[ExI] all we are is just llms

[Gadersd]

> Can we all read this article and make sense of it? It seems very relevant to the discussion. I love this idea of "semiotic physics". I talked to Umberto Eco when I was a student in Bologna about this exact idea even if it was very vague in my head at that time. Eco was very encouraging but I never was able to spend time on it. I think this could be a great tool to understand LLMs.

In some sense one can bridge semiotic physics with actual physics. Map all observations into some symbolic language and feed the observations into a model, a LLM perhaps. A good model will reflect the world that gave rise to the symbol sequence. In the extreme case using algorithmic information theory inference as the model, it is theoretically guaranteed to converge to the mathematical model of actual reality, assuming that physics is computable and of finite complexity. In practice however, we are more likely to get much better practical performance out of machine learning models such as LLMs rather than incomputable models such as algorithmic information theory inference.

> On Apr 25, 2023, at 6:40 PM, Giovanni Santostasi via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Ben and Jason,
> Can we all read this article and make sense of it? It seems very relevant to the discussion. I love this idea of "semiotic physics". I talked to Umberto Eco when I was a student in Bologna about this exact idea even if it was very vague in my head at that time. Eco was very encouraging but I never was able to spend time on it. I think this could be a great tool to understand LLMs.
> 
> https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TTn6vTcZ3szBctvgb/simulators-seminar-sequence-2-semiotic-physics-revamped?fbclid=IwAR3AtV49lmoyF7F8imCwiN0XCdKJ84LIfX8ZeUyuWRGiDBM1qxupX-Lwweo <https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TTn6vTcZ3szBctvgb/simulators-seminar-sequence-2-semiotic-physics-revamped?fbclid=IwAR3AtV49lmoyF7F8imCwiN0XCdKJ84LIfX8ZeUyuWRGiDBM1qxupX-Lwweo>
> 
> Giovanni  
> 
> On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 1:06 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>> wrote:
> On 25/04/2023 14:06, spike wrote:
> > Cool thx Ben.  I had never thought of it that way, but it is a cause 
> > for hope.  If we find enough ways a brain is like a computer, it 
> > suggests a mind can (in theory) exist in a computer, which is 
> > something I have long believed and hoped is true.  If thought is 
> > substrate dependent on biology, we are all sunk in the long run.
> 
> Thought cannot be dependent on biology. This is something I've thought 
> about, and done research on, for a long time, and I'm completely 
> convinced. It's logically impossible. If it's true, then all of our 
> science and logic is wrong.
> 
> What we call 'a computer' is open to interpretation, and it may well be 
> that minds (human-equivalent and above) can't be implemented on the 
> types of computer we have now (we already know that simpler minds can 
> be). But that doesn't destroy the substrate indifference argument (I 
> never liked the term 'substrate independent', because it conjures up the 
> concept of a mind that has no substrate. Substrate indifferent is more 
> accurate, imo (and yes, even that is not good enough, because the 
> substrate must be capable of supporting a mind, and not all will be (we 
> just need to find the right ones. (and OMD, I'm turning into a spikeian 
> bracket nester!!)))).
> 
> Ben
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