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Aristotle: There are no contradictions. Cassirer: “Only when we put away words will be able to reach the initial conditions, only then will we have direct perc

Aristotle: There are no contradictions. Cassirer: “Only when we put away words will be able to reach the initial conditions, only then will we have direct perception. All linguistic denotation is essentially ambiguous–and in this ambiguity, this “paronymia” of words is the source of all myths…this self-deception is rooted in language, which is forever making a game of the human mind, ever ensnaring it in that iridescent play of meanings…even theoretical knowledge becomes phantasmagoria; for even knowledge can never reproduce the true nature of things as they are but must frame their essence in “concepts.” Consequently all schemata which science evolves in order to classify, organize and summarize the phenomena of the real, turns out to be nothing but arbitrary schemes. So knowledge, as well as myth, language, and art, has been reduced to a kind of fiction–a fiction that recommends its usefulness, but must not be measured by any strict standard of truth, if it is not to melt away into nothingness.” Cassirer Language and Myth

utyop22 1y ago
This is beautiful. I also had a similar epiphany 3 days ago - once it hits you and you understand it, you can see clearly why LLMs are destined to crash and burn in their present form (good luck to those who will have to answer the questions regarding the money dumped into it). What will come out of the investment will not justify what has been invested (for anyone who thinks otherwise, PLEASE GO AHEAD AND DO A DCF VALUATION!) and it will have a depressing effect on future AI investment.
lo_zamoyski 1y ago
> Aristotle: There are no contradictions. I still don't know what this is supposed to mean, and I am not unfamiliar with Aristotle.
- Mallowram 1y ago
  If you don't grasp the basic ideas of paradox questioning the nature of language beginning in presocratics and winding their way through Aristotle, Socrates, Kant Hume and many others and also appearing in Advaita Vedanta (eg Nisargadatta), then I'm afraid staring here isn't really going to help you. Philosophy has ben questioning whether language is valid from the start. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-noncontradiction/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-noncontradictio...
  - joquarky 1y ago
    In my experience, it seems like most people believe that they are their thoughts. This is especially terrible for people with OCD, which seems to be common in this industry. I think it would be a valuable boost to mental health for them to at least explore some of the basic concepts in Vedanta and/or zen. What amuses me is how much my thoughts seem like a completion LLM while I'm meditating.
  - Shorel 1y ago
    You used too many words, and your argument depends on too many people, do you understand all of them?
    - Mallowram 1y ago
      Arguments are all built in neural-syntax specifics. How they externalize as arbitrary points is largely irrelevant, which demonstrates how humans go extinct: confusing the two. The basic 'fact' is words and the conduit metaphor paradox are never resolvable, they are inherently contradictory, which makes words almost entirely irrelevant, and gibberish. AI can never solve this because CS never began at first principles. In essence, AI is the most advanced demonstration of language's total irrelevance.
      - Shorel 1y ago
        Now I see your point. You are an absolutist. If something is not 100% perfect and works for all possible cases, then it is immediately worthless. Language being in that category. I also disagree with your point and your arguments. So many sentences in your response are blatantly false. You can win the Olympics of jumping to conclusions. Let's start with CS. CS is the set of first principles that are then applied to software. This is because CS is another branch of mathematics, starting with Boolean logic and discrete mathematics. Language relevance is shown here. We are using it right now. It is not a complete system because some ideas can't be expressed in language and some sentences in a logical system can't be proved or disproved, but the overwhelming majority of sentences are useful. And everything I have written is based on first principles, you can read about Gödel incompleteness theorem for a start. It applies to LLMs because it applies to all uses of language. Nothing is specific to neural networks. In fact, go and read about Gödel, because it proves that no logical system is complete, and your worldview seems to be dependent on the outdated assumption that there should be such a complete system. This includes all reasoning systems and all of mathematics.
- Shorel 1y ago
  The way I see it, Aristotle used language as a reasoning tool. Logic inference rules, modus ponens, and so on. Aristotle was also unaware of the incompleteness problem discovered by Gödel, that no reasoning tool of that type can be complete. There are fundamental contradictions in the nature of language, it however doesn't make them not useful for the entire experience of daily communication, all of literature, and so on. Just that there are affirmations that are true, but there is no set of rules that can prove them. I would point you to Gödel, Escher, Bach for a very nuanced discussion about this topic.
  - Mallowram 1y ago
    The problem of the GEB is it's containment in symbols. Godel was unaware of the the potential for direct perception, and ecological psychology, and coordination dynamics. All three are possible non-contradictory paths to direct perception. Time to put math aside and search for new possibility.

