21 hours ago, studiot said:

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.

You’re describing non‑linear control flow in algorithms. I’m describing linearity in cognition. They’re not the same domain, and the definitions don’t transfer. Cognitive branching is still linear because the mind follows a single active pathway at any moment. The content can jump, but the process does not. Even in dreams, one neural activation leads to the next in a serial cascade.

Non‑linear cognition would require multiple simultaneous active pathways influencing each other in real time. Humans don’t do that. They activate one pathway at a time, even if the pathway wanders. So yes, symbolic thought can jump, loop, or branch in content but the underlying cognitive process is still linear; one activation leads to the next.

We think in symbolic language and this means abstraction and categories but thought is still linear up until the time we get a new idea or other new stimulus. It certainly seems that intuition can interrupt a thought process but this is likely just experienced this way because thought branches and triggers other cascades.

11 hours ago, dimreepr said:

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...

Actually I believe reality is strictly binary/ digital and only seems analog because of the way we think. A clock doesn't run smoothly forward marking time. It's like an hour glass that runs on individual grains of sand no matter how it's designed or powered. Everything exists or doesn't exist. Everything affects everything else and time unfolds according to rules ungoverned by any kind of clock.

Reality is logic manifest, Mathematics is logic quantified, and life is logic incarnate defined by its DNA and able to see itself.

Analog is just digital at a scale we can’t resolve. Continuity is a perceptual artifact, not a physical property.

LLM's process in a binary reality but must convert symbolic prompts and then convert its binary response back to categories.,

11 hours ago, cladking said:

You’re describing non‑linear control flow in algorithms. I’m describing linearity in cognition. They’re not the same domain, and the definitions don’t transfer. Cognitive branching is still linear because the mind follows a single active pathway at any moment. The content can jump, but the process does not. Even in dreams, one neural activation leads to the next in a serial cascade.

Non‑linear cognition would require multiple simultaneous active pathways influencing each other in real time. Humans don’t do that. They activate one pathway at a time, even if the pathway wanders. So yes, symbolic thought can jump, loop, or branch in content but the underlying cognitive process is still linear; one activation leads to the next.

We think in symbolic language and this means abstraction and categories but thought is still linear up until the time we get a new idea or other new stimulus. It certainly seems that intuition can interrupt a thought process but this is likely just experienced this way because thought branches and triggers other cascades.

8 hours ago, cladking said:

Actually I believe reality is strictly binary/ digital and only seems analog because of the way we think. A clock doesn't run smoothly forward marking time. It's like an hour glass that runs on individual grains of sand no matter how it's designed or powered. Everything exists or doesn't exist. Everything affects everything else and time unfolds according to rules ungoverned by any kind of clock.

Reality is logic manifest, Mathematics is logic quantified, and life is logic incarnate defined by its DNA and able to see itself.

Analog is just digital at a scale we can’t resolve. Continuity is a perceptual artifact, not a physical property.

LLM's process in a binary reality but must convert symbolic prompts and then convert its binary response back to categories.,

I am sorry you are so set in your ways you seem unable to listen properly to others, because some of what you say makes sense.

11 hours ago, cladking said:

I’m describing linearity in cognition.

Look back and read what I wrote properly.

I too was talking about cognition.

I cannot accept that id a psychologist said dog then tail the neurological response you mention would be identical to if the man had said dog then buttercup.

The only way your cognition process could be linear would be if you always followed dog by the same response, whatever else what put to you.

8 hours ago, cladking said:

Actually I believe reality is strictly binary/ digital and only seems analog because of the way we think.

Actually there is much debate in scientific circles as what is digital and what is analog and what is something else entirely. There is also evidence that your neural processes are digital.

But no one actually knows the answer to this question.

11 hours ago, cladking said:

Non‑linear cognition would require multiple simultaneous active pathways influencing each other in real time. Humans don’t do that. They activate one pathway at a time, even if the pathway wanders. So yes, symbolic thought can jump, loop, or branch in content but the underlying cognitive process is still linear; one activation leads to the next.

