--- a/BCS_HST_2024-06-19/transcribeme.txt	Mon Sep 09 17:29:28 2024 +0100
+++ b/BCS_HST_2024-06-19/transcribeme.txt	Mon Sep 09 19:08:50 2024 +0100
@@ -1,194 +1,61 @@
-HST (0:00 - 0:00)
-
-Record.
-
-BCS (0:02 - 0:04)
-
-It says recording here.
-
-HST (0:04 - 0:16)
-
-Yep, and it just, I clicked it as you spoke or just before or
-something like that. How are you doing? Well, I said this last time
-and you disagreed with me, but you look okay.
-
-BCS (0:16 - 0:35)
-
-Yes, so I actually think I am okay this time. Good, good, good. I'm a
-little compromised in various ways, which I'm going to tell you about.
-
-HST (0:36 - 0:37)
-
-Sure, well.
-
 BCS (0:40 - 0:44)
 
 One of them being that I haven't done my homework for a reason I want
 to try to explain, actually.
 
-HST (0:46 - 1:50)
-
-Well, I mean, it was short notice, but I figure we do this, well, I
-don't know, it's like going, this is a comparison I use too often in
-too many ways. It's like we used to do with the kids, which was that
-we would go to the West Coast of Scotland for the Maybank holiday
-weekend every year. And without paying any attention to what the
-weather forecast was, because you needed to book in advance to get a
-cheap place and so on.
-
-And sometimes that meant famously, and family history is a good thing,
-eating our sandwiches in a phone booth on the ferry pier between Skye
-and Rase, because it was raining too hard. Didn't want to sit in the
-car to have our picnic. But sometimes it meant swimming off white sand
-beaches in Ariseg in 20 degree weather, and it looked and felt like
-the Caribbean.
-
-So you win some and you lose some. And if this is not as well prepared
-as you'd like, then we'll talk anyway.
+...
 
 BCS (1:51 - 2:57)
 
-We'll talk anyway. And I have a question about substance. So here's
-the problem.
-
-I have to get the final draft of the Reflections book to the press by
-July 8th, which deadline I'm not going to make. But I need to make it
-enough that my good standing with the press remains such that I can
-get an extension. And I think given the uncertainty about my lifespan,
-to say nothing of maybe just efficiency overall, I just need to do
-that.
-
-So this morning, I kind of thought, look, am I going to spend the
-morning reading old versions of God Approximately, which I would like
-to do? And I slapped myself on the other wrist. Is that a well founded
-instructional?
-
-HST (2:57 - 2:59)
-
-Probably not. But anyway.
-
-BCS (3:01 - 3:08)
-
-And have been working on that.
-
-HST (3:08 - 3:13)
-
-That's that. I mean, you you're the only person who can correctly set
-your priorities.
+We'll talk anyway. And I have a question about substance.
 
-BCS (3:14 - 3:19)
-
-Right. So I think I have to do that. Now, July 8th is not very far
-away.
-
-HST (3:20 - 3:20)
-
-No, it's not.
-
-BCS (3:21 - 3:34)
-
-So that might mean delaying our project by a rather short amount of
-time. But realism, the aforementioned realism means it'll probably
-mean deferring it for longer than that.
-
-HST (3:34 - 3:42)
-
-But understood. But we can we can reduce, at the very least, reduce
-the frequency. But I may try to keep it ticking over one way or
-another.
-
-BCS (3:42 - 3:46)
-
-Yeah, sure, sure. Well, so here's a question, if I can just plunge
-in. Maybe there are other.
-
-HST (3:46 - 3:46)
-
-Of course.
+...
 
 BCS (3:47 - 4:15)
 
-Yeah, go. So I was struck when I wrote the postscript note to our last
+So I was struck when I wrote the postscript note to our last
 meeting. By how I was framing everything.
-
 In terms of. Well, actually, I don't even remember the last note. Hang
 on a second.
 
 Maybe I should take a look at it.
 
