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1 (Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
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2
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3 [Speaker 1] (0:05 - 1:30)
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4 If we talk about, not only about Sussman, but let's say, and what he meant by empirical or something, but just we talk about, well, the things we're talking about, the three parts, the base model, the Delta that turns it into a question answering machine, and the prompt engineering that turns a particular prompt into a particular prompt, basically, particular question into a particular prompt, say. And we talk for half an hour about that, and we end up using the word prompt for that which the third part of our tripartite distinction has turned a question into.
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5
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6 That's right.
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7
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8 [Speaker 2] (1:31 - 1:33)
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9 Yeah. So far, so good.
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10
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11 [Speaker 1] (1:35 - 2:35)
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12 What prompt means in our discourse at that moment is not something that necessarily could be propositionally expressed, even though I just used words to communicate it with you about it. But there's no reason to suspect the kinds of understanding that I can evoke with things like early Pereira or something should actually have, well, the form of articulation that we assume propositions have. So, I don't think, and, you know, take poetry as a kind of limit example.
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13
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14 [Speaker 2] (2:36 - 2:36)
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15 Yeah.
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16
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17 [Speaker 1] (2:36 - 3:10)
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18 I don't think there's any reason to suspect that the understanding process is ever, I mean, I think something needs to be said about articulation in the original sense of being hinged. But I guess poetry is unhinged.
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19
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20 [Speaker 2] (3:13 - 5:36)
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21 Oh, absolutely. That's crucially important. That never occurred to me before.
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22
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23 Maybe it did, because I feel like, boy, it just takes a minute. Sorry. No, no, it just takes me a minute to come up with a name when I need it.
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24
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25 So, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Raoul Williams, who was a prodigious intellect and whose Archbishopric founded, as so many of them have over the last 40 years over the marriage equality issue within the Anglican, the international Anglican community, um, wrote a book and gave a lecture, a series of lectures, a series of lectures, possibly even Gifford lectures, about the necessity of poetic discourse in the face of the divine, the infinite, whatever, you know, what he had spent his life promulgating. You know, it was, you could almost view it as an, and at the end of his, of his time in that role, a sort of apology pro vita sua in terms of the defense of, of the creed, which attempts to be wholly explicit about something, which he in the end feels it's impossible to be even, even usefully explicit, much less wholly explicit. And I feel guilty that I've never bought or tried to read the book, but I felt like I got most of what, the lectures were brilliant.
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26
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27 And of course, you know, illustrated by lots of good, impenetrable, more or less penetrable poetry. Um, but that's something that it's, you never know where you're going to find somebody trying to share the same thought.
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28
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29 [Speaker 1] (5:39 - 5:53)
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30 Well, I mean, this conversation we're having is a good example of what does poetry mean, right? We've already bent it like a, yeah, like a string on an electric guitar.
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31
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32 [Speaker 2] (5:55 - 6:56)
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33 But that's what language is good for. I mean, again, this is, this is Robin Cooper's, you remember Robin, perhaps from the old days, his point that it's fundamental to the success of language, that what you understand by what I say is not what I meant by it. I'm exaggerating only slightly, right?
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34
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35 He, somewhere, I don't know if he ever even wrote this. He used to give a critique of the so-called conduit metaphor, um, by saying, you know, it's, it's, that's, that's not just unhelpful. It's, it's incoherent.
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36
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37 You can't take whatever my mental structures are and inject them into somebody else's brain by any means and get any useful results.
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38
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39 [Speaker 1] (6:57 - 7:16)
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40 It's actually interesting because you could write a short story on, maybe science fiction, I don't know, um, on what would evolution have looked like if our spinal cords came to the surface.
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41
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42 [Speaker 2] (7:17 - 7:47)
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43 Right. Well, and I think that there are many people who think that, that once we, once we have a 38 pin socket at the base of our spinal cord, um, that turning a vat produced body into me is just a matter of cabling the one up into the other.
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44
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45 [Speaker 1] (7:47 - 7:49)
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46 Right. With, with high bandwidth.
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47
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48 [Speaker 2] (7:49 - 7:56)
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49 With high bandwidth and, and, and, uh, and, uh, whatever the neural equivalent, neural equivalent of our sync is.
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50
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51 [Speaker 1] (7:56 - 8:34)
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52 Right. But it's interesting because one of the things that I think that deep learning folks have realized is that populating levels with arbitrary numbers of neurons or fake neurons or whatever, isn't always helpful. The reduction in, the reduction in number of neurons on a given level is often necessary in order to force the abstraction, basically.
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53
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54 [Speaker 2] (8:36 - 8:39)
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55 I don't think I'd heard that before. That's interesting.
