[ExI] LLM's cannot be concious

[sjatkins]

I remember looking up a word I was uncertain of in dictionaries in my youth only to have it defined in terms of some words I wasn't sure of the meaning of which on lookup led me in a hop or three back to the word I started with.  So color me skeptical.  Today it seems even worse as many words are defined in terms of how they are currently used.  I always found that unsatisfying, especially to settle some tedious disagreement about whether a word was used correctly or mean what the user thought it did. 


------- Original Message -------
On Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023 at 6:47 PM, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:


> 
> 
> 
> Quoting Gordon Swobe via extropy-chat extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org:
> 
> > On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 6:43 AM Jason Resch jasonresch at gmail.com wrote:
> > 
> > > I address this elsewhere in the thread. A sufficient intelligence given
> > > only a dictionary, could eventually decode it's meaning. I provided an
> > > example of how it could be done.
> > 
> > I saw that, and I disagree. I think if you try to work out an example in
> > your head, you will see that it leads to an infinite regression, an endless
> > search for meaning. Like ChatGPT, you will learn which word symbols define
> > each other word symbol, and you learn the rules of language (the syntax),
> > but from the dictionary alone you will never learn the actual meaning of
> > the words (the referents).
> 
> 
> Look on the bright side, Gordan. You are guaranteed to at least learn
> the actual meaning of the word dictionary from a dictionary alone. As
> well as the actual meaning of the word sentence. You will even learn
> the actual meaning of the word "word". There are plenty of referents
> in a dictionary if you know what to look for. ;)
> 
> > Try it with any word you please. You rapidly have a massive list of words
> > for which you have no meaning and for which you much keep looking up
> > definitions finding more words for which you have no meaning, and in your
> > list you also have many common words (like "the" and "a") that lead to
> > endless loops in your search for meaning.
> 
> Many words don't have a meaning on their own or too many meanings and
> their meaning depends almost entirely on where, when, and how they are
> used.
> 
> Stuart LaForge
> 
> 
> 
> 
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