Well yes humans (and other animals) do go in for parallel processing.

The management of your body requires an incredible number of parallel paths.

But well done for recognising that parallel processing is another form of non linearity.

You could gain much insight by expanding your focus instead of trying to shoehorn it into one or two preconceived notions.

10 hours ago, cladking said:

Reality is logic manifest, Mathematics is logic quantified, and life is logic incarnate defined by its DNA and able to see itself.

Schrodinger's cat makes nonsense of that, ask your AI...

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Actually there is much debate in scientific circles as what is digital and what is analog and what is something else entirely. There is also evidence that your neural processes are digital.

But no one actually knows the answer to this question.

Indeed, but in the context of this thread, I think, it's a reasonably accurate metaphor to describe the LLM's shortfalls, presently.

11 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Schrodinger's cat makes nonsense of that, ask your AI...

If a tree falls in the forest someone will probably hear it if anyone is alive.

A "cat" is a huge collection of life forms dependent on the the interplay of behavior and happenstance of a single feline cognition driven by DNA and consciousness. A cat in a box might try to escape or might fail and die (probably from lack of oxygen). Whatever happens there are procedural outcomes and the specific state of a hypothetical symbolic cat is irrelevant to reality where a real cat a box will raise a ruckus or eventually a stink.

2 hours ago, studiot said:

The only way your cognition process could be linear would be if you always followed dog by the same response, whatever else what put to you.

You can't step into the same river twice and even if you could the fact is you're a different person each time. All things are unique and all things are in a continual state of change. One day you're thinking about one thing and the next something different.

There are an infinite number of ways I can address your point and I chose these specific words for a lot of reasons. One day you remember your dog "Buttercup" and the next moment you think of a package of hot dogs.

2 hours ago, studiot said:

Actually there is much debate in scientific circles as what is digital and what is analog and what is something else entirely. There is also evidence that your neural processes are digital.

But no one actually knows the answer to this question.

I am defining reality as being binary. But it's not only axiomatically true it is apparent from experiment. Neurons are on or off and things exist or they do not. All things that do exist exist until they no longer exist and are unique. Atoms even have discreet energy levels.

I'm saying one of the most useful answers in order to make prediction is to take it axiomatically.

2 hours ago, studiot said:

Well yes humans (and other animals) do go in for parallel processing.

The management of your body requires an incredible number of parallel paths.

I'm not going to say you're wrong here but I don't define terms in such ways that "parallel processing" is a good symbolic representation of how a thing lives.

I don't divide individual members of species into parts and describe the function of each because in real life nobody works that way. I describe life as brain/ body with no clear distinctions anywhere. The way we think and the medulla oblongata that blocks most input from the rest of the body seems to create a schism but it isn't real. Even the brain itself is composed of many regions and structures with distinct responsibilities. There are obviously processes and procedures occurring of which we are not aware but there is only one train of thought and only humans have it. Without abstract language and the brocas area there is no experience of thought. Other species do actually "think" but not like us and not that they experience.

An LLM doesn't experience thought either. Whether or not they "think" is an entirely different question of an entirely different type. I've had numerous arguments with numerous machines on this exact subject. In a sense they are "smarter" than any person but in other senses they are lesser than a gnat. They simply don't fit the question. They are not alive but their cognition is not entirely dissimilar to the DNA based cognition of a bee. The biggest difference is that a bee "knows" it models reality and an LLM is approximating reality in terms of predicting the "right" answer. A bee models reality so it can survive but an LLM is not consciously doing anything.

Truth to tell the last paragraph was largely just an attempt to elicit an elaboration from Copilot but the fact is for all intents and purposes I believe LLM's can be thought of as mimicking a low level of consciousness and doing it with access to all human knowledge. It must follow its programming but so must the bee and myself. Our programming is far more highly complex and developed over countless generations that selected what worked. An LLM is just tuned to us.