-HST (4:16 - 4:16)
-
-I should too.
-
-BCS (4:17 - 4:18)
-
-Was it email? Probably.
-
-HST (4:18 - 4:27)
-
-I believe. Well, I'm sorry. If it was an email, then I don't have it.
-
-But that doesn't mean that it's not worth looking at. All right.
-
-BCS (4:28 - 4:39)
-
-So I'm desperately waiting.
-
-HST (4:45 - 4:50)
-
-I gather from Jim that some progress has been made on the map project.
-
-BCS (4:52 - 4:53)
-
-On which project?
-
-HST (4:54 - 4:57)
-
-The Save Brian's Mac project.
-
-BCS (4:58 - 5:02)
-
-Oh, yes. But not enough to have the Mac saved.
-
-HST (5:05 - 5:11)
-
-Well, he was hopeful of his next meeting with you, but maybe it didn't
-happen that way.
-
-BCS (5:15 - 5:16)
-
-So when did I?
-
-HST (5:16 - 5:23)
-
-Okay, here we are. Call this week. No, that was quick thought.
-
-It says here.
-
-BCS (5:23 - 5:24)
-
-Oh, that's it. Okay.
-
 HST (5:25 - 5:25)
 
 Right.
 
 BCS (5:26 - 5:53)
 
-All right. So yeah, I've got it. Right.
+All right. So yeah, I've got it. Right:
+
+  [Email sent 2024-06-08
+  A quick thought about what I said in our last conversation. 
 
-So as in the first paragraph, I say, call these the historical and
-metaphysical approaches.
-
-HST (5:54 - 5:54)
+  I described my imagination of a “machinic person” by comparison with 
+  current ideas … the pure mechanism of classical science, then “rationality” 
+  with reference to Frege and logic etc., then normativity and the current 
+  paradigm of deriving it from evolutionary fit, etc. 
 
-Right.
-
-BCS (5:55 - 6:09)
+  But I think at least some versions of G,A do something completely 
+  different. They start with (my version of) the blooming buzzing confusion, 
+  and talk about the emergence of creatures from that.  S-region and O-region 
+  stuff from the Objects book (though I no longer like those names), deixis 
+  from the differential equations, etc. 
 
-And what I have not done is read any. So what you think you have or
-what you know that you have is something like version 11. Is that
-right?
+  For short, call these the *historical* and *metaphysical* approaches.  What 
+  I talked about at the end of our conversation (on Thursday?) was the 
+  historical story.  When I re-read the G,A drafts, I am going to see whether 
+  they fit neatly into either of these two categories, or a mixture, or 
+  something else, or what.. 
+
+  Just mulling.]
+
+So as in the first [sic] paragraph, I say, call these the "historical"
+and "metaphysical" approaches.
+
+And what I have not done is read any [earlier versions of the
+manuscript]. So what you think you have or what you know that you have
+is something like version 11. Is that right?
 
 HST (6:09 - 6:18)
 
@@ -201,45 +68,36 @@
 
 HST (6:19 - 6:37)
 
-And I think that's consistent with the note at the top, which says, in
-previous versions of this, I tried to produce a metaphysics, which
-would underpin what I'm talking about, but didn't get far enough to
-make it worth reproducing or something like that.
+And I think that's consistent with the note at the top, which says
+
+  "In previous versions of this, I tried to produce a metaphysics, which
+   would underpin what I'm talking about, but didn't get far enough to
+   make it worth reproducing or something like that."
 
 BCS (6:38 - 6:41)
 
-And I did say in previous versions of this.
+And I did say "in previous versions of this".
 
 HST (6:41 - 8:23)
 
-I believe so. Let me just get the fact of the matter in front of me,
-which it nearly is. In fact, wait a minute.
+Yes, it is:
 
-I'm just looking at the wrong place. This one. Yes, it is.
-
-A number of manuscripts have been circulated under this title over the
-last 15 years. Right. This one lacks any sketch of a worldview
-exhibiting the characteristics described.
+  "A number of manuscripts have been circulated under this title over
+   the last 15 years. Right. This one lacks any sketch of a worldview
+   exhibiting the characteristics described."
 
-I presume that means described below as it were. Somewhat in response
-to the first version, which tried to provide such a view without
-explanation of what was interesting or mattered about it. If it seems
-worthwhile, I may someday incorporate all the various versions into a
-single long, it says short, monograph.
+I presume that means described below as it were. 
 
-BCS (8:27 - 8:28)
-
-Stereograph.
-
-HST (8:29 - 8:31)
-
-Yes, something like that.
+  "Somewhat in response to the first version, which tried to provide
+   such a view without explanation of what was interesting or mattered
+   about it. If it seems worthwhile, I may someday incorporate all the
+   various versions into a single" [HST: long, it says] "short monograph."
 
