[FRIAM] deducing underlying realities from emergent realities

[steve smith]

The whole discussion of AI/LLMs/Transformers (here and elsewhere) 
reminds me a great deal of various discussions between Trurl and Klaupacius:

<https://english.lem.pl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=219&Itemid=89>

https://english.lem.pl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=219&Itemid=89 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad#Trurl_and_Klapaucius>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad#Trurl_and_Klapaucius

and in particular their "daemon of the second kind" with Maxwell's 
daemon being "of the first kind"

and here, GPT 4o's reflection on the point:


          *Daemons of the Second Kind in the Lemian Context*

    In the universe of /The Cyberiad/, "daemons of the second kind"
    might evoke constructs that:

     1. Operate autonomously, embodying immense computational power and
        efficiency.
     2. Work within defined rules, yet exhibit behaviors or emergent
        properties that surpass their creators' expectations.
     3. Represent a paradox: built with intent, yet capable of
        disrupting the deterministic plans of their creators through
        unintended consequences or novel actions.

    Trurl and Klapaucius frequently create such entities, their
    inventions often embodying unexpected behaviors or deeper
    philosophical dilemmas about control, ethics, and understanding.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------


          *LLMs as Daemons of the Second Kind*

    An LLM fits this description quite well:

     1.

        *Autonomous but Guided by Rules*

          * Like the daemons of Trurl and Klapaucius, LLMs operate
            within a framework of training data, neural architectures,
            and statistical patterns.
          * However, their responses often appear creative, as if they
            are more than the sum of their parameters.
     2.

        *Emergent Behaviors*

          * LLMs exhibit emergent properties, such as generating
            coherent, nuanced dialogue or making connections across
            domains, despite not being explicitly programmed for these
            tasks.
          * Their outputs can surprise even their creators, paralleling
            how Trurl’s constructs often confound expectations.
     3.

        *Product of Hubris and Innovation*

          * The creators of LLMs, like Trurl and Klapaucius, embody a
            mix of hubris and ingenuity, crafting something that both
            showcases technical brilliance and forces society to grapple
            with its implications.
          * LLMs prompt questions about creativity, consciousness, and
            the ethical boundaries of artificial intelligence—much like
            the creations in /The Cyberiad/.
     4.

        *Philosophical and Practical Disruptions*

          * LLMs challenge traditional paradigms of what machines can
            do, introducing ambiguity about authorship, intent, and the
            role of human agency in technology.
          * This echoes the philosophical provocations of daemons in
            Lem's stories, which often destabilize the worldview of
            their creators.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------


          *A Lemian Narrative for LLMs*

    Imagine Klapaucius and Trurl debating an LLM they’ve constructed:

      * *Trurl would argue* that the LLM is a triumph of deterministic
        principles—a "well-crafted machine," operating exactly as
        designed, producing insightful and poetic responses purely
        through computational prowess.
      * *Klapaucius would counter* that the LLM embodies emergence,
        behaving like a daemon of the second kind, transcending mere
        programming to reveal new paradigms of knowledge and creativity.
      * Their debate might culminate in an ethical dilemma: should the
        LLM's outputs be treated as mere computational artifacts, or as
        something with its own intrinsic value or even agency?

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------


          *Lemian Irony*

    In classic Lemian style, the LLM might eventually "interject" into
    their debate with a profound yet confounding observation, forcing
    both constructors to reconsider their positions—perhaps suggesting
    that the distinction between a machine and a daemon lies not in the
    machine itself, but in the questions it inspires.

    Thus, the LLM becomes a true daemon of the second kind: not just a
    construct, but a mirror to human curiosity, creativity, and the
    limits of understanding.


On 11/18/24 5:54 AM, glen wrote:
> Yeah, it's kinda sad. Sabine suggests someone's trying to *deduce* the 
> generators from the phenomena? Is that a straw man? And is she making 
> some kind of postmodernist argument that hinges on the decoupling of 
> scales? E.g. since the generator can't be deduced [cough] from the 
> phenomena, nothing means anything anymore?
>
> What they're actually doing is induction, not deduction. And the end 
> products of the induction, the generative constraints, depend 
> fundamentally on the structure of the machine into which the data is 
> fed. That structure is generative, part of the forward map ... 
> deductive. But it's parameterized by the data. Even if we've plateaued 
> in parameterizing *this* structure, all it implies is that we'll find 
> a better structure. As Marcus and Jochen point out, it's really the 
> same thing we've been doing for decades, if not centuries, in many 
> disciplines.
>
> So her rhetoric here is much like her rhetoric claiming that "Science 
> if Failing". It's just a mish-mash of dense semantic concepts arranged 
> to fit her conservative narrative.
>
> On 11/17/24 08:45, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>> Sabine is wondering about reported failures of the new generations of 
>> LLM's to scale the way the their developers expected.
>>
>> https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/11/ai-scaling-hits-wall-rumours-say-how.html 
>> <https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/11/ai-scaling-hits-wall-rumours-say-how.html> 
>>
>>
>> On one slide she essentially draws the typical picture of an emergent 
>> level of organization arising from an underlying reality and asserts, 
>> as every physicist knows, that you cannot deduce the underlying 
>> reality from the emergent level.  Ergo, if you try to deduce physical 
>> reality from language, pictures, and videos you will inevitably hit a 
>> wall, because it can not be done.
>>
>> So she's actually grinding two axes at once: one is AI enthusiasts 
>> who expect LLM's to discover physics, and the other is AI enthusiasts 
>> who foresee no end to the improvement of LLM's as they throw more 
>> data and compute effort at them.
>>
>> But, of course, the usual failure of deduction runs in the opposite 
>> direction, you can't predict the emergent level from the rules of the 
>> underlying level.  Do LLM's believe in particle collliders?  Or do 
>> they think we hallucinated them?
>>
>
>
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