[ExI] External Reality

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 9:57 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:


> *>> In that case I would've been correct because "both the pictures and
>> the words came from the same external reality", and for an AI that only has
>> access to such pictures or words, human interaction IS external reality.*
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> *> Depends on the definition of "external reality".  I thought you
> meantexternal to everyone involved, including the humans.*


*We have a clear picture of what "external reality" is for an AI, it is us.
But we only have a blurry picture of what external reality is for us, as
Plato said all we can see is shadows of it.   *

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> *> The claim is that Chinese or Native American fundamental depictions
> ofthings like "cat" are massively different from Western depictions, sowhen
> AI keeps distilling to Western depictions, that's proof that saidother
> viewpoints are being excluded or not considered.That's the claim, anyway.
> From what I have seen of the "true"cultures, many times the underlying
> concepts aren't actually all thatdifferent, no matter how much they may
> feel different*


*There is some truth in that because all cultures do have something in
common; natural selection demands that human behavior, which is produced by
an internal mental model of the way things work, is compatible with the
external real world. What I find remarkable is that the way an AI that has
been exposed to nothing but words organizes things is remarkably similar to
the way an AI that has been exposed to words and pictures and videos and
even operated robots and drones organizes things. Some say AI is just
autocomplete on steroids, well maybe so, but it's starting to look like
that's enough to create a singularity. In other words, recent evidence
suggests that words are more powerful than most people thought. *

*John K Clark*
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