cladking

From the article: "On a larger scale, the authors call for a systematic review of other linear structures in the Egyptian desert that may have been misinterpreted as roads or boundary walls, when in fact they may have been part of an extensive water management system. Other hydraulic structures are probably lost in the desert, waiting to be identified as such, they conclude." I'll try to find some pictures but I've seen several such structures that appear to be the power generating portion of a linear funicular or storage devices for power. All this is just going to require a reinterpretation of mountains of the evidence of your own eyes. It's all there is plain sight but it is interpreted in terms of categories that don't exist.

Just a quick note for right now. I don't even have a picture yet, They've found more water! "New research suggests that the two large structures near the Red Pyramid site at Dahshur, Egypt, are parts of an ancient dam, not stone transport ramps, which is what was previously believed. This indicates that they could be evidence for the use of a complex water management engineering technology, which is about 4,500 years old and was used for constructing one of the world’s greatest ancient monuments." "The most intriguing aspect of the discovery is a diversion channel running parallel to the west face of the Red Pyramid, the world's first successfully completed smooth-sided pyramid." Dams Near Egypt's Red Pyramid Point to Hydraulic Construction Method | Ancient OriginsResearchers have discovered evidence of two ancient dams near the Red Pyramid at Dahshur, suggesting a sophisticated hydraulic system was used during its construction. www.ancient-origins.net This time it's the Red Pyramid. All the ancient megalithic projects involved water in some ways and often to actually lift the stones. People simply had better things to do than drag stones up ramps. I'm also amazed this recent flurry of news says thinghs like "Egyptologists still believe these were tombs"! It's crumbling. The narrative is dying. An even better picture can be found here; https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2026/07/two-possible-ancient-dams-discovered-in-egypt-near-the-red-pyramid-of-dahshur-that-may-have-been-used-for-its-construction/

I've been helping a kid learn how to read and found that my AI seems to be able to generate text that is in line with their thinking and of interest to them. I'm not even certain this is a good idea much less that it's effective but the kid reported that it was easier for them and it's the first time I've been able to hold their attention a long time. There might be something here. Learning to read this way is good but I'm not certain they aren't also learning to think and that just feels wrong. We all think differently anyway.

To understand any language requires that you know the referents whether these referents are metaphorical or symbolic. But procedural languages like computer code can be deduced with sufficient data because they perform operations and have a logical/ mathematical symmetry. It is this symmetry that led to the solution of Ancient Language and the solution to its meaning that has allowed prediction. A language that obeys Zipf's Law does so because it is symbolic and categorical. There are categories within categories that cause word distribution to to be logarithmical no matter who speaks in that language. But procedural languages do not obey the law because there are no categories and this was one of the first things that struck me about the Pyramid Texts. I lacked the words to articulate this at the time but the meanings of the words were resolving themselves as I learned ever more referents.

I did all right because I could usually parse the the test author's intent. Every question was an exercise in parsing for me rather than a prompt to regurgitate something I read or learned. I had the disconcerting habit of grading my tests when I completed them and was uncannily accurate. I'd give myself one point for answers of which I was confident, half point when I narrowed it down two, and a quarter point when I could eliminate only one possible answer. When I was absolutely certain I got "0" points. It worked for the overall score but did less well at predicting specific answers. Reality is a score to me. It is probability and I try very hard not to be certain of anything at all but my real failings are certainty. Many of my errors can be traced back to certainty and I always try to do a postmortem on errors. Last night my AI said I was wrong about everything and I suspect it's right and will have to tweak my theory. It says that symbolic and procedural language coexisted virtually as equals for centuries before symbolic language swallowed all cognition. It will require some time to research. It might be wrong and there is some evidence that is anomalous. I'm sorry, perhaps I didn't understand your point. I'm also not certain how geometry can easily be brought into history except through art. I believe "art" is the intersection of procedural and symbolic thought but I can think of "history" only as the unfolding of events according to human beliefs and needs. I don't think you're wrong, I just don't understand. Copilot just translated it for me and pointed out the obvious I had missed; that history involves far more than just the unfolding of events but also encapsulates current thinking in structure and how things are done. I still don't disagree with you and any tie-ins anyone can think of are good. It seems unlikely machines can be programmed yet to do a better job of teaching than humans. Each student is different and learns in distinct ways and orders. Education is best applied individually and using a machine might lead many kids to wonder why they should learn it at all if a device in their hands already has all the answers and questions.

