[habitue]

> Symbols, by definition, only represent a thing.

This is missing the lesson of the Yoneda Lemma: symbols are uniquely identified by their relationships with other symbols. If those relationships are represented in text, then in principle they can be inferred and navigated by an LLM.

Some relationships are not represented well in text: tacit knowledge like how hard to twist a bottle cap to get it to come off, etc. We aren't capturing those relationships between all your individual muscles and your brain well in language, so an LLM will miss them or have very approximate versions of them, but... that's always been the problem with tacit knowledge: it's the exact kind of knowledge that's hard to communicate!

[nomel]

I don’t think it’s a communication problem as much as there is no possible relation between a word and a (literal) physical experiences. They’re, quite literally, on different planes of existence.

[drdeca]

When I have a physical experience, sometimes it results in me saying a word.

Now, maybe there are other possible experiences that would result in me behaving identically, such that from my behavior (including what words I say) it is impossible to distinguish between different potential experiences I could have had.

But, “caused me to say” is a relation, is it not?

Unless you want to say that it wasn’t the experience that caused me to do something, but some physical thing that went along with the experience, either causing or co-occurring with the experience, and also causing me to say the word I said. But, that would still be a relation, I think.

[semiquaver]

Well shit, I better stop reading books then.