[FRIAM] "I hope I'm wrong. But that text reads like it was generated by an LLM"

Mon Jan 27 18:11:35 EST 2025

One could suppose that information is stored in frequency domain as a quantum state.  The same type of quantum state could be represented on a digital computer.   Or one could use Fourier Neural Operators to do machine learning in the frequency domain on a digital memory system.    These are just conveniences for modeling convenience, for performance and/or energy efficiency.    Ordinary digital neural nets (and especially big ones like LLMs) already distribute information holographically, metaphorically speaking.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2025 2:52 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "I hope I'm wrong. But that text reads like it was generated by an LLM"

using an alternative metaphor as a starting point does not mandate using an alternative metaphysics. Pribram's holographic metaphor involves matter, as do all of the other theories of mind of which I am aware. Nevertheless, the models of "computation" that arise in such theories are quite different, and, to me, pretty interesting.

davew

On Mon, Jan 27, 2025, at 1:56 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> It's fine if people want to imagine other metaphysics for what goes on 
> with consciousness, but it is a pointless violation of Occam's razor 
> until they show that consciousness can do things that matter cannot.
> As LLMs begin to surpass human intelligence, there's really no leg for 
> them to stand on, other than to appeal to faith and chauvinism.    
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Santafe
> Sent: Monday, January 27, 2025 11:40 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] "I hope I'm wrong. But that text reads like it 
> was generated by an LLM"
>
>
>> On Jan 27, 2025, at 10:35, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Eric writes:
>> 
>> "He is arguing against the computation framing of consciousness.  Searle’s device is to say that my brain is like my stomach, and that the computation framing doesn’t do its complexity justice."
>> 
>> Can say the same thing about quantum mechanics.   
>
> It’s an interesting response, because answering it requires deciding 
> what role a law has in our understanding of the world.
>
> It happens (as these accidents do) that I was at a conference maybe 3 
> months ago with at least one philosopher who writes on this, so I know 
> it is a field.  (Actually, got a dosing from other sources over the 
> weekend, so I know more than that….)
>
> Somehow, each thing we create as a formalism is bounded.  I don’t want 
> to say finite in its instantiations, because those could be infinite 
> in various cardinalities.  But finite in the premises that generate it 
> as a formal system.  QM as much as anything else.
>
> So we say that the best guess right now is that there is no type of 
> matter (and should be no type of spacetime) that isn’t borne on by, or 
> limited by the constraints of, the generating premises of QM.  We 
> would like laws to have universality of that kind, and if they don’t, 
> we look for ways to improve them to others that will get closer.
>
> But if we think “the universe” refers to something about which there 
> could be indefinitely much to be known or understood, and somehow a 
> much bigger infinity than that of any formalisms that, once we create 
> them, are just more “things in the world”, so just parts of that 
> universe.  It doesn’t seem like we want to say there is a containment 
> relation whereby the one finite thing “contains” everything — in the 
> sense of “everything there is that makes up an understanding”.
>
> All the ways I know to imagine this, since it refers to things I don’t 
> know yet, are metaphors.  I can think about “projections” in the sense 
> of dimension reduction, and a universe-of-everything that can have 
> infinitely many dimensions projected out of it, with the remainder 
> being _exactly_ the premises of QM.  Others seem to like to think of 
> it in some kind of set-containment metaphor, where QM “handles” some 
> “subset of phenomena” “in” the universe.  (The latter doesn’t appeal 
> to me as much.)
>
> Does the “projection” metaphor of how QM constrains all else that we 
> will say about matter seem equally apt, for what one or another 
> computational model says about what-all goes on in heads (and where 
> relevant, bodies)?  Seems mismatched.  The set-containment metaphor 
> seems better for computation-like events in heads.
>
> At the end, though, they are all metaphors, pretty clearly adopted out 
> of desperation to have some mental image.  If we let go of the mental 
> image, then what we seem to be left with is just a list of cases.  
> Here is QM; there is geometry; this is some algebra; here’s a formal 
> declaration of computability; and here are various hooks and 
> interfaces at which they seem to make some kind of contact with one 
> another that we also write down explicitly.  Maybe that’s all there 
> is; or all that we have any justification to speak as if there is.  
> Poor FRIAM: so far from DaveW, so close to Nick.
>
> Dunno.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
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