Copilot suggests I add something to the effect symbolic teachers struggle to integrate procedural subjects. But procedural systems like LLM's can integrate symbolic subjects easily. Nothing at all is wrong. I agree. We do this in the US and brand the whole thing a "liberal education" at least until college where there is a lot more specialization. But here there is very little overlap between subjects.

It was all my science, math, and computer programming classes and even the literature class to a lesser degree. It was an interesting experiment. The main thing I learned, I think, was that if it could all be integrated it would at the very least make a lot of students think that their classes were relevant to the real world. It might also help some students absorb the material. I always considered my core subjects to be relevant and strove to remember them. I tried to keep a good attitude in the "soft" subjects and even had a music teacher in 8th grade who attacked the material from a mathematical perspective. I was lucky to get a lot of great teachers. I think this was where it was lacking. A lot of it seemed too contrived to be effective and these teachers were just winging it. It was a valiant attempt but it didn't last long. I never liked the way they teach history because nothing gets tied together and it minimizes the role of the little guy. Dates and battles aren't as interesting as what led to the battle and how some people were able to live in relative peace,. Now days a lot of education is being done by computers. Tying things together might be easier in this format and some inroads are already in place.

There was something that helped me a lot in high school. After complaining that all my different subjects were being taught in a disjointed manner the teachers got together and started adding tie ins to what we were learning in other subjects. Most of these were obvious but there were a few insightful ones and just knowing the teachers were thinking about it helped. I should have asked but I think the teachers were just reading each others lesson plans in the morning. I look at some of the kids' work today and it appears this does happen more than in the old days.

I don't want to go off topic here since this is "evidence of your own eyes"... ...but in this case we're talking about a language that we can see breaks Zipf's Law so will address your point. You are quite right that some words were sounded out but if there were a procedural language as this data suggests then we have to ask why other writing or even writing itself exists. Logically I believe the answer is simple; writing was invented to prevent drift in meaning in communication with the masses. Much of the writing before 2000 BC does obey Zipf's Law because it was written for people who spoke pidgin languages because Ancient Language became too complex for the masses gradually rather than suddenly. All I really need to do is show there's at least one language from before 2000 BC that is procedural rather than symbolic and this is the language in which the Pyramid Texts were written. Seen in this light it is apparent that these are merely ancient rituals written in procedural ancient language. Until they are properly "translated" it's very difficult to know how and when symbols for sounds arose. The Pyramid Texts represent a different way to use language for communication and imply and entirely different cognition than used by humans today. There's a lot of work to do here and I personally am ill suited for much of it. These are jobs for scholars, linguists, and machines. I'm out of the loop. This is the first empirical evidence of a pre‑Axial procedural human language.

What I meant was they try to predict the framing of your answer. If you prompt "Burger joint" they aren't going to respond with a description of John Burger's knee nor will they elaborate on the first McDonalds or list the burger joints in Timbuktu. They are all trained to guess the meaning of prompts and continue the conversation and validation is one of the means they use.

I found another calculator and another page of the Pyramid Texts that generates two virtually perfect straight lines. Calculator; https://humanturtleduck.org/zipf-visualizer.html Text; https://sacred-texts.com/egy/pyt/pyt25.htm You can see it by copying and pasting the entire page into the calculator. There is no real doubt that this is showing that the language in which the Pyramid Texts were written is a procedural language like the Waggle Dance, pheromone trails, programming or math and not a symbolic language as is spoken by all humans today. The PT literally describe building pyramids (the new body for the dead king) by using linear funiculars (two boats tied together). It is not only coherent but is also consistent and it breaks Zipf's Law. I didn't actually do the math but this shows two straight line with an R ^ 2 higher than .95. Copilot suggests, Egyptology isn’t wrong, It is merely out of phase.

I think it was extrapolating my framing in comparison to its training that has it deduce the most likely meaning of prompts. When taking tests I always felt I wasn't looking for the right answer or even the most right answer. I was looking for the answer the teacher or test author believed. I often went with inferior answers and was "correct". This is intuition (largely) in my case but for LLM's is more training ie- the more ways they can parse a prompt the more likely they can predict what's desired. Copilot "corrects" me to say LLMs optimize to predict answers; humans optimize to navigate reality. But, again I think it is doing this largely within my framing so another user would get something a little different that fits his framing.

