4 minutes ago, KJW said:

What about photographs, or music?

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.

48 minutes ago, cladking said:

All modern human human languages are symbolic and all non-symbolic languages are procedural.

This is where you disagree with the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, which has a whole chapter on various forms of sigh language, as procedural.

Further you keep talking about communicating a message, yet contradicting yourself by saying that only the 'receiver ' has means to understand the meaning, implying that the generator of the message has no control over the message and ignoring intent.

Also you keep ignoring my poet who uses language to generate meaning in the receiver's mind, a meaning that may not be the same as intended, but nevertheless acceptable to the receiver.

For instance the poet may intend the receiver to happy or sad or whatever and succeed in that but not for the reasons he originally though of.

Two corrections:

3 hours ago, cladking said:

You can't paraphrase a computer program.

That is incorrect in the context of computer science . You can often rewrite, refactor, translate, or optimize a program while preserving its behavior. Compiler optimizations are also semantics-preserving transformations.

2 hours ago, cladking said:

Computational languages are procedural as well.

In computer science; "procedural" has specific meaning. A counter example; SQL. Procedural languages such as C describe how things should be done. SQL is nonprocedural and describes what should be done.

(Note: I do not know in the more general sense how your labels “symbolic” and “procedural” map onto established science; I comment only from computer science perspective.)

Edited Wednesday at 07:25 PM2 days by Ghideon

30 minutes ago, Ghideon said:

(Note: I do not know in the more general sense how your labels “symbolic” and “procedural” map onto established science; I comment only from computer science perspective.)

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?

4 hours ago, cladking said:

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).

Humans only parse and no procedural languages can be parsed?

I think one issue here is that “parse” has three definitions and some equivocation might be going on here. If you apply the same definition, this implies you are claiming humans can’t look at computer code and understand what the code will do, because it’s procedural.

How do you know that bees don’t parse the waggle dance?

2 hours ago, studiot said:

This is where you disagree with the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, which has a whole chapter on various forms of sigh language, as procedural.

Further you keep talking about communicating a message, yet contradicting yourself by saying that only the 'receiver ' has means to understand the meaning, implying that the generator of the message has no control over the message and ignoring intent.

Also you keep ignoring my poet who uses language to generate meaning in the receiver's mind, a meaning that may not be the same as intended, but nevertheless acceptable to the receiver.

For instance the poet may intend the receiver to happy or sad or whatever and succeed in that but not for the reasons he originally though of.

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.

2 hours ago, cladking said:

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.

I don't care what copilot put up (it doesn't think).

This nonsense is as bad as Pope Gregory v Bruno or Galileo or Plato's cave shadows and about as far from the original topic as one can get.

Edited Wednesday at 11:11 PM2 days by studiot

2 hours ago, cladking said:

. I'm using the word to mean language that reflects the logic of DNA directly within species or.....

Please define in clear language what you mean by "the logic of DNA." Are you somehow trying to map the coding of protein synthesis by base pairs onto something other than making proteins? What is meant by "reflecting the logic" ? This is vague and unscientific - sounds a bit like dorm philosophizing.

2 hours ago, cladking said:

We make up abstractions to expand the range of ideas we can communicate and then we mistake our categories for reality.

Who is "we"? Not everyone thinks symbols are reality, nor that maps are the territory. I think a fair number of people understand that categories are ways of mentally organizing perceptions or emotions or imaginings and not the things or patterns or feelings themselves. Words denote, connote, refer.

We understand that abstraction is compression, in information science. I can say "the wild street dogs of Istanbul" without having to compose a lengthy string which points to every single wild dog within the city limits..."there's Abdul, there's Jeff, there's Old One-Eye, there's Monseigneur Tripod...." We know they're all being referred to. We grasp that the category reference is not actually the furry butt sniffers themselves - it's a verbal act (please see Saul Kripke's causal theory of reference) of denotation passed through a community.

Edited Wednesday at 11:57 PM2 days by TheVat

21 hours ago, cladking said:

Bees find the flowers, ants operate their cities, prairie dogs maintain their colonies, dolphins coordinate hunts, and we can observe computers.

