Comment by YeGoblynQueenne
3 months ago
With Prolog, the proof is carried out by the computer, not a human. A human writes up a theory and a theorem and the computer proves the theorem with respect to the theory. So I ask again, how is carrying out a proof not reasoning?
>> I'm not claiming that reason is incorrect, I'm handwaving it away as irrelevant and academic.
That's not a great way to have a discussion.
The word "reason" came into this thread with the original comment:
I agree with you. In Prolog "?- 1=1." is reasoning by definition. Then 4. becomes "LLMs should emit Prolog because Prolog is good at executing Prolog code".
I think that's not a useful place to be, so I was trying to head off going there. But now I'll go with you - I agree it IS reasoning - can you please support your case that "executing Prolog code is reasoning" makes Prolog more useful for LLMs to emit than Python?
This is not my claim:
>> "executing Prolog code is reasoning" makes Prolog more useful for LLMs to emit than Python?
I said what I think about LLMs generating Prolog here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45914587
But I was mainly asking why you say that Prolog's execution is "not reasoning". I don't understand what you mean that '"?- 1=1." is reasoning by definition' and how that ties-in with our discussion about Prolog reasoning or not.
"?- 1=1." is Prolog code. Executing Prolog code is reasoning. Therefore that is reasoning. Q.E.D. This is the point you refused to move on from until I agreed. So I agreed. So we could get back to the interesting topic.
A topic you had no interest in, only interest dragging onto a trangent and grinding it down to make ... what point, exactly? If "executing Prolog code" is reasoning, then what? I say it isn't useful to call it reasoning (in the context of this thread) because it's too broad to be a helpful definition, basically everything is reasoning, and almost nothing is not. When I tried to say in advance that this wouldn't be a useful direction and I didn't want to go here, you said it was " not a great way to have a discussion". And now having dragged me off onto this academic tangent, you dismiss it as "I wasn't interested in that other topic anyway". Annoying.
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