Mercurial > hg > BCS
changeset 12:5449f84ccfb2
merge
| author | Henry S Thompson <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk> |
|---|---|
| date | Tue, 29 Oct 2024 14:04:53 +0000 |
| parents | 20bafd5b5dab (current diff) 707f760a8359 (diff) |
| children | 8e7d935c42b5 6f6fe15ed3ae |
| files | |
| diffstat | 3 files changed, 630 insertions(+), 411 deletions(-) [+] |
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--- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/BCS_HST_2024-06-19/audio_2.txt Tue Oct 29 14:04:53 2024 +0000 @@ -0,0 +1,202 @@ +(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) + +[Speaker 1] (0:05 - 1:30) +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. + +That's right. + +[Speaker 2] (1:31 - 1:33) +Yeah. So far, so good. + +[Speaker 1] (1:35 - 2:35) +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. + +[Speaker 2] (2:36 - 2:36) +Yeah. + +[Speaker 1] (2:36 - 3:10) +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. + +[Speaker 2] (3:13 - 5:36) +Oh, absolutely. That's crucially important. That never occurred to me before. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +[Speaker 1] (5:39 - 5:53) +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. + +[Speaker 2] (5:55 - 6:56) +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? + +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. + +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. + +[Speaker 1] (6:57 - 7:16) +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. + +[Speaker 2] (7:17 - 7:47) +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. + +[Speaker 1] (7:47 - 7:49) +Right. With, with high bandwidth. + +[Speaker 2] (7:49 - 7:56) +With high bandwidth and, and, and, uh, and, uh, whatever the neural equivalent, neural equivalent of our sync is. + +[Speaker 1] (7:56 - 8:34) +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. + +[Speaker 2] (8:36 - 8:39) +I don't think I'd heard that before. That's interesting. + +[Speaker 1] (8:42 - 8:51) +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. + +[Speaker 2] (8:51 - 9:09) +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. + +[Speaker 1] (9:10 - 9:16) +That's right. Because it actually, it's not that it won't get any better. It'll actually get worse. + +[Speaker 2] (9:17 - 9:24) +Yeah. Yeah. No, I guess I, well, because it will never, I think I would say, because it will never converge. + +[Speaker 1] (9:25 - 9:27) +Never converge. That's what I meant to say. Yeah. + +[Speaker 2] (9:27 - 9:41) +They're never settled. Yeah. Whatever. + +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. + +To make it effective in coding required. + +[Speaker 1] (9:41 - 9:42) +Right. Right. + +[Speaker 2] (9:44 - 9:47) +And so we'll just keep wandering around with stuff that is good enough. + +[Speaker 1] (9:48 - 10:23) +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. + +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. + +[Speaker 2] (10:24 - 10:33) +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. + +[Speaker 1] (10:33 - 10:37) +Yeah. No, it's, it is, which has gone astray, I think. But anyway. + +[Speaker 2] (10:43 - 10:46) +But you were going to say that. Yeah. + +[Speaker 1] (10:46 - 13:52) +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +[Speaker 2] (13:52 - 13:55) +Yeah, we're obliged by, we're obliged, much better circumstance. + +[Speaker 1] (13:56 - 13:57) +Thank you, yeah, we're obliged. + +[Speaker 2] (14:01 - 15:32) +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. + +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. + +Well, already, but they haven't been pulled together in a way. + +[Speaker 1] (15:32 - 15:41) +No, I think that's absolutely right. And I think my tendency would be to recapitulate both of them in one to 2000 pages. + +[Speaker 2] (15:42 - 15:47) +Yes, well, that would serve nobody's interest. + +[Speaker 1] (15:48 - 17:54) +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. + +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. + +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. + +They have nothing to do with each other. + +[Speaker 2] (17:56 - 17:59) +It's certainly not inane, but it's not immediately