Comment by chongli
1 day ago
Read the rest of the discussion. The claim is about text which is in principle incomprehensible to humans.
If there exists a text which only one person can understand, that person can communicate their understanding to others, even if that doesn't help them with the original text. That dissemination of knowledge is what provides the value, not the mere existence of the text. If that person forgets or dies before they can share their knowledge then it will be lost.
We have many examples of this from history: ancient texts written in a lost language. These texts provide us with no value until the day they can be deciphered, unless you count linguistic puzzle-solving as a virtue.
> If there exists a text which only one person can understand, that person can communicate their understanding to others, even if that doesn't help them with the original text.
If there exists a text which only an AI can understand, that AI can communicate their key conclusions to others, even if that doesn't help them with the original text.
The only difference here is the amount of meat involved. Perhaps tossing a few steaks on the server racks could help with that.
If an AI can communicate its findings to us in a way that we can understand it, then its findings are by definition intelligible to humans. Your claim was about texts for which this is not possible.
So, you're willing to claim that a conclusion that you don't understand the reasoning for is equivalent to comprehension?
Because, again, I can point to hundreds of examples of texts where nobody but the author understands it, and they're only giving summarized "commandments" that you should follow if you want good results.
If I told you "don't use spin locks, call futex instead", do you think have gained an understanding of the Linux scheduler?
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