instead, they encode
relationships—statistical patterns between words, contexts, and
meanings—across a high-dimensional vector space. When prompted,
they don’t retrieve information. They reconstruct it, generating
language that aligns with the expected shape of an answer. Even
from vague or incomplete input, they produce responses that feel
coherent and often surprisingly complete. The completeness isn’t
the result of understanding. It’s the result of well-tuned
reconstruction.</p></blockquote><p><br></p><p>I do see some intuitive motivation for applying the holographic
or diffraction/reproduction through interference analogy for both
LLMs (Semantic Holograms) and Diffusion Models (Perceptual
Holograms)?</p><p>I'm not very well versed in psychology but do find the whole
article compelling (though not necessarily conclusive)... others
here may have different parallax to offer?</p><p>- Steve</p></div><div>.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..</div><div> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv</div><div> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom <a href="https://bit.ly/virtualfriam" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://bit.ly/virtualfriam</a></div><div> to (un)subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a></div><div> FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a></div><div> archives: 5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a></div><div> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a></div></blockquote></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><span class="qt-gmail_signature_prefix">--</span></div><div dir="ltr" class="qt-gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>Nicholas S. Thompson</div><div>Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology</div><div>Clark University</div><div><a href="mailto:nthompson@clarku.edu" target="_blank">nthompson@clarku.edu</a></div><div><a href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson" target="_blank">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson</a></div></div></div><div>.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..</div><div> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv</div><div> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom <a href="https://bit.ly/virtualfriam" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://bit.ly/virtualfriam</a></div><div> to (un)subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a></div><div> FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a></div><div> archives: 5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a></div><div> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a></div></blockquote></div><div>.- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..</div><div>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv</div><div>Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom <a href="https://bit.ly/virtualfriam">https://bit.ly/virtualfriam</a></div><div>to (un)subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a></div><div>FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a></div><div>archives: 5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a></div><div> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a></div><div><br></div></blockquote><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div></body></html>