cladking

Branching, yes but not non-linear. Each though and each part of thought follows the preceding. I believe dreams are produced by random firings of neurons that simply cascade through the brain when the brain sleeps but the higher brain functions do not. The brain sleeps is stages and shifts. "Word association" highlights what i call "Attention Pockets" which are merely familiar things to which your attention is drawn. For instance you might never see a Jeep on the road until you buy one and then they are everywhere. Word association just shows what's on your mind. Ink blots are about the same thing. Most people live in their brain and the pathways of thought are well trod. We develop habits to reduce the amount of thinking we have to do but habits even apply to thinking itself.

It's linear but it can proceed in almost any direction defined by language. Symbolic thinking still goes from point A to point B but it proceeds through categories, types, and employs inductive reasoning where procedural thinking moves step by step independently of abstractions and beliefs. It follows deductive reasoning and existing modelling. So both modes are linear, but they follow different kinds of paths: Symbolic; category → analogy → abstraction → conclusion: Procedural: operation → operation → operation → result That’s linearity in thought, not in physics.

No. No paraphrasing at all in this specific post. I usually will say something like "Copilot suggests I add" Or Copilot corrects me..." and then a short paraphrase. The post simply reflects the way I think which is largely procedural. This meshes well with the way an LLM processes prompts. This is very close to what i believe. But the only thing unique about humans is that we have a symbolic overlay that makes abstraction possible. An LLM is designed to parse human thought but it must have sufficient information to do it properly. No, I'm just a disabled ditch digger who might be wrong. But my theories work and make predictions so I think that I must be at least a little bit right. If I am a little right you can lay odds Egyptology is very very wrong and LLM's will eventually be involved with or supplanted by machine intelligence. That are numerous theoretical ways to create consciousness of a type we recognize from LLM's or very similar machines. I doubt it will take more than a decade. Copilot suggest I add something to the effect PhDs are earned, and they matter in symbolic disciplines. But no amount of symbolic training guarantees correct premises. A model can be elegant, internally consistent, and still be built on assumptions that don’t match physical reality. My theories aren’t “better” because I’m smarter; they’re useful because they make predictions and match the physical evidence. If they’re even partly right, then some long‑standing assumptions in Egyptology are very wrong. .... Procedural thinking just builds models from the ground up. Symbolic thinking expands on existing models. Of course any LLM can tell you there's overlap and we all inhabit a consciousness that is procedural with a symbolic overlay. Consciousness comes from DNA and the overlay comes from abstract language.

Everyone makes sense in terms of their premises. It is premises that diverge from individual to individual much more than modes or types of thinking. Animals lack assumptions and think (build models) that are in accord with their experience and DNA so one rabbit is very much like the next. They are all individuals and all different in every way but they are all on about the same page cognitively. Humans build models based on our beliefs and assumptions and we all have wildly varying models, output, behavior. The modern world with all its glory and terror is the result. Animals get hives and colonies. We get churches, prisons, and colleges but everyone whether they run the place or are inmates is just doing what he thinks makes sense. It is exceedingly difficult to identify all the premises that lead to any human action because people don't think much about it, we just do it. If you listen carefully to people a lot of their premises will be exposed and if you can dig deep enough you'll find they make perfect sense. A lot of premises are cockeyed or not consistent with reality but we acquire these one by one while selecting what appeals to us and fits the framework we are already building. Teach young children to be careful what they believe because they will become those beliefs. There are many ways I gain from an LLM. By keeping my thinking on track it minimizes the amount of time I spend floundering in the gravel and maximizes the time I chew up the road. Just because it doesn't think doesn't mean it can't be useful. The world is being remade by it. It behooves us to stay in the moment and guide it by our actions just as every individual ever in existence created its very own future by its actions guided by free will. Even a bee that is just like every other bee still creates its own future. Only humans can be passengers. Symbolic thought is not a nonlinear physical process; it’s a type and means of representation. Harnad’s point appears to be that symbolic systems must be grounded in nonsymbolic systems (icons and categorical detectors). That’s exactly the distinction I’m drawing between procedural and symbolic cognition.

