[FRIAM] Epistemic Holography

Wed May 21 01:38:48 EDT 2025

I agree with your view that what matters is the input and output — what
goes in and what comes out. From that perspective, I align with most
experts in AI who acknowledge that while the progress is remarkable,
there's still a qualitative gap between human and AI outputs when compared
at the highest levels. Even under this "modified Turing test" lens, top
humans still maintain the edge. (Though I say this with affection, I
wouldn't place my bets on some of the Afrikaners featured on recent
American talk shows — so no, in my opinion, not all humans qualify.)

This naturally leads to the million-dollar question: if — and if so, when —
AI will surpass the very best humans across all scientific domains. Sam
Altman seems to suggest that we may soon be able to rent access to a
PhD-level AI for as little as $10,000 to $20,000. Although that will
obviously be a game-changer, I would still make the bar higher than that.
I'm struggling a bit to define this properly, so although it's not a
definition, for now I'll stick to I'll know it when I see it.

On Wed, 21 May 2025 at 00:40, glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, the reason I'm lumping the Markov blanket (MB) with the holographic
> principle (HP) is because in either case the innards are occult. This veers
> quite a bit from Nosta's Whole in Every Part or "resolution" rhetoric. But
> it hints at the hairball mysteriousness of whatever it is the LLM is doing
> in those innards and focuses on its output (and, by extension, its input).
> Whereas the analogy between a light hologram and a black hole breaks down
> is that the hologram's 3D pattern is hallucinatory. And even if we don't
> know what's inside a black hole, few people would think the innards of
> black holes just don't exist at all in the same way the 3D shapes of
> holograms "don't exist". There's *enough* information on the sphere, or in
> the 2D surface. That's what makes it holographic.
>
> And from a behaviorist perspective, we can say the same thing about a MB.
> Maybe the state of the innards are somewhat occluded. But through
> manipulation of the outer surface, we can build a good *enough* model of
> the innards.
>
>  From this perspective, all this hand wringing about whether an LLM is
> Truly intelligent, or Truly creative, or Truly whatever, is metaphysical
> hooey. What matters is what goes in and what comes out ... similar to
> holograms, MBs, and the surface of a black hole.
>
>
> On 5/20/25 12:21 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> > “You can’t see the forest for the trees.”
> >
> > My interpretation of the article, without really focussing on the
> details of holograms really spoke to me.
> >
> > The author makes three points that I find helpful:
> >
> > LLMs don’t just reflect things—they rebuild meaning from patterns, more
> like a hologram than a mirror.
> >
> > Just because they sound smooth and fluent doesn’t mean they truly
> understand.
> >
> > They copy the shape of knowledge, not its substance.
> >
> > I don’t take these ideas too literally, but the metaphors help. LLMs
> seem to do more than just repeat facts. Sometimes, their answers feel like
> they see the bigger picture—even if they’re not truly thinking.
> >
> > That’s where I find the hologram metaphor useful. Unlike a mirror, which
> just shows what’s in front of it, a hologram builds an image from many
> angles. LLMs don’t just give us back what we said—they sometimes pull
> together patterns we didn’t notice ourselves.
> >
> > But then of course, Google DeepMind claims that their AI does create new
> knowledge (
> https://www.wired.com/story/google-deepminds-ai-agent-dreams-up-algorithms-beyond-human-expertise/
> <
> https://www.wired.com/story/google-deepminds-ai-agent-dreams-up-algorithms-beyond-human-expertise/>),
> but, I don't get too excited about that - their claim of "new knowledge" is
> very limited and based on a framework already set by humans.
> >
> > On Tue, 20 May 2025 at 20:39, steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com <mailto:
> sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:
> >
> >
> >     On 5/20/25 10:19 AM, glen wrote:
> >      > I was confused by your post. But that resolved after reading the
> article.
> >
> >      > If we think of Markov blankets and the holographic principle,
> then the
> >      > analogy to a hologram makes a bit more sense.
> >
> >     This was outside my consideration when I read it, but I definitely
> >     appreciate the gesture toward Markov blankets.   I've had an
> intuition
> >     that in some sense the markov Blanket of an "entity" IS the entity
> for
> >     the purposes of other entities interacting with it... a bit like the
> >     software contract/interface design business?
> >
> >     I'm still pretty perplexed by the cosmological/physics "holographic
> >     principle"...   just not enough depth or focus applied on my end
> quite
> >     yet?  Or as you might frame it "i'm not smart enough".
> >
>
>
> --
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