All of Jon Rowlands's Comments + Replies

I've come to define a belief as a self-reinforcing opinion. That leaves open how it is reinforced, e.g. by testing against reality in the case of a prediction, or by confirmation bias in the case of a delusion.

1Andrew Burns
I don't know that an opinion that conforms to reality is self-reinforcing. It is reinforced by reality. The presence of a building on a map is reinforced by the continued existence of the building in real life.

Kim Stanley Robinson used this in several books, calling it a "pebble mob". Picture an explosion run in reverse time, with the fragments converging at a point. Or a hundred drones, as in this interview with him.

https://bioneers.org/kim-stanley-robinson-on-his-book-the-ministry-for-the-future/

2TsviBT
Excellent, thanks!

It's worse than just sometimes being irrational, though. They're incapable of consistently using logic -- see the many demonstrations of billion parameter LLMs failing to add two three-digit numbers, vs the hundred-odd gates that this task conventionally needs.

Humans have limits, like poor memory, but we make up for it with tools and processes. Given their current failings, LLMs need to become tool-users, and to really succeed they need to become tool inventors.

This is another way of saying hybrid-symbolic. But it further points to specific considerations ... (read more)