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56
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57 [Speaker 1] (8:42 - 8:51)
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58 I'm not sure I've heard it before, but that's certainly what I take. The fact that these things collapse, if they have too many neurons.
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59
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60 [Speaker 2] (8:51 - 9:09)
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61 You can't just, you can't just throw more, you can always throw more data in, but you can't just throw more layers or, or nodes in the layers without, without some more architecture.
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62
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63 [Speaker 1] (9:10 - 9:16)
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64 That's right. Because it actually, it's not that it won't get any better. It'll actually get worse.
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65
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66 [Speaker 2] (9:17 - 9:24)
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67 Yeah. Yeah. No, I guess I, well, because it will never, I think I would say, because it will never converge.
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68
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69 [Speaker 1] (9:25 - 9:27)
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70 Never converge. That's what I meant to say. Yeah.
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71
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72 [Speaker 2] (9:27 - 9:41)
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73 They're never settled. Yeah. Whatever.
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74
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75 Yeah. Because there's never, there's not, there's not enough, there's not enough pressure on the, on the, the channel. That's right.
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76
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77 To make it effective in coding required.
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78
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79 [Speaker 1] (9:41 - 9:42)
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80 Right. Right.
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81
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82 [Speaker 2] (9:44 - 9:47)
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83 And so we'll just keep wandering around with stuff that is good enough.
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84
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85 [Speaker 1] (9:48 - 10:23)
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86 So, okay. So let's go back to the question is whether the metaphysical story, which might be actually a, just a more successful version of the anthropic principle. I don't know.
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87
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88 I don't like what I've read under the... No, not under, well, I don't, yeah. So anyway, I'm not going to use it anymore.
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89
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90 [Speaker 2] (10:24 - 10:33)
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91 No, I'm sorry. I, I introduced it only in, only because it's, again, see previous discussion, because it's a shorthand for a line of thought.
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92
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93 [Speaker 1] (10:33 - 10:37)
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94 Yeah. No, it's, it is, which has gone astray, I think. But anyway.
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95
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96 [Speaker 2] (10:43 - 10:46)
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97 But you were going to say that. Yeah.
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98
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99 [Speaker 1] (10:46 - 13:52)
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100 The metaphysical question. Well, you know, I, I have said, sorry, I'm starting over. I have said that we are in, of, and about the world.
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101
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102 And the in and of are pretty serious facts. And it's funny writing about reflection, even though I'm not writing about reflection. But I'm kind of writing about, well, I'm writing about what I'm writing about the fundamental notion of computing as revealed by looking at reflection.
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103
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104 And the reason reflection is such a salutary example is that, you know, I take computation to be a dialectic of meaning and mechanism to refer to the other book that I want to write. It both represents and does. And, but crucially, it represents and does.
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105
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106 And it needs to represent its representation, it needs to represent its doing, and it needs to be able to do what it represents itself as doing and whatever. I mean, it's, it exemplifies, and it's both part of its properties, it exemplifies the properties that can represent, which is, forces a certain kind of discipline on it. And that fact about reflection reflection is, is related to, I mean, I feel now as if I'm instantiating this idea that the layers need fewer neurons, because I'm losing neurons at a rate that's forcing everything into being the same thing.
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107
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108 But that fact about us being here and representing being here, and what the constraints on that are, is a pretty serious fact about how we think, I think. And I think the ontological facts that the use of differential equations in physics represents, which are never given a name, but that's what I think they, the Dyson sort of is, is just one of the things that is pushed on us. That's a funny use of the word push, but it's one of the things we're, we're not normatively accountable to, we just are bluntly accountable to.
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109
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110 [Speaker 2] (13:52 - 13:55)
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111 Yeah, we're obliged by, we're obliged, much better circumstance.
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112
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113 [Speaker 1] (13:56 - 13:57)
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114 Thank you, yeah, we're obliged.
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115
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116 [Speaker 2] (14:01 - 15:32)
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117 So that, I think that, that claim that you just uttered, I don't understand. And I think elucidating it, and maybe the elucidation is in the objects book if I went back and found it, but it's not, but, but I think it's necessary if you want to, I mean, the problem is at the, at the purely sort of tactical level, whether the, whether it's necessary to take 10 or 15 pages to reformulate each of the two stories in order to demonstrate that they converge. Right.
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118
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119 Or, you know, it's, I haven't, it feels to me like that's not perhaps what you would like to do, but it's the only structure that I've been able to think of given what we've been saying so far. But, but maybe there's another I mean, yeah. Because there, the problem is that there are critical steps in each of those, which, which you understand, and which you may or may not have articulated in one place or another, is, you know, right.
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120
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121 Well, already, but they haven't been pulled together in a way.