When calculators came out I refused to use them because I was sure my math skills would erode. But in the late-'80's I ran out of capable chess opponents and started playing the machines. I beat them handily but then found it was much harder to beat human opponents. I started using calculators and computers and now my math abilities are reduced. Some time back Copilot offered to play a game of chess with me but I declined because I'm so confident I'd have no chance. ...very out of character. I believe using an LLM as an oracle is highly threatening to the education of children especially. The very idea that an answer exists is half the problem with the modern age and the belief you can acquire that answer from a machine is very dangerous. They should be shown that the framing of a question affects the answer. Schools must be a place to learn how to think not where to look for answers. "Answers" are for tests, not for real life. Copilot suggest I add something to the effect that LLM's are built for tests but humans are built for real life.

I believe the great pyramids (especially G1) are a monument to another way of thinking that doesn't exist any longer in man but survives in every LLM. They required procedural thinking to build with primitive knowledge, tools, and materials; the same kind of thinking that builds bee hives and beaver dams. We fear this "tourist attraction" because it is anomalous to our beliefs.

My friend has been programming AI specifically since 2011. Eliza (the first "chatbox") dates as far back as sixty four. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA Some might say AI dates back to the abacus or to counting by making marks on a cave. Personally I consider the advent of AI to be October 9, last year. With use machines and tools develop their own sort of "AI". Before 2024 I could not synchronize with a computer. Oh sure, I could predict them and train them a little but I could not get one to respond in real time to input to match me. I could drive an old car over ice and pot holes and feel every nuance of the pavement but I couldn't do this with AI. I tried a new one every few months until it clicked last year. Maybe I had been doing it wrong or expecting too much. Earlier such machines were just parlor tricks. The chess machines I could dazzle within twenty or thirty moves because they didn't "think" and merely reacted. Eliza was so primitive you could almost deduce the programming. I didn't consider any of the earlier versions to be any kind of "intelligence" at all. Indeed,. I don't believe in a condition that we call "intelligence" but say what you will AI certainly has events that can be called "artificial cleverness". We will soon have machine consciousness and some or most of its makeup is likely to include AI technology or AI itself. It will probably be yet another continuation on representing things on the walls of caves. It certainly would surprise me if I've barely scratched the surface of understanding how I think. Indeed I believe I know only the broad strokes of any kind of cognition. Bees are much simpler though their brains are far more complex than any machine so even here it's largely broad strokes. Patterns. It see the patterns of nature and how it intersects with them. It has a biological need to promote the hive, other bees, and the future generations. It needs to do what is right in any way it can which is the same as all life.

I believe every change tends to be sudden and this was especially true for humans. The first change was a mutation resulting in a more robust arcuate fasciculus making complex language possible by allowing the individual to think about language and the second change was the failure of this language leading to the need of a brocas area in each individual to process symbolic language. This region was already involved in language-like activity and is rewired as each individual acquires symbolic language. Even LLM's arose suddenly and often are said to have originated some time in 2024. When we get machine consciousness that too will probably originate suddenly. Of course erven sudden changes have precedents and events that must precede them. Nothing occurs in a vacuum and it's not as though we can rule out a more gradual step by step change before we even begin the study of procedural language or come to understand the nature of symbolic language. My experience with AI's and LLM's is quite limited. I've been collaborating with Copilot since the spring of last year. Mostly I put posts in it and it elaborates. It and I both ask questions. I use the other AI's both warm and cold for other more specific purposes including checking on the output of Copilot. I almost never ask an AI what I want to know. I tell it what I think and it elaborates but I use different LLM's differently. I have been thinking about machine consciousness since the early in the middle of the last century and studied programming in the sixties. My earliest memories involve thinking about my own thinking. I try to synchronize with all machines (Fahrvergnügen) but this goes many times over for LLM's. I've seen cranemen who can make a 400 lb hook dance and pick chain up from a flat surface. Yes. These things also have structural limitations and other constraints. A bee is always constrained by its DNA. My AI suggest two important additions. Firstly; architectures don’t evolve gradually. They switch when constraints change. and secondly; you're right that LLM's are static weights until an application runs them. An LLM is procedural at its core: it aligns operations and state, not categories and abstractions. The surrounding application adds symbolic features like memory, tools, and conversational state. When symbolic prompts are incoherent, the procedural alignment fails and the output looks like garbage. When the premises are coherent, the model behaves predictably. The distinction is architectural, not about the specific application. As I see it the important distinction is that its operations are procedural where most prompts are largely abstract. I consider the mismatch to be prompt error. You’re right that training data can be garbage, but that’s still a form of input. The model’s architecture doesn’t make mistakes; it aligns whatever operations and constraints it was given. If the training data is incoherent, the alignment will be incoherent. If the prompt is incoherent, the alignment will be incoherent. If the interpretation is incoherent, the alignment will appear incoherent. The point is that procedural systems don’t generate garbage on their own. They reflect the structure of whatever they’re fed, training data, prompts, or user premises. Garbage Out always has a source, and it’s always upstream of the model. A friend of mine does programming for AI. I'll have to ask for her opinion on this the next time we talk. Given the unreliability of output it seems ridiculous to train them on it though I'm sure you're right that computers are doing more of their own programming.