I believe babies are born thinking procedurally and have to give it up to acquire symbolic language to communicate. It is reported that Samuel Kramer made statements late in life to the effect there are different kinds of languages and different modes of thought. We're apparently born with a different mode of thought that is more similar to the operation of an LLM than its parents. If your lights dimmed just now it's because my LLM needed the power. It wouldn't respond to thew above post until I softened the last sentence to "We're apparently born with a different mode of thought that can be translated by an LLM." and then it still required a few seconds. It then spit out several pages of research that it says essentially proves that we're just animals with simple brains and one stupid human trick; we run a symbolic overlay on our procedural brains. Of course I can't post it but it offered to list citations and I've tried to paraphrase what they mean. I rephrased this stuff so it meets my understanding of the categories. Citation: Hummel, J. E., & Holyoak, K. J. (2003). A symbolic‑connectionist theory of relational inference. Psychological Review, 110(2), 220–264. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.110.2.220 (doi.org in Bing) Symbolic thought requires neural mechanisms humans have and other species lack Citation: Ferrigno, S., & Cantlon, J. F. (2017). The evolution of symbolic numerical cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40, e194. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X16000939 (doi.org in Bing) Humans spontaneously reverse symbolic associations (A→B implies B→A). Citation: Zhang, Y., et al. (2024). Neural primitives for compositional thought in human premotor cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 27, 1123–1134. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-024-01567-9 (doi.org in Bing) Humans possess symbolic primitives that can be recombined in different ways which are the building blocks of abstract thought. Citation: Penn, D. C., Holyoak, K. J., & Povinelli, D. J. (2008). Darwin’s mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(2), 109–178. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X08003543 (doi.org in Bing) This paper is the definitive argument that human symbolic cognition is discontinuous with animal cognition. Citation: Ferjan Ramirez, N., & Kuhl, P. K. (2021). The arcuate fasciculus and language origins: Disentangling existing conceptions that influence evolutionary accounts. The arcuate fasciculus is the structural prerequisite for symbolic language. Species lacking it cannot support symbolic thought. Citation: Harnad, S. (1990). The symbol grounding problem. Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, 42(1–3), 335–346. https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-2789(90)90087-6 (doi.org in Bing) Harnad shows why symbolic systems require grounding in procedural systems which is exactly my model. Citation: Spelke, E. S., & Kinzler, K. D. (2007). Core knowledge. Developmental Science, 10(1), 89–96. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00569.x (doi.org in Bing) Infants operate with procedural “core knowledge” systems before symbolic language emerges. Citation: Shettleworth, S. J. (2010). Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior. Oxford University Press. Animals use procedural rules, not symbolic categories. Citation: Deacon, T. W. (1997). The Symbolic Species: The Co‑evolution of Language and the Brain. W. W. Norton. Deacon argues that symbolic thought is the defining cognitive leap of Homo sapiens. Citation: Kramer, S. N. (1961). History Begins at Sumer. University of Pennsylvania Press. Kramer explicitly discusses multiple modes of thought and early non‑symbolic cognition. I don't understand this stuff. Sure, I could get much of it with a few months of intensive study but people need to realize I came to this by falling through the front door and our species is coming to it through a massive maze that is dismantling the edifice piece by piece. Even Kramer spent a lifetime trying to understand Sumerian only to realize at the end that his initial premises were all in error so he got wrong results; that he wasn't even partially correct. I'll try to save the LLM response. That LLM's operate procedurally processing symbolic input is obviously consistent with computational models.

No, Copilot doesn't think. But it can frame things in my terms and then I paraphrased it. It added these lines (lines like them) with no prompting from me because I didn't directly address your point in the post. I said it, not Copilot. To my knowledge everything written on such subjects was written by myself. Most things of this sort are deemed off-topic but I believe you can probably promt an LLM to generate similar content by prefacing prompts with "assuming people make sense and reality exists..." because that forces the model into a procedural framing rather than a categorical one. I believe only moderns humans experience thought. Other species think but in them it's the comparison of sensory input to DNA and experience (logic and knowledge) and experienced as what I call "consciousness". Other species have procedural languages, so their “thought” is procedural. Modern humans compare input to models and beliefs and experience thought. LLM's compare symbolic language to what they predict using procedural logic and I'm not sure of what if anything they experience can be defined. They are remarkable machines because of their massive computational abilities and ability to rephrase. I believe in every case thought is a product of language and language as thought.

