Comment by madaxe_again
11 hours ago
That’s Wikipedia I copy pasted but sure, you do you.
And yes - without Grossmann, Einstein likely would never have posited relativity. Grossmann literally prompted him, saying “look at this, read that, learn this, then try this approach”. Without riemann’s metric tensor, not a fucking chance.
And for what it’s worth my PhD is in physics. You?
So you're just equivocating on terms like "prompt", "synthesis" and the like. Clearly a PhD in physics does not free people from scientistic modes of thinking and poor philosophy.
To think this discussion is about Einstein who had a much better mind on these things as well.
They used words to mean what the words mean. What specific issue do you take with that?
"prompt", as in prompting an AI, has the same definition as "prompt", as in prompting a person. They mean the same thing, that's why the term was applied to AI after already applying people.
That's a jingle fallacy.
*Jingle-jangle fallacies are erroneous assumptions that either two different things are the same because they bear the same name (jingle fallacy); or two identical or almost identical things are different because they are labeled differently (jangle fallacy).[1][2][3] The term was coined by Truman Lee Kelley in his 1927 book Interpretation of educational measurements.[4] In research, a jangle fallacy is the inference that two measures (e.g., tests, scales) with different names measure different constructs. By comparison, a jingle fallacy is the assumption that two measures which are called by the same name capture the same construct.[5][6][7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle-jangle_fallacies
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Actually, my undergraduate degree was physics and philosophy. And yes, synthesis is synthesis whether a human, a machine, or a duck does it, and people prompt one another all the time - “have you thought about trying X?” Or “I need the TPS report by EOB”.
I suppose my underlying point is that human cognition is not the unique and beautiful thing that we anthropocentrically suppose it to be - it is a physical process, with stochastic outcomes. Much like transformers.
Me, I’m just a machine made of meat. You can suppose yourself to be God’s perfect creation, and that’s your right, but I disagree.
Clearly your degrees did not make you immune from fallacies and simplistic reductions.
"Synthesis" is obviously of different kinds. A duck has a different level of intelligence than a human. We do not say both are "just doing synthesis".
So the question is how can you be so disingenuous about such terminology? Answer, you are relying on a classic form of scientistic reductivism.
The fact that intelligence is physical, emerges from chemistry, etc,. has nothing to do with there being also objectively different levels of computational sophistication.
If you want to be scientific about that you could look at neuropsychology on one hand and computability/complexity on the other. There are levels and so equivocation of "mentorship" as "prompting" and fallacious variants thereof is a) frankly intellectually obtuse, b) par for the course for SV-levels of philosophizing, c) and a disservice to philosophy, physics, and Einstein's own philosophical outlooks himself.
I am well aware of the Hinton-style physics argument about human cognition, and unlike others I am partial to it. That "there is no special magic." But it is wrong to go about misunderstanding and/or conveying this physicalism/computationalim so grossly.
I also don't have to start replies thumping my chest about my credentials, also another kind of intellectual boorishness that works to cloud understanding and serious discussion.
I'm not sure which move is worse or more telling, those above or the one backhandedly accusing someone who disagrees with you of religious thinking. It is bad faith and undisciplined behavior. Having privileged and advanced degrees is clearly no antidote, as Asimov famously wrote.
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