Comment by latexr
7 hours ago
That is a “gotcha” born of either ignorance (nothing wrong with that, we’re all ignorant of something) or bad faith. Definitions shift as we learn more. Darwin’s definition of life is not the same as Descartes’ or Plato’s or anyone in between or since because we learn and evolve our thinking.
Are you also going to argue definitions of life before we even learned of microscopic or single cell organisms are correct and that the definitions we use today are wrong? That they are shifting goal posts? That “centuries later, people are still doing this”? No, that would be absurd.
I don't see it as a gotcha. Just an (evergreen, it seems) observation that people will absolutely move the goalposts every time there's something new. And people can be ignorant outsiders or experts in that field as well.
For example, ~2 years ago, an expert in ML publicly made this remark on stage: LLMs can't do math. Today they absolutely and obviously, can. Yet somehow it's not impressive anymore. Or, and this is the key part of the quote, this is somehow not related to "intelligence". Something that 2 years ago was not possible (again, according to a leading expert in this field), is possible today. And yet this is somehow something that they always could do, and since they're doing it today, is suddenly no longer important. On to the next one!
No idea why this is related to darwin or definitions of life. The definitions don't change. What people considered important 2 years ago, is suddenly not important anymore. The only thing that changed is that today we can see that capability. Ergo, the quote holds.
> For example, ~2 years ago, an expert in ML
See, that’s a poor argument already. Anyone could counter that with other experts in ML publicly making remarks that AI would have replaced 80% of the work force or cured multiple diseases by now, which obviously hasn’t happened. That’s about as good an argument as when people countered NFT critics by citing how Clifford Stoll said the internet was a fad.
> made this remark on stage: LLMs can't do math. Today they absolutely and obviously, can.
How exactly are “LLMs can’t” and “do math” defined? As you described it, that sentence does not mean “will never be able to”, so there’s no contradiction. Furthermore, it continues to be true that you cannot trust LLMs on their own for basic arithmetic. They may e.g. call an external tool to do it, but pattern matching on text isn’t sufficient.
> The definitions don't change.
Of course they do, what are you talking about? Definitions change all the time with new information. That’s called science.
The definition of "can/cannot do math" didn't change. That's not up for debate. 2 years ago they couldn't solve an erdos problem (people have tried, Tao has tried ~1 year ago). Today they can.
Definitions don't change. The idea that now that they can it's no longer intelligence is changing. And that's literally moving the goalposts. Read the thread here, go to the bottom part. There are zillions of comments saying this.
You are keen to not trying to understand what the quote is saying. This is not good faith discussion, and it's not going anywhere. We're already miles from where we started. The quote is an observation (and an old one at that) about goalposts moving. If you can't or won't see that, there's no reason to continue this thread.
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