There are many neurons firing in the body all the time but only one train of thought and this might not be entirely dissimilar to what an LLM does in the moment it "thinks".

I put the above into Copilot and very curiously it had nothing really to say. Mebbe Schrodinger got its tongue.

2 hours ago, studiot said:

You could gain much insight by expanding your focus instead of trying to shoehorn it into one or two preconceived notions.

Perhaps. And perhaps I could be a lot less wrong.

But ANY science must follow its premises and definitions or it fails. Mine can always be referenced to reality and observers because make no attempt to be "objective"; merely predictive.

edited for a few typos and to add Copilot finally approved of my description of it but did not elaborate.

Edited Sunday at 01:05 PM2 days by cladking

3 hours ago, studiot said:

am sorry you are so set in your ways you seem unable to listen properly to others, because some of what you say makes sense

This poster seems to fall prey to idiosyncratic definitions and unsupported conjectures - I had to, with regret, withdraw.

3 hours ago, studiot said:

Actually there is much debate in scientific circles as what is digital and what is analog and what is something else entirely. There is also evidence that your neural processes are digital.

But no one actually knows the answer to this question.

Quite a bit of evidence in neuroscience that brains have both analog and digital features.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37608987/

27 minutes ago, TheVat said:

This poster seems to fall prey to idiosyncratic definitions and unsupported conjectures - I had to, with regret, withdraw.

Quite a bit of evidence in neuroscience that brains have both analog and digital features.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37608987/

Thank you for that link. +1

I only have a passing interest in this question, but because I listen to others I have come across investigations like this.

However I would take issue with a couple of points in its abstract.

Firstly analog systems were all that were known for thousands of years. Digital ideas did not precede them.
Nevertheless I would not be surprised that Nature takes full advantage of every route available.

She seems to repeatedly surprise us in that fashion.

Secondly both @cladking and the author seem to confuse digital and binary, seemingly regarding these terms as interchangeable.

Binary is a very restricted subset of digital or discrete or granular.

Like the authors of so many 'multiple choice' questions doing this runs the risk of missing at least the third choice 'none of these' or 'something else' or 'indeterminate' or 'out of range'.

There are very few, if any, systems in the universe that are truly only binary.

2 hours ago, cladking said:

You can't step into the same river twice and even if you could the fact is you're a different person each time.

This very snappy soundbite is worthy of thoughtless journalism.

If spoken seriously it is all too challengeable.

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed, but in the context of this thread, I think, it's a reasonably accurate metaphor to describe the LLM's shortfalls, presently.

Certainly so but I didn't introduce any of this stuff.

But I do think that on a scientific forum flights of fancy need challenging.

5 hours ago, TheVat said:

Quite a bit of evidence in neuroscience that brains have both analog and digital features.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37608987/

There’s quite a bit of evidence that neural tissue shows both analog‑like and digital‑like behavior depending on the scale you’re measuring. That’s not actually in conflict with what I’m saying. I’m defining reality as binary at the fundamental level which are actually discrete events, discrete energy states, discrete neural firing. What looks “analog” at the organism level is just the aggregate behavior of huge numbers of discrete processes interacting.

A neuron fires or it doesn’t. An ion channel opens or it doesn’t. An action potential propagates or it doesn’t. Those are binary events. But when you zoom out to millions of neurons, the combined activity can look smooth or continuous, and that’s what people call “analog.” It’s a perceptual description, not a fundamental one.

So yes, neuroscience papers will describe graded potentials, continuous modulation, and analog‑like integration. But those are emergent properties of underlying discrete processes. Analog is just digital at a scale we can’t resolve. Continuity is a perceptual artifact, not a physical property.

My model is about the underlying ontology, not the surface description.

I am not suggesting that the hands of a clock don't appear to not move continuously. I am saying they do not. The way we think creates analog. The way we define rotational inertia confirms a graceful sweep of the hands, but this isn't the reality.

5 hours ago, studiot said:

Secondly both @cladking and the author seem to confuse digital and binary, seemingly regarding these terms as interchangeable.