F-able either. + +[Speaker 1] (18:00 - 18:20) +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. + +[Speaker 2] (18:20 - 18:34) +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? + +[Speaker 1] (18:35 - 18:47) +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. + +[Speaker 2] (18:50 - 18:55) +Yeah, that's, I mean, it is, it is, there is this lack of transitivity in things like that. + +[Speaker 1] (18:58 - 19:09) +So it's a puzzle to me, to what extent he should be named as, you know. + +[Speaker 2] (19:09 - 19:14) +Whether he'll, he'll, he'll, he'll appear for the defense in court. + +[Speaker 1] (19:15 - 19:21) +Right. He failed his PhD oral at Duke in philosophy. + +[Speaker 2] (19:22 - 19:25) +Yeah, I'm sure that could be said of many good people. + +[Speaker 1] (19:28 - 19:34) +Anyway, yeah, whether he should be custodian of the oeuvre, at any rate. + +[Speaker 2] (19:36 - 19:51) +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. + +[Speaker 1] (19:52 - 20:16) +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. + +Out at UCLA for a year. + +[Speaker 2] (20:20 - 20:34) +Oh yeah, yeah. Him. Him, yes. + +I'll fill in reference. I can do that. Oh dear, give me 90 seconds and I'll have the name, I think, usually. + +[Speaker 1] (20:35 - 20:38) +Because that's how long it takes to look something up. + +[Speaker 2] (20:39 - 20:47) +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. + +[Speaker 1] (20:48 - 20:50) +But it's 90 seconds of your brain, not 90 seconds. + +[Speaker 2] (20:50 - 21:02) +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. + +[Speaker 1] (21:03 - 21:24) +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. + +[Speaker 2] (21:27 - 21:32) +And my mobile phone camera has that problem. + +[Speaker 1] (21:34 - 21:38) +So that might be true of attention too. Yeah. + +(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) \ No newline at end of file
--- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/BCS_HST_2024-06-19/audio_3.txt Tue Oct 29 14:04:53 2024 +0000 @@ -0,0 +1,341 @@ +(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) + +[Speaker 2] (0:00 - 0:08) +It's of my eye, which being that whatever I focus on goes blurry. + +[Speaker 1] (0:11 - 0:16) +And my mobile phone camera has that problem. + +[Speaker 2] (0:17 - 0:21) +Well, so that might be true of attention, too. + +[Speaker 1] (0:22 - 0:22) +Yeah. + +[Speaker 2] (0:23 - 0:23) +Anyway. + +[Speaker 1] (0:28 - 0:39) +We should probably, in the interests of your stamina, if not mine, bring this to a close for now and let you spend a little more time on reflection before. + +[Speaker 2] (0:40 - 0:41) +Before collapsing. + +[Speaker 1] (0:42 - 0:46) +Before you, yeah, exactly. Turn to. + +[Speaker 2] (0:46 - 0:47) +At any rate, Agri. + +[Speaker 1] (0:48 - 0:52) +Yes, there you go, Phil Agri. Well done. You see, it took you 90 seconds. + +[Speaker 2] (0:52 - 1:00) +I know. It was obvious. + +[Speaker 1] (1:01 - 1:03) +What about him? It was obvious to him, yes. + +[Speaker 2] (1:03 - 1:15) +Yeah, I remember saying it to him and he said, oh, yeah, of course, that's right. And in fact, the model that he takes to underwrite whatever he's famous for, is it Pangea? I can't remember. + +[Speaker 1] (1:16 - 1:27) +Yeah, I mean, well, it's the revolution in planning, which I used to have to teach, which I used to be able to teach about and have now for the people have lost sight of. I mean, planning isn't a thing anymore. + +[Speaker 2] (1:28 - 1:28) +No, that's right. + +[Speaker 1] (1:28 - 1:43) +I don't think I could point to a single one of my 120 colleagues at Edinburgh, the largest AI establishment in Europe and say that since Austin Tate retired and said, say that they work on planning. + +[Speaker 2] (1:43 - 1:43) +Yeah. + +[Speaker 1] (1:44 - 1:55) +I mean, if there's reinforcement learning, but that's only planning by courtesy or post hoc. + +[Speaker 2] (1:57 - 1:58) +It's interesting, Xander is a planner. + +[Speaker 1] (2:01 - 2:04) +In terms of his job title, yes. + +[Speaker 2] (2:04 - 2:06) +Right, well, in terms of what he does. + +[Speaker 1] (2:07 - 2:07) +Yeah, yeah, no, I know. + +[Speaker 2] (2:08 - 2:10) +It's urban planning, but