utyop22 1y ago

This is beautiful. I also had a similar epiphany 3 days ago - once it hits you and you understand it, you can see clearly why LLMs are destined to crash and burn in their present form (good luck to those who will have to answer the questions regarding the money dumped into it). What will come out of the investment will not justify what has been invested (for anyone who thinks otherwise, PLEASE GO AHEAD AND DO A DCF VALUATION!) and it will have a depressing effect on future AI investment.

lo_zamoyski 1y ago

> Aristotle: There are no contradictions. I still don't know what this is supposed to mean, and I am not unfamiliar with Aristotle.

Mallowram 1y ago
If you don't grasp the basic ideas of paradox questioning the nature of language beginning in presocratics and winding their way through Aristotle, Socrates, Kant Hume and many others and also appearing in Advaita Vedanta (eg Nisargadatta), then I'm afraid staring here isn't really going to help you. Philosophy has ben questioning whether language is valid from the start. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-noncontradiction/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-noncontradictio...
- joquarky 1y ago
  In my experience, it seems like most people believe that they are their thoughts. This is especially terrible for people with OCD, which seems to be common in this industry. I think it would be a valuable boost to mental health for them to at least explore some of the basic concepts in Vedanta and/or zen. What amuses me is how much my thoughts seem like a completion LLM while I'm meditating.
- Shorel 1y ago
  You used too many words, and your argument depends on too many people, do you understand all of them?
  - Mallowram 1y ago
    Arguments are all built in neural-syntax specifics. How they externalize as arbitrary points is largely irrelevant, which demonstrates how humans go extinct: confusing the two. The basic 'fact' is words and the conduit metaphor paradox are never resolvable, they are inherently contradictory, which makes words almost entirely irrelevant, and gibberish. AI can never solve this because CS never began at first principles. In essence, AI is the most advanced demonstration of language's total irrelevance.
    - Shorel 1y ago
      Now I see your point. You are an absolutist. If something is not 100% perfect and works for all possible cases, then it is immediately worthless. Language being in that category. I also disagree with your point and your arguments. So many sentences in your response are blatantly false. You can win the Olympics of jumping to conclusions. Let's start with CS. CS is the set of first principles that are then applied to software. This is because CS is another branch of mathematics, starting with Boolean logic and discrete mathematics. Language relevance is shown here. We are using it right now. It is not a complete system because some ideas can't be expressed in language and some sentences in a logical system can't be proved or disproved, but the overwhelming majority of sentences are useful. And everything I have written is based on first principles, you can read about Gödel incompleteness theorem for a start. It applies to LLMs because it applies to all uses of language. Nothing is specific to neural networks. In fact, go and read about Gödel, because it proves that no logical system is complete, and your worldview seems to be dependent on the outdated assumption that there should be such a complete system. This includes all reasoning systems and all of mathematics.
Shorel 1y ago
The way I see it, Aristotle used language as a reasoning tool. Logic inference rules, modus ponens, and so on. Aristotle was also unaware of the incompleteness problem discovered by Gödel, that no reasoning tool of that type can be complete. There are fundamental contradictions in the nature of language, it however doesn't make them not useful for the entire experience of daily communication, all of literature, and so on. Just that there are affirmations that are true, but there is no set of rules that can prove them. I would point you to Gödel, Escher, Bach for a very nuanced discussion about this topic.
- Mallowram 1y ago
  The problem of the GEB is it's containment in symbols. Godel was unaware of the the potential for direct perception, and ecological psychology, and coordination dynamics. All three are possible non-contradictory paths to direct perception. Time to put math aside and search for new possibility.