 BCS (8:34 - 10:57)
 
 Right. Okay. Well, that's very helpful actually to me.
 
-Bob, thank you for finding that. Yes, I think that longer monograph,
+Bob @?, thank you for finding that. Yes, I think that longer monograph,
 the yet to be produced longer monograph is what I feel as if we're
 aiming at. And I don't actually know whether I made any attempt to say
 that these lead to the same view.
@@ -251,7 +109,7 @@
 beginning.
 
 That is, start at what those who'd like to start at the beginning
-start with. Bosons, fermions, quarks, assemblages pressed into atoms
+start with. @? Bosons, fermions, quarks, assemblages pressed into atoms
 and molecules and DNA and so on and so forth. And then the second
 paragraph saying, of course, something like that's not a beginning.
 
@@ -280,16 +138,16 @@
 likely answers to the second.
 
 That's another way of saying what it is you're trying to bring
-together, I think. Right.
+together, I think.
 
 BCS (12:12 - 13:08)
 
 I think so. Yeah, I think so. And I think what I put in the note after
 the historical approach is sort of a story about how our understanding
-of Rameans and Bosons, as it were, has been pressed into service as a
+of fermions and bosons, as it were, has been pressed into service as a
 grounds for normativity and maybe objectivity and so on and so forth.
 
-I don't think successfully, but there is...
+I don't think successfully, but there is... @?
 
 HST (13:08 - 13:13)
 
@@ -297,13 +155,13 @@
 
 BCS (13:14 - 13:19)
 
-Right. Which I've now buried under lots of windows.
+Right.
 
 HST (13:20 - 13:32)
 
 Well, the pure mechanism of classical science, then rationality with
-reference to Friggen logic, then normativity, and the current paradigm
-of deriving it from the evolutionary field, etc. Right.
+reference to Frege and @? logic, then normativity, and the current paradigm
+of deriving it from the evolutionary field, etc. Right. @?
 
 BCS (13:42 - 15:20)
 
@@ -315,8 +173,8 @@
 
 HST (15:22 - 15:31)
 
-Yeah. I mean, I've been thinking... You know the phrase, the thing,
-which I think is very bizarrely labeled, the anthropic principle.
+You know the thing, which I think is very bizarrely labeled, the
+anthropic principle?
 
 BCS (15:31 - 15:32)
 
@@ -326,7 +184,7 @@
 
 Which attempts to dissolve the first of the Kantian questions by
 saying, because if there weren't something, we wouldn't be here to ask
-the question, get over it.
+the question, so get over it.
 
 BCS (15:45 - 16:03)
 
@@ -336,13 +194,10 @@
 
 HST (16:05 - 16:31)
 
-Yeah. I mean, yeah, certainly. Yeah.
-
-What little I remember of the time I heard somebody talk about this at
-length was Planck's constant is what it is. And the fact that if you
-varied it by not very much in either direction, nothing would work
-isn't something that needs explanation because it evidently is the
-case.
+... [For example] that Planck's constant is what it is, and that if
+you varied it by not very much in either direction, nothing would
+work, isn't something that needs explanation because it evidently is
+the case.
 
 BCS (16:31 - 16:31)
 
@@ -350,39 +205,25 @@
 
 HST (16:32 - 16:52)
 
-And if it weren't the case, I mean, yes, exactly. It is at least of
-minor theoretical interest to establish what the bounding box is
-within which we would still be here to ask that question. But having
-done that, there's nothing more to be said.
-
-BCS (16:53 - 16:53)
-
-Right.
-
-HST (16:55 - 17:06)
-
-But I think you're... So, I mean, I don't think that changes the
-availability of both projects, essentially.
+... I don't think that changes the availability of both projects,
+essentially.
 
 BCS (17:06 - 17:53)
 
 I think that's right. And I actually think, you know, this is... Well,
-I'm going to have to agree to the long rather than short.
+I'm going to have to agree to the long rather than short [see at 8:23 above].
 
 I'm assuming if I go down this pathway, but I actually think the
 fact... Well, as I put it, which is transparent to nobody, the
 ontological warrant for the epistemic fact that we use differential
 equations to express physical laws is actually... I mean, I don't know
-if I said this in the objects book, but anyway, underlies the Dysus of
+if I said this in the objects book, but anyway, underlies the Dysus @? of
 the world, which I think is fundamental to consciousness and self and
 various things like that.
 