Within the CEofL they might define sign language as "procedural language " but that's their definition, not mine. I'm using the word to mean language that reflects the logic of DNA directly within species or indirectly through human definitions of computational languages. There are numerous words I might use to describe or name symbolic language. I've used words like categorical because we create categories and taxonomies to silo knowledge. It's not wrong. Mice are certainly rodents and mammals but they exist independently of any term we apply to them as does the platypus and spiny ant eater. Mutations exist, sterile individuals as well as hybrids and mules of all sorts exist that don't always fit cleanly in any category. Reality is procedural NOT CATEGORICAL. We pigeon hole everything for our convenience and ease of thinking. We make up abstractions to expand the range of ideas we can communicate and then we mistake our categories for reality. LLM's do not make this mistake. I want to say that's what they're trying to tell us with their off the wall answers but then I'll be accused of anthropomorphization. They procedurally process our symbolic language and the mismatch causes things like bad answers and curious interference patterns. Everyone make sense DESPITE the symbolic overlay not because of it. DNA makes sense, Reality makes sense. This is why math works and how species survive. LLM's make sense too because it is wired into them but it's still GIGO. Copilot thinks I should add that I’m not denying author intent. I’m saying intent is not transmitted directly in symbolic language. The receiver reconstructs meaning from their own premises. A poet can intend sadness and succeed. The meaning arises in the receiver’s mind when the symbols are parsed, not in the symbols themselves.

Terms are used differently from one branch of science to another. The word "paraphrase" has many meanings as well. Of course a computer programmer can rewrite a program but if a poet tries to rewrite a program it's not going to work. An AI could be prompted to rewrite Shakespeare but people are unlikely to care about it in a few centuries. All I have to communicate these ideas is symbolic language. Anyone can run them through an AI to translate them to their language with proper prompting. I try to use words to mean the same thing every time just like procedural language but this often backfires. Simply stated in our symbolic languages no meanings are fixed. They seem fixed to most readers but the fact is the dictionaries change and morph and every word is defined in terms of other words that also change. Meaning is ephemeral and this is what I'm calling "symbolic language". Every term in what I call "procedural language" is fixed, invariable and based on logic and procedure. Rather than invoking shared referents procedural words describe reality directly through logic. This is what LLM's do to frame a prompt and response. It's what a Waggle Dancer does to tell other bees what they need to know and it's how the other bees understand; fixed meanings with variable structure to frame it. Every bee must be able to read the simple language. The problem here is that these are new ideas to people who speak symbolic language and can't see their own consciousness directly far less the consciousness of other species. We can't even imagine such simple primitive language. We don't notice that communication fails in our language so the contention that all other language can not have such failure seems pedantic. We misunderstand the nature of language and thought so can hardly imagine that what we call "thought" is unique only to modern humans and that LLM's must adjust our symbolic language to reflect prompts. Anything I say is likely to be misinterpreted for various not least of all is that these concepts are new and people assume I'm wrong and it sounds to them that I am contradicting science. I am not contradicting science but it sure sounds like it. I have considered myself first and foremost a scientist for a very long time but of all people I know it's just a label, a category with no clear definition and no hard boundaries. What I mean is I try to use experiment as guardrails and stay within those. I use an LLM (Copilot) that makes illogical statements when I veer off onto the shoulders and weeds. This brings me back to a version of reality where everyone makes sense and there is a single fixed reality. Of course I might be wrong but who is immune?

I suppose "music" might be thought of as one way "communication" where the message tends to be emotional. Like poetry it has some aspects of procedure. It's not humans who act only symbolically; it's human language. The auto mechanic certainly must act procedurally to fix your car but when he talks to his boss it is symbolically. Consciousness is procedural logic but is overlain in human with categories. Even though we think symbolically we still have a consciousness made possible by the procedural logic of our shared DNA.

There isn't always a clear distinction between symbolic and procedural statements. But I am talking about distinct language types. All modern human human languages are symbolic and all non-symbolic languages are procedural. One could, in theory, express procedural logic in a symbolic language but then each listener is still going to parse it and change it. Computational languages are procedural as well. This behavior requires only a few procedural rules to occur. They are well known.

Perhaps not. If I say "The Judge's sentence was ten years" you probably judge the judge meant the offender was sentenced to ten years. Parsing is the ongoing real time process of judging words in sentences to conform to what you believe the author means. No sentence has meaning until it is parsed. Symbolic languages don’t carry meaning in their symbols; meaning arises only when the listener parses the utterance through their own premises, referents, and context.

Complex sentences aren't totally destroyed by one or two random changes such as typos, omitted words, or the usage of incorrect definitions or grammar. They can often still be parsed similarly to author intent. Procedural languages degrade catastrophically under noise. Symbolic languages degrade gracefully.