hold the urban. + +[Speaker 1] (2:13 - 2:28) +Well, I mean, that's what Catherine, who's back there somewhere, I think. Yes. Absolutely. + +The design of the non-built environment. + +[Speaker 2] (2:28 - 2:28) +Right. + +[Speaker 1] (2:32 - 2:33) +Defined privatively. + +[Speaker 2] (2:34 - 3:01) +Here's a question which I thought about once and I was sort of struck by it, which is, if England were to decide one day to switch overnight to driving on the right instead of driving on the left, I believe the following proposition is true, which is the roads would be fine as is. What would have to change is an awful lot of signage. + +[Speaker 1] (3:05 - 3:25) +And it's interesting question, at least some traffic lights, but that is so there would have to be, some things would have to be physically moved as well as the content of some. Well, indeed, some signs would have to be moved, right? They would be in the wrong place. + +[Speaker 2] (3:26 - 3:27) +They'd be in the wrong place. + +[Speaker 1] (3:27 - 3:38) +No, the stop signs, you know, a stop sign, which is to your right as you come to a stop would have to be moved. Right. Sorry, to your left. + +[Speaker 2] (3:38 - 3:39) +Yeah. + +[Speaker 1] (3:40 - 4:52) +I mean, maybe you're just remembering this because it might well have been you who told me this order 45 or 50 years ago, which is that two particular points about the early days of the systems theory class at MIT, both of them about examining the systems theory class, that the final year project was to describe in as much accurate detail as possible the algorithm implemented by the tech square elevators without using an oscilloscope. And the other was to, you know, produce a succinct, whether it was a project or actually an exam question, which is to produce the too long didn't read three page outline of what the Swedish government needed to do to do exactly that, because they have. + +[Speaker 2] (4:53 - 4:58) +Right, right, right, right. No, these are not, none of this rings a bell. + +[Speaker 1] (4:58 - 5:56) +So, okay. Well, yeah, someone else, but exactly. So, so, okay. + +Sorry. But, but so the point of the fact that the, you know, stipulate that we had somehow managed to evolve our traffic system without ever actually asphalting any tarmac. And, and so the paths were just the consequence of our driving. + +That, that none of the, nothing, nothing of the non-human world would need to change. People would find it inconvenient that their steering wheel was on the side that it was on. But the fact that I drove in this country, and so did Catherine drive the Saab that I brought to California for many years is, you know, that's not. + +[Speaker 2] (5:56 - 5:57) +Testament to something. + +[Speaker 1] (5:58 - 6:02) +Well, it's a testament to something, but it's also, it doesn't, it doesn't falsify the claim. + +[Speaker 2] (6:03 - 6:03) +Right. + +[Speaker 1] (6:03 - 6:48) +No human artifacts would need to change to adapt to this. But, but the question of whether you could, well, if you use, if, if, so we could, we could articulate this further, right? You have to suppose that in the absence of any signage or any traffic signals that rotaries had to evolve because rotaries enable you to efficiently have crossroads with, without any, you know, without any overt control of flow. + +But no, but hang on a second. + +[Speaker 2] (6:48 - 6:50) +The ovaries, I mean, the ovaries, the rotaries. + +[Speaker 1] (6:51 - 6:57) +I'm sorry. We won't go there. Strike that from the record, your honor. + +[Speaker 2] (6:59 - 7:04) +The rotaries in Sweden have the following property, which is their spirals. + +[Speaker 1] (7:07 - 7:17) +So you enter and depending on how far you're going, you go further in. + +[Speaker 2] (7:18 - 7:28) +That's right. Because that's right. Because if you're going to get off at the farthest exit to the rotary, you move into the center. + +[Speaker 1] (7:29 - 7:36) +Yeah. Well, all, all big rotaries in the UK are like that now, but they're, but they're marshaled by lines on the pavement. + +[Speaker 2] (7:37 - 7:48) +Right. But you, you, once you got yourself in the right lane, then it dumps you off at a certain exit. + +[Speaker 