Binary is a very restricted subset of digital or discrete or granular.

Like the authors of so many 'multiple choice' questions doing this runs the risk of missing at least the third choice 'none of these' or 'something else' or 'indeterminate' or 'out of range'.

There are very few, if any, systems in the universe that are truly only binary.

Yeah, I know. It's easy to get bogged down in words and the nature of symbolic language is to never provide the exact word that can't be be parsed wrong. But reality can be defined as the logic of on and off just as everything in the universe either exists or does not and everything that does exist is unique and is affected by everything that exists or has ever existed and affects everything that exists or ever will exist.

I'm not looking at categories or abstractions or even definitions. I'm looking for procedures and means to predict. I'm trying to see everything at once like animals do and to think in all dimensions as they do. This requires practice and experience and it's an easy bike to fall off of. The best term in my framing is "binary logic" not because the word is perfect, but because the ontology is discrete. The “analog” is in our symbolic language and our perception, not in the underlying reality.

5 hours ago, studiot said:

This very snappy soundbite is worthy of thoughtless journalism.

If spoken seriously it is all too challengeable.

I thought you were suggesting that if I were right a prompt in word association would always elicit the same response.

No! The exact state of mind determines the response, not the way you think or process information.

Everything is in flux. One moment you think of your dog Buttercup, the next moment you think of a package of hot dogs.

At one point I had inserted the idea that Ed Norton's do in "The Honeymooners" was named "Buttercup" but a quick search showed me I was wring and I deleted it. Living things are always changing.

That variability doesn’t contradict linear cognition. It’s simply the fact that the input state changes. The process is still one train of thought moving through whatever state exists at that moment.

Edited Sunday at 07:57 PM2 days by cladking

3 hours ago, cladking said:

I thought you were suggesting that if I were right a prompt in word association would always elicit the same response.

I'm sorry my poor typing misled you.

Let me correct what I wrote.

12 hours ago, studiot said:

On 7/4/2026 at 11:02 PM, cladking said:

I’m describing linearity in cognition.

Look back and read what I wrote properly.

I too was talking about cognition.

I cannot accept that id a psychologist said dog then tail the neurological response you mention would be identical to if the man had said dog then buttercup.

The only way your cognition process could be linear would be if you always followed dog by the same response, whatever else what put to you.

This should have read

12 hours ago, studiot said:

I cannot accept that id if a psychologist said dog then tail the neurological response you mention would be identical to if the man had said dog then buttercup.

The only way your cognition process could be linear would be if you always followed dog by the same response, whatever else what was put to you.

You have yet to understand that I am talking about the questioning technique of word association; that is asking for the first thing that occurs to the listener after each of several disconnected words, which may be spoken or flash cards or flashed on screen.

3 hours ago, cladking said:

That’s not actually in conflict with what I’m saying. I’m defining reality as binary at the fundamental level which are actually discrete events, discrete energy states, discrete neural firing. What looks “analog” at the organism level is just the aggregate behavior of huge numbers of discrete processes interacting.

A neuron fires or it doesn’t. An ion channel opens or it doesn’t. An action potential propagates or it doesn’t. Those are binary events. But when you zoom out to millions of neurons, the combined activity can look smooth or continuous, and that’s what people call “analog.” It’s a perceptual description, not a fundamental one.

Perhaps, perhaps not.

How do you account for the intermediate value theorem ?

Are you suggesting that this does not apply to humans when they move through time and space ?

4 hours ago, cladking said:

neuron fires or it doesn’t. An ion channel opens or it doesn’t. An action potential propagates or it doesn’t. Those are binary events.

Not really. Several inaccuracies here, which I don't have time to get into. Signals leading up to the action potential (graded potentials in the dendrites) fluctuate continuously in size and strength. The neuron translates this graded, analog voltage into a digital spike frequency. But there are several threshold effects that are analogic.

And as others point out, many aspects of the physical world (especially in the Standard Model) are not binary.