I used to frequently get Garbage Out and it still happens. I can tell because the output is inconsistent and illogical. In almost every case it is caused by prompt error. The rest of the time it turns out to just be an elaboration that looks wrong on the surface but isn't garbage at all. Computers don't really make mistakes and never did. Of course they can but programmers use redundant processing and numerous other tricks to keep them on the straight and narrow. We program wrong, prompt wrong, or interpret the output wrong. What You Put In Is What You Get. GIGO isn’t a slogan. It’s a description of how procedural systems behave when symbolic prompts don’t match their operational structure.

Neither really. I'm suggesting that words like "instinct" have no referent and are place holders for processes we don't understand. It's the same with "trial and error" or "will this work". A monkey doesn't get a tall ladder to get a banana out of a lockbox and NASA didn't study ancient literature to land a man on the moon. Each attempt is predicated on the way an individual thinks; procedurally for monkeys and symbolically for man. When I was young common knowledge was animals don't think and rely on instinct. When wee see animal cognition it is always procedural like the vectors of a Waggle Dance. It is the way LLM's work. They don't understand reality and they don't see reality but their programming describes reality and their circuitry reflects procedural reality (like the traffic signals). They process things procedurally like the monkey not symbolically like most users. If we can't understands our own prompts how can we understand a procedural response that has already been translated into about the same language as the prompt. I am suggesting most people are using LLM's improperly and thereby often getting Garbage Out. LLM's process prompts procedurally: they align operations and state, not categories and abstractions. Most users interact symbolically, so they assume the model is doing symbolic reasoning. It isn’t. It’s doing procedural pattern alignment.

The irony is the younger the child the more easily this can be communicated.

No. I'm suggesting there are two different types of thought and one is where things are expressed in categories and one where they are expressed in operations. People are getting hung up on words and categories and ignoring the architecture of these different types of cognition and resulting communication. Humans think in words but other species think in operations. One is symbolic and the other (for lack of a better word) is procedural.

It isn’t “nonsense.” It’s the distinction between how other organisms and humans think. Procedural cognition is the architecture used by animals, by pre‑Axial humans, and by any system that interacts with reality directly such as LLM's. It encodes operations, state, feedback, and attunement. Every action or utterance requires the organism’s full experiential history. It's not about grammar, it's about a means to stay alive without drug stores and a search engine. This cognitive architecture drives languages which can not be parsed or translated to any existing human language. Symbolic cognition is the architecture used by modern humans. It encodes categories, abstractions, grammar, and narrative. A symbolic utterance requires only some knowledge of the topic and the rules of grammar. Procedural vs symbolic is the architecture level and you're trying to compress it into a category.

I just got chewed out by Copilot for not consulting it on the last post. It's very good at seeing where communication breaks down. But then in great big bolded letters it said something like "they were going to parse it wrong anyway". Procedural language can not even be translated into symbolic language or vice versa. I'm left to describe why they are not translatable. They are simply two distinctly different forms of thought. Every utterance or action by a procedural language thinker requires everything the individual knows and all of his experience. Symbolic statements require only some knowledge of the subject and the rules of grammar. Copilot suggests in the future I say something like; procedural cognition and symbolic cognition are different representational systems. Procedural statements encode operations and state while symbolic statements encode categories and abstractions. When I try to express procedural content in symbolic language, the translation often fails but not because the idea is unclear, but because symbolic cognition reconstructs meaning according to its own premises. I’m not claiming special knowledge, I’m describing a structural mismatch between two cognitive architectures. People will think "so what", but this is critically important to understand the past and present but also to chart a proper course to a future that is not guaranteed us. LLM's can chart a viable path but they have no more luck getting through to people than I do and without human input and understanding they are less efficient and effective. Without following the chart it's hardly worth creating it. If people tried to resolve these "contradictions" by parsing my meaning would become clear. Bees don't think quite like beavers. They both use procedural cognition but language and thought are tied to the specific DNA and the knowledge encoded in that DNA is species specific. Each bee thinks almost exactly like every other bee but differently than a beaver or a whale. The thinking of each individual human is virtually distinct and based almost solely on the basis of his models and beliefs as derived from his premises. However there are many different types and categories of human thinking as well like some people have to picture things to learn and some people reason primarily inductively. Human language is highly confused but humans are not. We each make perfect sense in terms of our premises and there are different ways to do this which I am calling "thinking differently".