1] (7:49 - 8:05) +No, it doesn't. That's what's interesting because the lines just take you into the center. You have to then cut across the lines that are taking somebody else into the center to get off when you want to get off. + +[Speaker 2] (8:05 - 8:07) +Well, that's the opposite of Sweden, I believe. + +[Speaker 1] (8:09 - 8:18) +Well, I'm sorry. You have to, you have, you, I, my immediate thought is you can't not have potential crossings. + +[Speaker 2] (8:20 - 8:26) +No, you, but, but they happen right when you get in. You, when you get into the rotary, you cross it. + +[Speaker 1] (8:26 - 8:29) +As you get in, you're crossing people who are on their way out. + +[Speaker 2] (8:30 - 8:30) +Right. + +[Speaker 1] (8:31 - 8:31) +You must be. + +[Speaker 2] (8:32 - 8:32) +Yes. + +[Speaker 1] (8:32 - 8:55) +No, absolutely. So you can't, you, you can, you can only have, you, you have to, if you're going to put lines on the pavement that indicate priority, they can only deal with, with, they have to give that priority unequivocally at every intersection. And so you have to decide who has priority, people coming in or people going out. + +[Speaker 2] (8:56 - 8:58) +Right. And you pretty much have to decide people going out. + +[Speaker 1] (8:59 - 9:03) +Because, except I, yeah, I guess. Yes. + +[Speaker 2] (9:03 - 9:07) +Otherwise you might end up with a logjam of people in the rotary. + +[Speaker 1] (9:08 - 9:35) +I need to, I need, I need to, there is a rotary that I don't like going on, on the bike precisely because as a cyclist, when you have to cross the line of priority, you're vulnerable because people assume you're going slower. They don't even see you. Anyway. + +Anyway. Sorry. I was entertaining ourselves without actually moving ourselves forward. + +[Speaker 2] (9:36 - 10:11) +Yeah. So, okay. So I think what I wanted to say by way of summary is, is there a feasible project, God willing, in the Creekstone rise to have a shortish version of this story that tells these two stories. + +[Speaker 1] (10:14 - 10:15) +We can but try. + +[Speaker 2] (10:16 - 10:52) +We can but try. And I think a subsidiary question to that is, can I, and my answer might be no. Can I come up with an F-able description of why the Dijkstra's generates, why the physical Dijkstra's generates linguistic indexicals? + +That's simple. + +[Speaker 1] (10:53 - 10:55) +That's already a better way of putting it. Carry on. + +[Speaker 2] (10:56 - 11:21) +Yeah. No, I think, I mean, that's all I would want to say. And is that story essential to the fusion, as it were, that this project is aiming at? + +I don't think those are questions that I'm not going to try to answer them now. And I don't think, I can't answer, I can't do anything until the reflections book is done. + +[Speaker 1] (11:22 - 11:25) +Understood. But those are questions we can pick up then. + +[Speaker 2] (11:25 - 11:27) +Well, but also there, they can be mulled on. + +[Speaker 1] (11:28 - 11:29) +Yeah, absolutely. + +[Speaker 2] (11:30 - 11:30) +Before then. + +[Speaker 1] (11:33 - 11:47) +And there was something moderately important there that just slipped. What was it? Oh, yes. + +It also occurs to me that there's a, just, I just want to get this on the record and we can Yeah, sure. + +[Speaker 2] (11:47 - 11:47) +Say goodbye. + +[Speaker 1] (11:48 - 12:48) +There's a, there's a, a trick that, that Feynman pulls in what I think is the, the best thing that he ever wrote, which is his, his book about why glass is transparent, which has a title, which has quantum something in it, but I can't remember now. Doesn't matter. It's only about this. + +It's only, it's less than a centimeter thick. When you think of it, give me a note. And it, what he, what he says in the introduction is that the characteristically Feynman introduction, because he says the thing I hate about popular science is they don't tell you when they're lying to you. + +[Speaker 2] (12:48 - 12:49) +Right. + +[Speaker 1] (12:50 - 13:39) +Because they have to lie to you because to tell you the truth would mean that they would, they'd exceed their word count. Right. Right. + +And newspaper editors are very jealous of people, you know, their word count. And