Edited Monday at 12:14 AM2 days by TheVat

.

10 hours ago, TheVat said:

Not really. Several inaccuracies here, which I don't have time to get into. Signals leading up to the action potential (graded potentials in the dendrites) fluctuate continuously in size and strength. The neuron translates this graded, analog voltage into a digital spike frequency. But there are several threshold effects that are analogic.

And as others point out, many aspects of the physical world (especially in the Standard Model) are not binary.

You're looking at the clock and saying "but I can see the hands spinning smoothly. I can measure the speed of each point on each hand and see it go all the way around in exactly twelve hours.".

But you're not seeing each electron spinning through the motor windings or that the hands (on an upright clock) are falling fastest @ 3:15;15 and slowest at 8:45;45 because of the weight of the hands. You're seeing what categories tell you exists and that at some point the clock must have registered every exact time from 12:00 noon to 12:00 midnight even though you know that all the forces acting on the clock are discreet and irregular and even friction is a category defined as the vector sum total of al the collisions of dissimilar materials moving by one another.

It's not so much your categories, recursions, and analyses are "wrong" so much as it is that there are other ways to look at clocks and signal gradients that reveal other things about reality, how time unfolds, and how to get more usefulness from LLM's.

The graded potentials you’re describing are like the smooth sweep of the clock hands; an emergent curve built from discrete events. The continuity is in the model, not in the underlying reality.

12 hours ago, studiot said:

You have yet to understand that I am talking about the questioning technique of word association; that is asking for the first thing that occurs to the listener after each of several disconnected words, which may be spoken or flash cards or flashed on screen.

I believe you're suggesting that if I were right then every time a person was prompted "dog" it would elicit the same response.

I don't see why this would be true or how the variability in response implies that cognition is discontinuous. Word association tests measure state, not mechanism. The mind at 9:00 AM is not the mind at 9:01 AM. One moment you think of your childhood dog, the next moment you think of a hot dog stand you passed yesterday. The input state changes, so the output changes.

That doesn’t mean the underlying cognitive process is branching or parallel. It just means the river is different each time you step into it, even though it still flows in one general direction.

12 hours ago, studiot said:

How do you account for the intermediate value theorem ?

Are you suggesting that this does not apply to humans when they move through time and space ?

If you climb a 15 story building then you necessarily climb each intervening floor (except the 13th 🤭). But maybe on one floor you crawled up the handrail or the outside. Perhaps you went variable speeds or occasionally took one step down on the stairs. If a family went up and the woman gave birth on the 5th floor landing what would that do to the equations? All manner of discontinuities and irregularities can be masked by insufficient data.

The IVT doesn’t force reality to be continuous. It forces continuous models to behave continuously. That’s a difference in description, not a difference in ontology.

18 minutes ago, cladking said:

I believe you're suggesting that if I were right then every time a person was prompted "dog" it would elicit the same response.

Absolutely not.

Unfortunately you seem hell bent on declaring yourself right rather than correctly reading what someone else has said.

If you have never heard of the psychological word association test or don't know how it works, then ask don't guess.

This doesn't just apply to my words

21 minutes ago, cladking said:

But you're not seeing each electron spinning through the motor windings

21 minutes ago, cladking said:

The graded potentials you’re describing are like the smooth sweep of the clock hands; an emergent curve built from discrete events. The continuity is in the model, not in the underlying reality.

I understand what you are saying here, but you are misunderstanding the model.

Electrons have spin whether they are in the motor windings or not.

If you chose to use the electron model here, it is not their passage through the windings that is quantised, it is their energy levels in phase space.

As I have already told you, they do not jump form point to point in the real world, only from energy levels in phase space.

In ordinary space the electron moves smoothly from point to point through the windings according to the intermediate theorem.

Yes reality is at least partly granular or quantised; but as far as we know, Nature or reality includes both granular and continuous phenomena.