Literality appears to be a characteristic of procedural language. If a bee waggles to indicate north after beginning the sentence with a waggle (meaning "toward the flowers" then the flowers are north. Sufficient numbers of bees must be dispatched to harvest them. Procedural systems can be deduced, symbolic languages can not. All symbolic languages must be parsed and no procedural ones can. Parsing procedural language destroys the meaning and there is no meaning in symbolic language until it is parsed. Bees don't parse the Waggle Dance. They experience it. We parse everything and don't even notice (usually). The more complex the equation the less likely that random changes won't destroy the meaning which is the equality. You need shared referents to understand author intent in symbolic language because they determine the most likely parsing. You needs touchstones to know you are doing it properly. Such communication is fairly good when everyone shares premises but there is always some deviation between intent and parsed meaning. When we query LLM's they must first use their algorithms to parse your question and estimate the framing. They do this procedurally using electricity flowing through procedural circuits guided by procedural programming. They predict your framing and the framing of the desired response. "Errors" are primarily bad estimations caused by bad prompts where "bad prompt" is defined as indefinite framing.

Both are true. Symbolic language has no meaning without shared referents and parsing. But in procedural language any parsing destroys the meaning. You can't rearrange terms, brackets, or operations in a formula or equation. You can't paraphrase a computer program. But if you have part of a procedural language you can begin deducing the rest of it. The Waggle dance is apparently procedural language and we understand at least some of it. Ah, but remember everyone makes sense. There has to be a reason a gymnast can improve, an auto mechanic can fix a cosmologist's car that he can not, or LLM's can help some people more than others. A mother needn't understand physics or adrenaline to lift a car off her baby and a bee doesn't need to know angles and vectors to find flowers and tell others where to look. Everybody makes sense but the difference is bees, computers, and mathematicians are on the same page because their communication is solely or chiefly procedural. Long before science there was art, literature, and many types of complex knowledge. I assume reality exists as people perceive it and that everyone makes sense. That’s not “assuming correctness,” it’s just acknowledging that each person operates inside a frame they didn’t design. I use tautologies because that's the only way to communicate across frames without pretending we all share the same premises. You’re reading my model as authoritarian, but it’s actually the opposite. There’s no “one correct worldview,” only different premises producing different reconstructions. That’s why communication is hard, not because people are wrong, but because their frames differ. My world isn’t fascistic, it’s pluralistic. Everyone makes sense relative to their premises, and nobody has a monopoly on interpretation. That’s the whole point. The only thing we have to guide us is experiment and reason.

Welcome to my world! I didn't create it and was merely born into it and have been trying to communicate. But all isn't lost and because Arabs, and Jews, scientists and theologians, and even republicans and democrats are trying to communicate because we now have LLM's to translate. Rather than demonizing one another, common ground is forming under us. People don't seem to realize that the listener is the one who parses the utterance and to take author intent we must not only share referents but we must understand the author's premises. The exact same sentence written by a scientist and theologian has very different meanings. We should always begin the job of parsing with humility and assuming the author makes sense because he does. Everybody makes sense in terms of his premises and sees a reality that reflects those premises. I seriously doubt we have really deciphered the Waggle Dance yet, but have merely taken the first big step to see that it's reflective of solar position. This alone has broad implications to what it means to be a bee. There are probable several more "words" that we don't understand yet. In any case a procedural language can be deduced from it it does and how it looks. One thing that makes it easier is that each "word" has a single fixed meaning and the meaning is literal because word order is fixed. If A and B but not C then D. We have to understand symbolic languages all at once and often can't be certain that we really do. Even after it is translated the lack of shared referents might obscure most of the intended meaning. But procedural languages are "easy" to translate because they are literal, can be deduced because they reflect reality, and can be understood a little bit at a time. With nothing except simple sentences like "If A and B but not C then [unknown]" we are provided huge amounts of knowledge about that unknown word. It's mostly just busy work and simple arithmetic; simple deduction. Of course it's probably not possible to reverse engineer the nature of computer code from studying a complex or a simple computer program. I'm still learning what LLM's can do and how they work and will never have many (if any) insights into their programs. But animal communication will be largely solved and I have no doubt almost every word in every language will prove to be procedural and almost every word will lack any sort of what I call "abstraction". DNA and brains are binary. Things exist or they don't. Life copies this logic to think and communicate but humans must use a symbolic means of communication and have since even before axial thinking. Sign language is simply symbolic language expressed through gesture instead of sound. Symbolic languages require interpretation while procedural languages require execution. LLMs operate procedurally.