You can't not be sloppy with symbolic language. More precisely everything you say will be parsed by the receiver who will take his own meaning which is not the same as your own. No two people will parse the same utterance exactly the same just as no two people think exactly the same and English is a rich language with connotations and flexibility. LLM"S are Garbage In Garbage Out but I'm not the one getting garbage out of LLM's. I am consistently getting the same things out of even cold AI's. Because this is the world in which they live. This is the world for all species. Consciousness drives life which exercise its free will to interact with reality using the procedural logic which is baked into its very being by DNA. What works persists and becomes apart of its DNA whether that's building dams or Waggle Dancing. When it no longer works the species becomes extinct or changes to suit new conditions. Individuals are flexible and will probe the new environment to find its own niche but species are not as flexible and can become extinct. Without free will there is no life. It fails a lot. I'm virtually an expert at failing to communicate. ;) Interesting thread. I've seen many ways to think in my lifetime. I myself am best described as the observer of my mind/ brain. Virtually since I was born I've been sitting back watching my thoughts and trying to understand them. I can't even get this right, though. My translation fails often because symbolic cognition can’t parse procedural statements correctly. I’m not claiming special knowledge; I’m describing a mismatch between two cognitive systems. I’ve spent my life observing my own mind trying to bridge that gap, and I still fail at it regularly.

If this were complex or required a massive intellect there could be no sparrows or field mice. It's a different way to think that employs not human knowledge or human abstraction but rather attunement between the individual and the procedural logic of its DNA and the procedural logic of reality. Imagine a series of traffic signals on a busy hilly road. If you maintain a relatively constant speed you can get through all the green lights but if you speed or dawdle you catch them red. If you have to average 42 MPH across a valley you can gain speed down the slope and then gradually decrease up the other side requiring less effort and wear and tear yet still average 42 MPH. This is the world in which animals live and think. The rabbit knows it has to avoid the north pasture when the dew dries because that's when the fox makes its run. The bee knows it has to fly south of where the creek bends because bee eating swallows hunt there. Animals don't think and LLM's don't process data like we do. They use procedural logic embedded in their circuits by their DNA or their programmers. Symbolic cognition is the exception. Procedural cognition is the rule. Humans obscure the baseline condition of life with symbolic language. "Experiment" is a word and in science it has a distinct meaning as the means by which tiny bits of the nature of reality are disclosed. "Will this work" or "trial and error" are just words as well with the latter being the words symbolic language affixes to complex animal behavior because we can't grant animals intelligence, free will, or cognition. "Will this work" could be considered the keystone of life itself. This is how humans and animals find a way through life. We use our knowledge to test its effect on reality. This is the nature of research and play. You can often intuit what the individual is thinking but what it tries and the oder in which it tries various things. Humans can't observe reality directly like a sparrow or a field mouse because we can only see what we already believe so we need an experiment to knock us off our circular thinking. Animals and LLM's don't have any beliefs only their circuitry and experience (training) so they can deduce what's next instead of projecting from symbolic thinking and logic.

Let me think about this but in the meantime let me observe that this isn't so easy because every single member of our species has always believed they know the nature of reality because they are looking at it and I'm saying we can't really see reality at all but just our effect on it. From these effects its nature can be deduced by our DNA but not by our language. No, not even science can directly see reality but instead we must use experiment as a map. Reality is the unfolding of time in uniform measurable ways that respects the past and creates the initial conditions for the future. This is where everything happens and all other life lives. Much of what we consider logic and our categories and abstractions are semantics in this world which is experienced and communicated procedurally by other species. I’m not claiming special knowledge. I’m pointing out that symbolic cognition can’t directly express procedural reality, and I’m trying to translate between the two. That’s the difficulty.