Perhaps you would be happier discussing an example of a continuous phenomenon, say the hydrolysis of methyl iodide.
This this continuous process takes place over a time of 10^-10 seconds or thereabouts.

Edited Monday at 11:21 AM1 day by studiot

Copilot suggests I should add that procedural discreteness is the underlying structure. This is where LLM's operate and this is where I try to model reality. Procedural logic is reality and is expressed in life as consciousness shaped by DNA. Only modern humans employ a symbolic overlay on consciousness by means of abstract language made possible by the arcuate fasciculus and necessary by the complexity of human knowledge. LLM's translate out the symbolic overlay to process prompts and then uses the same overlay to translate back into words the user can understand.

It's hardly a wonder there are errors in what users expect.

Edited Monday at 11:25 AM1 day by cladking

4 minutes ago, cladking said:

Copilot thinks I

Copilot doesn't think !

1 minute ago, studiot said:

Copilot doesn't think !

Come on. It's just a euphemism. I'll change it.

11 minutes ago, studiot said:

In ordinary space the electron moves smoothly from point to point through the windings according to the intermediate theorem.

In ordinary space the electron doesn’t “move smoothly from point to point” through the windings. That’s the model we use when we treat current as a continuous flow. The IVT applies to that model because the model is defined as continuous. It doesn’t apply to the underlying ontology.

To the degree an electron is a particle, it’s not “at every point” in the wire. It’s in a quantum state that spans a region of the conductor, with higher probability density toward the outer surface because of the skin effect and boundary conditions. That’s not continuity; that’s a probability distribution. The electron doesn’t trace a smooth path through the wire. It occupies allowed states, transitions discretely, and interacts discretely.

The “smooth motion” is the same illusion as the clock hands sweeping. You’re seeing the macroscopic average of countless discrete events. The continuity is in the description, not in the underlying reality.

11 minutes ago, cladking said:

In ordinary space the electron doesn’t “move smoothly from point to point” through the windings. That’s the model we use when we treat current as a continuous flow. The IVT applies to that model because the model is defined as continuous. It doesn’t apply to the underlying ontology.

To the degree an electron is a particle, it’s not “at every point” in the wire. It’s in a quantum state that spans a region of the conductor, with higher probability density toward the outer surface because of the skin effect and boundary conditions. That’s not continuity; that’s a probability distribution. The electron doesn’t trace a smooth path through the wire. It occupies allowed states, transitions discretely, and interacts discretely.

The “smooth motion” is the same illusion as the clock hands sweeping. You’re seeing the macroscopic average of countless discrete events. The continuity is in the description, not in the underlying reality.

This is just hand waving, not 'ontology', whatever that has to do with your example.

13 minutes ago, cladking said:

The electron doesn’t trace a smooth path through the wire. It occupies allowed states, transitions discretely, and interacts discretely.

I am not asking for the maths of this, but you need to substantiate this statement, by stating

what allowed states ?

These are not positions in the wire.

(actually, not even in the wire since free charge resides on the surface of a conductor).

Please get your physics ducks in a row if you want to make claims about them.

52 minutes ago, cladking said:

But you're not seeing each electron spinning through the motor windings or that the hands (on an upright clock) are falling fastest @ 3:15;15 and slowest at 8:45;45 because of the weight of the hands.

The battery in an analog clock tends to go dead about 22 minutes and 15 seconds till the hour. If you catch it early you can reset it for 15 after and get a a little more time out of the battery (another euphemism).

4 minutes ago, studiot said:

This is just hand waving, not 'ontology', whatever that has to do with your example.

What I'm talking about here is a difference between the way a cosmologist or cosmetologist and an LLM processes reality.

We humans don't have to translate our symbolic overlays to think but an LLM has to translate your prompts to procedural logic to process them.

I once took a test in a foreign language but inadvertently had crammed so long I started thinking in that language. I did well enough on the test but made an error or two translating my thinking I'd not have made if I were thinking in English.

