All of averros's Comments + Replies

averros1-2

The point is not "not understanding sometimes", the point is not understanding in a sense of inability to generate responses having no close analogs in the training sets.  ChatGPT is very good at finding the closest example and fitting it into output text.  What it cannot do - obviously - is to combine two things it can answer satisfactory separately and combine them into a coherent answer to a question requiring two steps (unless it has seen an analog of this two-step answer already).

This shows the complete lack of usable semantic encoding - which is the core of the original Searle's argument.

1Radford Neal
You're still arguing with reference to what ChatGPT can or cannot do as far as producing responses to questions - that it cannot produce "a coherent answer to a question requiring two steps".  But the claim of the Chinese Room argument is that even if it could do that, and could do everything else you think it ought to be able to do, it still would not actually understand anything. We have had programs that produce text but clearly don't understand many things for decades. That ChatGPT is another such program has no implications for whether or not the Chinese Room argument is correct. If at some point we conclude that it is just not possible to write a program that behaves in all respects as if it understands, that wouldn't so much refute or support the Chinese Room argument, as simply render it pointless, since its premise cannot possible hold.
averros0-1

The questions about the wing lift show complete lack of understanding of the basic physics by ChatGPT.

The Coanda effect is caused by viscosity (the adjacent layers of air transfer some of the momentum of molecules between them), and the wing material also transfers momentum to adjacent layer of the air (causing parasitic drag).   This causes the air flow to "stick" to the top surface (to understand how just look at the streamlines to see how the speed gradient from wing to undisturbed air bends the flow) and so be deflected downwards, which creates li... (read more)

averros0-1

The same argument applies to academic learning... it doesn't appeal to all.

What we need is diversity in education - scrap the system of academic accreditation and the prohibitions on "child labor".  So that more academic-inclined kids may go for academic courses while more hands-on oriented kids would join companies and learn on the job (actually there is some of that in family-owned businesses even now; unfortunately the estate taxes tend to destroy generational family business operations).

The examples of objections to the non-central fallacy above rely, essentially, on utilitarian (consequentialist) argumentation.

This itself is a logical fallacy, as it presumes that some form of utility function implied in the utilitarian argument is the same as that of the person's who is supposed to be convinced by the counter-argument.

The real big problem with all forms of utilitarian arguments is that they assume both definition of utility and some arbitrary time horizon.

For example: "taxation is theft" is a moral argument (based on aversion to using of... (read more)

My first patent (for a hybrid analog/digital method of detecting pulse centroids for noisy signals) was awarded when I was 14... but, then, my father was a Chief Scientist in a large electronics design department and I had all kinds of electronic parts as toys since I was a toddler, and at some point he started taking me to his office so I started interacting with real engineers building real computers.  (When I've read Robert W. Wood's memoirs I discovered that he had a similar experience in his teenage years; in Surely You're Joking Richard Feynman ... (read more)

3belkarx
Can you think of any way to fix the system without forcing everyone into an apprenticeship? The status quo in America right now is respect of the system for most because it's easy and a clean path ... hands-on learning wouldn't appeal to all
averros1715

This completely misses the point, for a simple reason: humans (uniquely among Earth lifeforms) are subject not only to genetic/epigenetic evolution but also to memetic evolution.  In fact, these two evolutionary levels are tightly coupled, as evidenced by the very good match between phylogenetic trees of human populations and of languages.

It makes no sense to talk about human IGF, any definition excluding memetic component is meaningless.   Now, if you look at IGMF optimization a lot of human behavior starts making a lot more sense.  (It is ... (read more)