[clooper]

How are people lookup tables? In the case of neural networks the representation of the table is obvious, it's just numbers. What would be the equivalent table for the liver?

My argument isn't abstract. Neural networks really are just numerical functions which can be expanded into their equivalent graph representations.

[josh-stylo]

Not sure what he's referring to in terms of modern physics saying we're just a lookup table but at the very least, you could say the same thing about the conversation that we're having now. You read words, those words map to meaning representation in our heads, we then generate a response.

[clooper]

Obviously if we are interacting over a digital medium then the responses will be encoded as numbers but there is no way to reduce an entire person to a lookup table. Measured output of human behavior can be expressed as lists of numbers but thinking is not the same as the list of numbers, unlike in the case of neural networks where the graph and the network are actually equivalent.

[bubblyworld]

People really are just stacks of molecules that can be broken down into their causal properties - moreover, we know those causal properties to a high degree of accuracy these days.

I'm suggesting that for any given human/environment pair, there is a lookup table that produces that person's actual behaviour in that situation. Modern physics lets us approximate this lookup table, and presumably better physics would give us a better lookup table.

Since human behaviour can in principle be described with a lookup table, I see this as a bad reason to rule out a system as "thinking".

Perhaps there is another way to describe neural nets, one that does not use the language of lookup tables, that makes it feel more like thinking and less like lookups.

One such approach I've seen is looking for embedded world models in neural nets.