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

steve smith sasmyth at swcp.com
Mon Jan 27 21:55:10 EST 2025 

On 1/27/25 4:11 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> 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.
ORCH-OR ?
>
> -----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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