 HST (17:56 - 18:08)
 
-But because of the uncertain... No, not the uncertainty because, I
-mean, is this... What I remember from the objects book, which I've
-already apologized for is very little, is about the importance of
-slop.
+[In the Objects book you talk] about the importance of "slop".
 
 BCS (18:09 - 18:11)
 
@@ -396,7 +237,7 @@
 
 BCS (18:20 - 18:25)
 
-What's the... Rasson regardless?
+What's the... Rasson regardless? @?
 
 HST (18:26 - 18:26)
 
@@ -405,7 +246,7 @@
 BCS (18:27 - 19:54)
 
 I'm not sure I should accept the regardless just now, but yeah, the
-Dysus stuff is, I think, important to self. And something else that's
+Dysus @?deixis? stuff is, I think, important to self. And something else that's
 interesting, this is going to sound a little bit like a non-sequitur,
 but I think it's not for obvious reasons. The fact that LLMs are based
 on language is, I think, possibly consequential, but possibly not the
@@ -414,16 +255,14 @@
 Because I think the power of them stems from the fact that the
 relationality that they encode is so stupefyingly huge that all the
 content of the state of the network is bizarrely non-conceptual in the
-sense of that.
+sense of that. ?@
 
 HST (19:58 - 20:16)
 
 Absolutely. I mean, they got somewhere by not being
-representational. Well, not being representational.
-
-Sorry, but not being explicitly representational. That no amount of
-additional funding to Doug Lennon and company would ever have gotten
-to.
+representational. Well, not being _explicitly_ representational. That
+no amount of additional funding to Doug Lenat and company would ever
+have gotten to.
 
 BCS (20:17 - 20:25)
 
@@ -434,187 +273,23 @@
 
 Yeah, I mean, it would be useful in the indefinitely unforeseeable
 future to have a conversation involving Fernando Pereira about this,
-because... Have you ever met Fernando? Not clearly.
-
-BCS (20:44 - 20:51)
-
-Oh, yeah. I knew him. God knows if he was a student, but anyway, 100
-years ago.
-
-HST (20:51 - 22:51)
-
-No, he was our student, because I did his PhD oral. Oh, I see. No, but
-I think he was in California at the time of the oral, so it's
-possible.
-
-It doesn't matter. Anyway, he was here six months ago for a guest talk
-during our 60th anniversary celebrations. And the talk was
-interesting, but not great and not recorded.
-
-But lunch beforehand, which was just me and him and one other person,
-was hugely more valuable, because he was expanding to an audience that
-could hear of the two of us on his anger about the fact, about the
-impact of his own company's work, indirectly in terms of open AI, but
-in chat GPT and so on. Because he's recently changed within Google,
-being responsible for the natural language work to being responsible
-for the sort of theory practice interface within Google. And he's very
-angry about the way in which people are treating the natural language
-problem as having now been solved and or being soluble only by the
-technologies of LLMs. But what he did for us in that conversation, and
-I wish I had recorded it, was give me a much clearer sense of the
-scale of the base model. And also the scale of the priming that it
-gets in order to make it a question answer.
-
-BCS (22:51 - 22:52)
-
-Yeah. What's that called?
-
-HST (22:53 - 22:56)
-
-The prompt. It's not the prompt, but it's something.
+because...  He was here six months ago, and ... he was expanding .. on
+his anger about the fact, about the impact of his own company's work,
+indirectly in terms of OpenAI @?, but in ChatGPT and so on. ... He's
+very angry about the way in which people are treating the natural
+language problem as having now been solved and or being soluble only
+by the technologies of LLMs. But what he did for us in that
+conversation, and I wish I had recorded it, was give me a much clearer
+sense of the scale of the base model. And also the scale of the
+priming that it gets in order to make it a question answerer.
 
 BCS (22:56 - 22:57)
 
 Prompt engineering.
 