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122
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123 [Speaker 1] (15:32 - 15:41)
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124 No, I think that's absolutely right. And I think my tendency would be to recapitulate both of them in one to 2000 pages.
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125
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126 [Speaker 2] (15:42 - 15:47)
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127 Yes, well, that would serve nobody's interest.
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128
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129 [Speaker 1] (15:48 - 17:54)
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130 And one thing also that's interesting about the Dykes' story is it, it is obvious to a very small number of people, all of whom I believe are computer scientists. And that's, I mean, it's just an interesting intellectual history sort of fact. And very smart people, like my friend whose name escapes me right now, young Rosa Tao, father's a philosopher of science.
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131
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132 She's got two PhDs, one in philosophy, one in neuroscience now. And she's on the faculty at Stanford. And, and I like her too much.
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133
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134 But anyway, I'm not in touch with her. She, I mean, she and I have had this explicit conversation about why it's obvious that the structure of indexicals in language, and the structure of magnetism, and the way physics is expressed in terms of properties, not objects, and that the regularities are differential, which is why the differential equations are used, are the same fact. And it just strikes her as inane and absolutely not.
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135
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136 They have nothing to do with each other.
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137
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138 [Speaker 2] (17:56 - 17:59)
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139 It's certainly not inane, but it's not immediately F-able either.
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140
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141 [Speaker 1] (18:00 - 18:20)
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142 Well, not only is it not immediately F-able, but I feel as if I tried to express it in the objects book, I've tried to express it in numerous places since, and none of my expressions of it have actually made any headway with the people to whom it's not obvious, which is interesting.
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143
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144 [Speaker 2] (18:20 - 18:34)
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145 I mean, so can you, can you name anybody to who, who, who you have, who has successfully, in fact, maybe already before you even mentioned it, grasped this, that I might know?
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146
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147 [Speaker 1] (18:35 - 18:47)
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148 Well, Jun is one, but as I said to Jill, Jun probably understands my work as it were better than anybody, but nobody can understand him.
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149
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150 [Speaker 2] (18:50 - 18:55)
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151 Yeah, that's, I mean, it is, it is, there is this lack of transitivity in things like that.
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152
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153 [Speaker 1] (18:58 - 19:09)
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154 So it's a puzzle to me, to what extent he should be named as, you know.
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155
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156 [Speaker 2] (19:09 - 19:14)
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157 Whether he'll, he'll, he'll, he'll appear for the defense in court.
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158
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159 [Speaker 1] (19:15 - 19:21)
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160 Right. He failed his PhD oral at Duke in philosophy.
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161
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162 [Speaker 2] (19:22 - 19:25)
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163 Yeah, I'm sure that could be said of many good people.
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164
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165 [Speaker 1] (19:28 - 19:34)
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166 Anyway, yeah, whether he should be custodian of the oeuvre, at any rate.
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167
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168 [Speaker 2] (19:36 - 19:51)
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169 Well, I mean, that's, that's gotta be a goal. That has got to be a goal, it seems to me, to try to, to break through that logjam, but maybe, maybe too hard for this life. You were just going to revert to Fernando.
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170
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171 [Speaker 1] (19:52 - 20:16)
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172 Yes, I think he, I don't know if I just made this up, but I think he's somebody who thought, oh yeah, of course, that's obvious. And actually, someone who definitely thinks it's obvious is, I guess he's still with us in some sense. I had a psychotic break.
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173
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174 Out at UCLA for a year.
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175
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176 [Speaker 2] (20:20 - 20:34)
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177 Oh yeah, yeah. Him. Him, yes.
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178
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179 I'll fill in reference. I can do that. Oh dear, give me 90 seconds and I'll have the name, I think, usually.
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180
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181 [Speaker 1] (20:35 - 20:38)
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182 Because that's how long it takes to look something up.
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183
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184 [Speaker 2] (20:39 - 20:47)
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185 Well, it's how, I mean, no, I can't, I can't actually make it happen. It's not a process. It's not a consciously accessible process.
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186
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187 [Speaker 1] (20:48 - 20:50)
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188 But it's 90 seconds of your brain, not 90 seconds.
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189
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190 [Speaker 2] (20:50 - 21:02)
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191 Yeah, I mean, I often find that the name I'm looking for comes along after the conversation has moved on by about a minute, subjectively.
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192
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193 [Speaker 1] (21:03 - 21:24)
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194 I have a problem in my eye that I have very bad, what are they called? Anyway, foggy bits of my eye, which mean that whatever I focus on goes blurry.
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195
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196 [Speaker 2] (21:27 - 21:32)
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197 And my mobile phone camera has that problem.
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198
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199 [Speaker 1] (21:34 - 21:38)
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200 So that might be true of attention too. Yeah.
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201
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202 (Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) |