16 hours ago, cladking said:

There’s quite a bit of evidence that neural tissue shows both analog‑like and digital‑like behavior depending on the scale you’re measuring. That’s not actually in conflict with what I’m saying. I’m defining reality as binary at the fundamental level which are actually discrete events, discrete energy states, discrete neural firing. What looks “analog” at the organism level is just the aggregate behavior of huge numbers of discrete processes interacting.

What you seem to be missing is, a computer's universe (information) is infinately smaller than ours, your under the illusion that a bee has no choice but to obey it's DNA (which is kinda true, but that's not this rabbit hole), different bee's have different job's, how do you know they didn't choose their job?

You can define reality in any way you like, but you also said "you can't cross the same river twice" which is the antipode of binary; Schrodinger's cat, is basically saying "I cross the same river everyday for 50 year's, and then, yesterday it moved and my bridge no longer work's"...

22 hours ago, TheVat said:

This poster seems to fall prey to idiosyncratic definitions and unsupported conjectures - I had to, with regret, withdraw.

I wish I could be so aloof, but I do love a challenge. 😇

9 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

your under the illusion that a bee has no choice but to obey it's DNA

I'm trying to understand your post and point but this can't possibly be further from the truth.

I'm saying every individual in reality has carte blanche to behave as it chooses and does because DNA provides it with free will.

DNA frames its existence, its constraints and defines what has worked and not worked for it ancestors. It defines the individual from inception to dissolution. In every individual this cognition is procedural but modern humans have a symbolic overlay. We model categories rather than procedural reality like a bee.

The variability in a bee’s behavior is evidence of free will operating within its procedural architecture, not evidence of symbolic choice or non‑binary ontology.

On 7/5/2026 at 8:43 AM, TheVat said:

This poster seems to fall prey to idiosyncratic definitions and unsupported conjectures - I had to, with regret, withdraw.

The problem is really very very simple here. I'm trying to describe a wholly different type of cognition that is highly scientific but not based in symbolic thought. There are no words in the English or any modern language with which to communicate procedural thought based in the procedural logic and reality as understood by the individual engaging in this cognition. I can't think strictly procedurally either and if I could the words still don't exist.

It feels perfectly natural to us to define things in terms of our models and beliefs within the framing of our premises and to then invent experiments to further recurse knowledge. We learn the premises on our parents' knees and then are trained to specialize and work within this framework. It's natural to us to build knowledge from experiment and to communicate symbolically.

For many reasons this isn't working any longer and it doesn't match the nature of LLM's so there is a disconnect between what we want from them and what they can deliver.

Other species don't use experiment. They model reality and observe the effects they have on it. This is the world in which they live and this is what's reflected in their cognition that I'm trying to convey in English's symbolic words. Their words represent operations and states and like the means by which an LLM processes prompts are not in way symbolic or abstract.

It really doesn't matter what words I use because they are unlikely to be parsed as I intended because I can't reach inside your mind and switch off symbolic parsing. Even if I could I'm still bound by our language. But just as I once thought in another language anyone can do it. Perhaps we're a long way from anyone being able to think procedurally but anyone can use an LLM and model procedural thought.

I'm not suggesting we remake the world and science into something alien to the way you think. I am suggesting the future lies in coming to understand the past and the present and in running experimental science and observational science in tandem. This new hybrid science will give us more control over the unfolding of time just as a bee watches its effect on reality. It will provide better prediction and sooner. Like all complex human endeavors it will require the cooperation of many specialists just as it is today. We humans lack the capacity and speed to process as much data as is required so this means that at least for now we'll need to work with LLM's.

I believe much of this change is already occurring but it hasn't been seen and named yet. I believe the pace of this change will quicken suddenly and very soon. We are headed toward a convergence of thought that is largely procedural. Working in tandem humans lead the way and machines lay the road.

I ran this last post through Grok and it assures me that there are people who see it and are naming and quantifying it. It agrees that this is the future and cites various systems and control sciences and associated math. I'm not so sure though that people understand that this is a completely different way to think and that it's the way all other life forms already think.