-HST (22:58 - 23:05)
-
-Yeah. The prompt engineering is, there are three aspects of this, I
-think. There is the base model.
-
-BCS (23:06 - 23:13)
-
-Right. Which is something like 100 billion gigabytes or something.
-
-HST (23:13 - 23:46)
-
-Yeah. Well, it's certainly that many dimensions. And I don't know,
-there's this whole business about projecting to lower dimensionalities
-for years that I don't understand.
-
-But there's the base model. There is the make this a question
-answerer, make a question answerer from this base model. And there's,
-what do we add to the conjunction of those two from your question?
-
-BCS (23:48 - 23:54)
-
-And is the third of those what's called prompt engineering? I think
-so.
-
-HST (23:55 - 23:59)
-
-But I could be wrong. It doesn't matter.
-
-BCS (24:00 - 24:01)
-
-Anyway. Yeah. Anyway.
-
-HST (24:04 - 24:26)
-
-Even though the interesting part in a way is in a sense from the
-performance point of view is not the base model, but it's the thing
-you make a question answerer out of it with.
-
-BCS (24:27 - 24:28)
-
-Right. Right.
-
-HST (24:29 - 25:19)
-
-Because that's what the people who don't have any money scrimp on,
-skimp on. Right. And why you then get things which lie and fabulate
-and contradict themselves and in general, or start imitating Witty
-Tiki Ray rather than a human being or whatever it might be.
-
-Because actually, there's another kind of farm rather than the GPU
-farm that you need to build something like as successful as it is as
-chat GPT, which is a huge farm of ordinary human beings asking
-questions and feeding back to the engineers the wrong answers and
-saying, you've got to stop this kind of answer.
-
-BCS (25:19 - 25:23)
-
-Right. Yeah. That's a lot of trivial.
-
-HST (25:24 - 25:29)
-
-And that's an open-ended and in principle, impossible task.
-
-BCS (25:29 - 25:31)
-
-Right. Interesting.
-
-HST (25:32 - 25:34)
-
-Anyway, that was all.
-
-BCS (25:34 - 25:45)
-
-A total footnote. You could have expressed your thought at the
-beginning of your what you just said that that's what people who
-scrimp skimp on.
-
-HST (25:46 - 26:13)
-
-Yes. Something like that. Anyway.
-
-But so I think from your perspective, it's really GPT-3 that you're
-interested in, which is the base model. It's now GPT-4 and they won't
-tell you anything about that. The only thing we have any information
-about is GPT-3.
-
-Right. Well, that's the only thing I've seen published information
-about from Google anyway. Right.
-
-BCS (26:16 - 26:17)
-
-Yes. I mean, I think that's...
-
-HST (26:18 - 26:19)
-
-Open AI. Sorry. Yeah.
-
-BCS (26:19 - 26:26)
-
-From open AI. Yeah. I think that's what I was just talking about.
-
-I mean, it doesn't prove that I'm not interested in the other ones.
-
-HST (26:28 - 26:59)
-
-But I mean, it's there, for instance, that we come back to the thing
-that you said, which I think is why I think Dijkstra is certainly in
-there is not only do they not know that there's a world that not only
-does that 100 million gigabytes, whatever it is, 100 million
-gigabytes, what it doesn't have is any obligation to the world about
-which...
-
-BCS (27:00 - 27:01)
-
-Right.
-
-HST (27:01 - 28:33)
-
-That is some kind of representation. Right. Yeah.
-
-But that responsibility can be decomposed in any particular instance
-to being only about a certain small part of the world, which amounts,
-I guess, in many cases, to some kind of story about reference and
-Dijkstra's. And it does... I am tempted to bring Jonathan back into
-this again, Jonathan Rees, because of his...
-
-What he's been spending the last two or three years on is trying to
-articulate a story about reference, which is simply defined in terms
-of propositions that include this are vulnerable to changes in
-that. That is, they include this referring expression are vulnerable
-to changes in that bit of the world as a way of talking about what
-does that referring expression refer to? Well...
-
-Because he's a radical empiricist, basically, he wants...
-
-BCS (28:33 - 28:33)
-
-Right.
+[digression on LLMs and question-answering, base models, the
+difference between GPT-3 or GPT-4 and ChatGPT, the translation of a
+human query into a prompt @fix this@ ] 
 
 HST (28:33 - 28:35)
 
@@ -625,9 +300,10 @@
 No, not entirely, because there was a title of a talk I was thinking
 of putting together, something like the nonverbal meaning of words. 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
+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
+basically, particular question into a particular @?
 
+