[ExI] Bender's Octopus (re: LLMs like ChatGPT)

[Gordon Swobe]

On Sun, Mar 26, 2023 at 8:10 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> On Sun, Mar 26, 2023 at 4:35 PM Gordon Swobe via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Mar 25, 2023 at 2:42 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Reading these conversations over the last few days, it has struck me
>>> that some people keep referring to 'real' things, usually using the word
>>> 'referents' (e.g. an apple), as though our brains had direct access to
>>> them and could somehow just know what they are.
>>>
>>> But we don't.
>>>
>>> Think about it, what is "An Apple"?
>>> ...
>>> There is no spoon! Er, Apple. There is no Apple!
>>> Not as a 'real-world thing'.
>>>
>>
>> It would seem that you would rather say that apples are not real than say
>> that the word "apple" has meaning.
>>
>
> I don't believe he is saying that at all.  Are YOU saying, we don't have
> knowledge of an apple, which has very real redness and greenness qualities,
> which can be computationally bound, which is what we know about the
> apple??  Redness is a quality of our knowledge of the apple.  THAT very
> real physical quality of our knowledge, in the brain, is the referent of
> redness.  We don't know the colorness qualities of the apple, or anything
> else out there, since our brains false colors all of our knowledge, so it
> can emphasize, in our understanding of the apple, what is important to us,
> as part of our computation process of needing to pick the apple.
>

I am not making any arguments about qualities or qualia at the moment (no
time for it). I am saying simply that a word like "apple" has meaning, and
that the meaning is derived from pointing at the existence of real apples
in the real world -- the referents. The word apple is simply a pointer to
those apples. Without those apples in the real world, the word has no
meaning.

For whatever reason, Ben is saying apples are not real-world things.

-gts
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230326/45e8d416/attachment.htm>