there is a point in this book in which I'm going to lie to you and I'm going to tell you when we get there so that you know it. Okay. + +Because it's the one point in the book where I think people with a reasonable grasp of moderately sophisticated mathematics to the degree of a high school diploma and maybe a little bit of calculus can understand. But there's one point at which I'm, that, that's blown. And I'm, so I'm going to lie to you and I'll tell you. + +[Speaker 2] (13:40 - 13:41) +That's what Feynman says. + +[Speaker 1] (13:42 - 14:35) +That's what Feynman says in the introduction. And he does indeed at some point in the book tell you. And the, the version of that, that might apply is to, to go back to a rhetorical stance, which you adopted briefly 20 or 30 years ago. + +And I think correctly, subsequently abandoned, which is the promissory, you know, where, where your version of that was, who, who, who needs to accept what promissory notes in the course of, you know, when am I uttering promissory notes, which I'm not delivering on? The similar phenomenon. I think it's in the objects book that you, in the, the preface of the objects book that you, you articulate a sort of epistemological stance about the necessity of being clear when promissory notes are being uttered. + +[Speaker 2] (14:36 - 14:36) +Right. + +[Speaker 1] (14:36 - 15:07) +A sort of lighter weight. And, and, and even in the, in the sense of, of Feynman being humor, being constantly lurking around the edges. Right. + +That, that may be the way to get a 50 page draft of the 4,000 page pair of parallel drafts is to, is, is simply to put square brackets. Magic happens here. + +[Speaker 2] (15:08 - 15:08) +Right, right. + +[Speaker 1] (15:09 - 15:09) +Ad lib. + +[Speaker 2] (15:11 - 15:11) +Yeah. + +[Speaker 1] (15:12 - 15:17) +And fill them in as time allows. + +[Speaker 2] (15:18 - 15:19) +The time allows, yeah. + +[Speaker 1] (15:19 - 15:24) +The point at the very least, not to, not to, to run into the sand at those points. + +[Speaker 2] (15:24 - 15:47) +Right, right, right. Another way to do it is to, is to put together lecture notes for my class, which I regularly did and compressed an enormous amount of whatever. I mean, that was a discipline that came pretty easily getting in, didn't bog down. + +[Speaker 1] (15:48 - 15:49) +Yeah. Yeah. + +[Speaker 2] (15:49 - 15:50) +So. + +[Speaker 1] (15:51 - 16:01) +Yep, we could. Yep. I mean, if, if we have the time to have the lectures to cover the 2,000 pages, then that can be done. + +[Speaker 2] (16:01 - 16:02) +That can be done. + +[Speaker 1] (16:04 - 16:21) +That can be done. Anyway, best to Jill. And it occurs to me since, since we're, you know, it's, I don't think there's much coming in the way of reasons why this wouldn't work for us. + +Would sometime this weekend for a four-way, half-hour social conversation be possible? + +[Speaker 2] (16:22 - 16:23) +Um. + +[Speaker 1] (16:25 - 16:30) +After the point at which you're no longer capable of doing useful work on the reflection book one day? + +[Speaker 2] (16:33 - 16:34) +Yep. Sorry, I just. + +[Speaker 1] (16:38 - 16:40) +And not only possible, but welcome. + +[Speaker 2] (16:41 - 16:41) +Yeah. + +[Speaker 1] (16:42 - 16:47) +With respect to which you, you, you need to involve Jill and I need to involve Catherine. + +[Speaker 2] (16:50 - 16:52) +I think not this weekend. + +[Speaker 1] (16:52 - 16:56) +Okay. Well, I can't see further forward than that. So that's okay. + +[Speaker 2] (16:56 - 16:58) +Okay. We'll do it soon. + +[Speaker 1] (16:58 - 17:00) +Yeah. Let's not lose time. It's interesting. + +[Speaker 2] (17:01 - 17:07) +Oh, sorry. No. Yes. + +[Speaker 1] (17:09 - 17:12) +Okay. Take care. God bless. + +Best to Jill. + +[Speaker 2] (17:13 - 17:15) +And God bless Catherine too. + +[Speaker 1] (17:16 - 17:22) +I will. Goodbye. Okay. + +Cheers. I'm going to stop recording and then. + +(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) \ No newline at end of file
--- a/BCS_HST_2024-06-19/transcribeme.txt Tue Oct 29 14:04:31 2024 +0000 +++ b/BCS_HST_2024-06-19/transcribeme.txt Tue Oct 29 14:04:53 2024 +0000 @@ -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 @? +