Sure, it's largely assumption that bees never go to the wrong place and that hive collapse isn't related to communication problems (they go out and don't come back so that's getting lost not going to the wrong place). Nature is brutal to bad behavior and that brutality assures the bad behavior will not be replicated in the gene pool. I might remind you too, that these are all just animals that are highly successful with tiny little brains and no abstractions. Any language lacking abstraction will be shown to be procedural language based on logic rather than shared referents.

Animals can survive with almost no brain at all. How big is a mite's brain?

I can't “know” animal communication is flawless in the symbolic sense but the question itself is symbolic. Nature always propels individuals toward proper behavior because their DNA is procedural logic of what has worked in the past. If it quits working than the species might become extinct.

I would be very interested in reading about any research comparing symbolic thought in humans to other species. Do you have any links?

1 hour ago, studiot said:

I don't care what copilot put up (it doesn't think).

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.

23 minutes ago, npts2020 said:

I would be very interested in reading about any research comparing symbolic thought in humans to other species. Do you have any links?

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.

29 minutes ago, cladking said:

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.

I'm not interested in what an LLM "thinks", I am interested in what facts humans have accumulated in reference to the subject. I strongly disagree that thought is a product of language. It takes a relatively long time to learn a language but even babies are capable of some thought, even if they lack the language necessary to communicate that thought.

19 hours ago, cladking said:

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.

Not everyone makes sense to everyone, for instance two people from different culture's, definitely struggle and without a shared premise have very little chance to comunicate, luckily we all share a need to eat, drink and sleep, so we all share a fundamental premise; that's not true of an AI human interaction, anything you gain from your interaction with 'your' AI is ultimately from your own projections and so, at best, it's circular reasoning, like in "Taxy driver" the mirror scene "You talkin to me"...

As an example, this post screams of trying to sound convincing, from a vox box of misunderstood aphorisms.

Edited Thursday at 10:51 AM2 days by dimreepr

1 hour ago, npts2020 said:

I'm not interested in what an LLM "thinks", I am interested in what facts humans have accumulated in reference to the subject. I strongly disagree that thought is a product of language. It takes a relatively long time to learn a language but even babies are capable of some thought, even if they lack the language necessary to communicate that thought.

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.

28 minutes ago, cladking said:

If your lights dimmed just now it's because my LLM needed the power.

No shit Sherlock, did it show you pictures of fairies?

36 minutes ago, cladking said:

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

Abstract

There has been much discussion recently about the scope and limits of purely symbolic models of the mind and about the proper role of connectionism in cognitive modeling. This paper describes the “symbol grounding problem”: How can the semantic interpretation of a formal symbol system be made intrinsic to the system, rather than just parasitic on the meanings in our heads? How can the meanings of the meaningless symbol tokens, manipulated solely on the basis of their (arbitrary) shapes, be grounded in anything but other meaningless symbols? The problem is analogous to trying to learn Chinese from a Chinese/Chinese dictionary alone. A candidate solution is sketched: Symbolic representations must be grounded bottom-up in nonsymbolic representations of two kinds: (1) iconic representations, which are analogs of the proximal sensory projections of distal objects and events, and (2) categorical representations, which are learned and innate feature detectors that pick out the invariant features of object and event categories from their sensory projections. Elementary symbols are the names of these object and event categories, assigned on the basis of their (nonsymbolic) categorical representations. Higher-order (3) symbolic representations, grounded in these elementary symbols, consist of symbol strings describing category membership relations (e.g. “An X is a Y that is Z”).

Connectionism is one natural candidate for the mechanism that learns the invariant features underlying categorical representations, thereby connecting names to the proximal projections of the distal objects they stand for. In this way connectionism can be seen as a complementary component in a hybrid nonsymbolic/symbolic model of the mind, rather than a rival to purely symbolic modeling. Such a hybrid model would not have an autonomous symbolic “module,” however; the symbolic functions would emerge as an intrinsically “dedicated” symbol system as a consequence of the bottom-up grounding of categories' names in their sensory representations. Symbol manipulation would be governed not just by the arbitrary shapes of the symbol tokens, but by the nonarbitrary shapes of the icons and category invariants in which they are grounded.

How is this anything to do with linear or non linear phenomena ?