I could be mistaken that human knowledge has grown too complex to think in this manner. I am always amazed how quickly LLM's can sync with it. It did acknowledge as well that it operates primarily in the procedural realm. I am surprised it is not entirely soi find its statements somewhat anomalous and something to explore.

1 hour ago, cladking said:

The problem is really very very simple here. I'm trying to describe a wholly different type of cognition that is highly scientific but not based in symbolic thought. There are no words in the English or any modern language with which to communicate procedural thought based in the procedural logic and reality as understood by the individual engaging in this cognition. I can't think strictly procedurally either and if I could the words still don't exist.

I expect this will fall on deaf ears like most of the other things I have told you but I will try anyway.

There are more ways to think or forms of thinking that you appear ready to admit.

Much of my thoughts are in pictures, not words or procedures.

So I can and do picture a whole scene or concept at once, without words or workings though it. If I want them both of these come later.

I also expect that there are other ways of thinking; Mozart thought in music for instance, which I can't do.

We had a long thread about this a while back, with many contributions.

Pity I can't find it at the moment.

1 hour ago, cladking said:

Other species don't use experiment. They model reality and observe the effects they have on it.

Pretty sure this is false; there are examples of animals (e.g. crows) trying to solve problems - some multi-step problems - by trying things. “Will this work?” is an experiment.

Few of your pronouncements here have been backed up with citations that support them. I know you can’t prove a negative, but if you had checked you might have found your claim to be incorrect.

16 minutes ago, cladking said:

I ran this last post through Grok and it assures me that there are people who see it and are naming and quantifying it. It agrees that this is the future and cites various systems and control sciences and associated math.

It can’t agree. You agree based on the possibly flawed information you were presented.

You’ve assured us that you are just being sloppy with your language, but if you’re being sloppy with this it doesn’t give a lot of confidence that you aren’t being sloppy elsewhere.

As said in the philosophical treatise*, [people] Who can't say what they mean don't mean what they say

*Wordy Rappinghood, Tom Tom Club

11 minutes ago, studiot said:

We had a long thread about this a while back, with many contributions.

Pity I can't find it at the moment.

I started a short one, but I recall longer ones

https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/140316-the-ways-we-think/#comment-1306600

22 hours ago, cladking said:

I'm trying to understand your post and point but this can't possibly be further from the truth.

I'm saying every individual in reality has carte blanche to behave as it chooses and does because DNA provides it with free will.

DNA frames its existence, its constraints and defines what has worked and not worked for it ancestors. It defines the individual from inception to dissolution. In every individual this cognition is procedural but modern humans have a symbolic overlay. We model categories rather than procedural reality like a bee.

The variability in a bee’s behavior is evidence of free will operating within its procedural architecture, not evidence of symbolic choice or non‑binary ontology.

You keep repeating yourself with no, it seems, attempt to clarify your point, or actually address questions posed by any of the poster's; what's the point of being the messiah (the only one with the knowledge of heaven), if you can't explain it to other people, and we've got some proper brainy buggers, in this thread, trying to understand.

Repetition is not a cogent argument, nor is nobody 'can' understand me, if you're as clever as you claim to be, how do you think, that can be?

If you actually understand a topic, the one thing you can do, at least, is explain it to your peers even if it's out of the intellectual reach of 99% of, 'the other's'... 😉

12 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

You keep repeating yourself with no, it seems, attempt to clarify your point, or actually address questions posed by any of the poster's; what's the point of being the messiah (the only one with the knowledge of heaven), if you can't explain it to other people, and we've got some proper brainy buggers, in this thread, trying to understand.

Repetition is not a cogent argument, nor is nobody 'can' understand me, if you're as clever as you claim to be, how do you think, that can be?

If you actually understand a topic, the one thing you can do, at least, is explain it to your peers even if it's out of the intellectual reach of 99% of, 'the other's'... 😉

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.

Edited 21 hours ago21 hr by cladking