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Not everyone makes sense to everyone, for instance two people from different culture's, definitely struggle and without a shared premise have very little chance to comunicate, luckily we all share a need to eat, drink and sleep, so we all share a fundamental premise; that's not true of an AI human interaction, anything you gain from your interaction with 'your' AI is ultimately from your own projections and so, at best, it's circular reasoning, like in "Taxy driver" the mirror scene "You talkin to me"...

As an example, this post screams of trying to sound convincing, from a vox box of misunderstood aphorisms.

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.

30 minutes ago, studiot said:

How is this anything to do with linear or non linear phenomena ?

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.

Interesting article from the BBC

BBC News

Artificial intelligence: Yann LeCun works on more flexibl...

Leading AI researcher Yan LeCun has a start-up which is developing a more flexible AI system.

AI is 'not smart' so what's next in artificial intelligence?

"They [LLMs] basically just accumulate knowledge... They can regurgitate something, you train them to regurgitate, but they're not particularly smart. They don't have an underlying understanding," he says.

His goal is to move AI beyond current systems like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. They have their uses, he says, but will never be able to tackle complicated situations in the real world, like getting a robot to do household chores.

"They're not a path towards human level or human-like intelligence, or even animal-like intelligence, because they cannot deal with real world data, they just are not built for that,"

22 hours ago, cladking said:

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.

This is exactly the response I'd expect from an AI, it's very human centric/biased, is it direct from your AI or do I detect a smattering of paraphrasing?

It's us humans that assume animal's lack assumptions, and it's us human's that assume we're uniquely human and so have a unique perspective on reality bc we're a magical type of animal that stands apart from nature.

After all you have stated that you are uniquely priveliged, in that you understand things better than a professional student, they don't just give PhD's away, willy nilly...

5 hours ago, dimreepr said:

This is exactly the response I'd expect from an AI, it's very human centric/biased, is it direct from your AI or do I detect a smattering of paraphrasing?

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.

5 hours ago, dimreepr said:

It's us humans that assume animal's lack assumptions, and it's us human's that assume we're uniquely human and so have a unique perspective on reality bc we're a magical type of animal that stands apart from nature.

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.

5 hours ago, dimreepr said:

After all you have stated that you are uniquely priveliged, in that you understand things better than a professional student, they don't just give PhD's away, willy nilly...

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.

On 7/2/2026 at 2:25 PM, cladking said:

On 7/2/2026 at 2:06 PM, studiot said:

How is this anything to do with linear or non linear phenomena ?

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.

If symbolic thought is not non linear are you then saying it must be linear ?

In what way must it be linear ?

20 minutes ago, studiot said:

If symbolic thought is not non linear are you then saying it must be linear ?

In what way must it be linear ?

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.

Edited 17 hours ago17 hr by cladking

17 minutes ago, cladking said:

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.

Yes it can be linear, but it may also be branching or entirely disconnected, both of which are non linear.

A fine example of non linearity would be a psychologist's word association Q & A session.

6 minutes ago, studiot said:

Yes it can be linear, but it may also be branching or entirely disconnected, both of which are non linear.

A fine example of non linearity would be a psychologist's word association Q & A session.

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.

2 hours ago, cladking said:

Each though and each part of thought follows the preceding.

This is indeed a characteristic of linear structures.

But it is also a characteristic on non linear structures.

For instance

A then B then C then D then E then F then G is linear

But

A then B then G then F then C then D is non linear.

In each case there is a sequence of preceding and following whatevers.

Any (computer) program that allows jumping, looping, branching etc is non linear and all the more useful for it.

17 hours ago, cladking said:

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.

If you don't know for sure, ultimately, it's just a guess and just luck if you're right.

It reminds me of a professional sportsman's take on luck "The more I practice, the luckier I get", it works for all professionals, even the thinkers. 😉

Just for clarity, I'm not a professional, the epithet I hope to achieve is, talented amateur.

An LLM will never have enough information to do more than just guess, bc being, even being a bee is more than the automation of a dry circuit, primarily bc our world is analogue/wet, which is impossible to reproduce digitally, ask your AI about a computers attempt to create a truely random number/event, and get back to me...

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by dimreepr