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by JackSlateur3 hours ago |
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upvoteby azakai3 hours ago|
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The article answers this question, at least to the extent it can be answered, at this time.

We see some signs of reasoning, but also we understand little about how they work.

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upvoteby michaelchisari3 hours ago|
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Do we see actual signs of reasoning or is it anthropomorphism? We have an innate tendency to do so as humans.
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upvoteby blooalien3 hours ago|
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> Do we see signs of reasoning or is it anthropomorphism?

This is the part that so many folks just don't seem to understand (probably because it's been labeled as "thinking" or "reasoning" mode, and people assume that words have meaning). It's not reasoning or thought. It's spewing tokens pretending to "think", but it's actually just generating extra "context" to help the final answer be more coherent. The model isn't doing anything it doesn't already do. It's just doing more of it to improve the quality of the final answer displayed to the user.

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upvoteby Leonard_of_Q2 hours ago|
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You're describing a process by which a 'thinking' entity uses cognition to refine a solution to a stated problem. That's a lot of words so usually we shorten this to 'reasoning'.

Do LLMs 'think'? I 'think' they do in a way. I don't really know how I think myself but I know I do and therefore I am (thanks, Descartes). I have a somewhat better grasp of the way LLMs 'think'. They do so sequentially, building a chain of descriptors which best fit the problem and the preceding descriptors. I suspect I do something not entirely dissimilar- i.e. I imagine 'worlds' which are like the current one changed in some way so they the problem I'm working on is reduced, then refine those until it is resolved - but in a massively parallel way.

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upvoteby blooalien2 hours ago|
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Fine. Whatever. I give up. LLMs think. Believe what you want. I literally no longer care, and this argument is beyond exhausting. Go ask the LLM to explain itself to you. It will happily spew out a pretty solid explanation of the details and math involved if you ask it the right questions in the right way. It'll also happily play along with you if you want to roleplay that it is an actual thinking machine. It's designed that way. But hey, whatever. It's a thinking intelligent machine and we're all doomed. I accept that my many decades of working with and learning about computers was wasted and I know nothing about them at all.
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upvoteby scrollaway1 hours ago|
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Ask any human to explain their own biology to you and they'll also happily spew out whatever crap they learned before, whether that's correct or not.

You're not making the point you think you are.

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upvoteby blooalien1 hours ago|
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> "You're not making the point you think you are."

I don't care anymore. I'm not going to bother with this discussion anymore, not with anyone. I realize now that people want to believe what they want to believe and they don't care about facts or reality, so why should I care either? It's not worth my time or stress to give a damn anymore. I'm done. I'm not going to respond any further on any of these threads, and I'm probably done commenting in general. It's just not worth it anymore. I'm gonna go back to doin things I actually enjoy doing now. Y'all folks have fun. I genuinely wish you all the best.

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upvoteby famouswaffles5 minutes ago|
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If you really didn't care you could have just stopped replying instead of making sure you got in the last word.

A single reply and you folded, unable to provide any counter of any sort. Why even bother at all if you're going to throw a tantrum at the first sign of disagreement ?

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upvoteby cindyllm3 minutes ago|
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[dead]
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upvoteby dataflow2 hours ago|
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Honestly, people need to get over this debate. It's pretty irrelevant in a lot of cases. When people ask "what is the model thinking?", they're really asking "what caused the model to produce this response (as opposed to a bunch of other plausible ones)?"

Whether it's thinking or word prediction or whatever you want to call it, people are trying to understand the causal chain.

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upvoteby throw3108222 hours ago|
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It's not just a nominalistic debate though, as the people who are vocal against the idea that LLMs might "understand" or "think" also claim that because of this, they are fundamentally limited in what they can achieve, in contrast to human beings. Therefore any possibility of actual intelligence (or even superintelligence) is, according to them, just a fantasy.
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upvoteby wat100002 hours ago|
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Angry diatribes about whether submarines swim or not.
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upvoteby azakai3 hours ago|
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Yes, we do see signs of actual reasoning, see the papers linked in the article. (There are many others too.)

Yes, we have a tendency to anthropomorphize, but (most) researchers are aware of this.

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upvoteby michaelchisari2 hours ago|
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The papers linked in the article discuss the mechanical operations that simulate reasoning. Intelligence is data efficiency and I don't see a strong argument that reasoning can exist if it requires a world's worth of data.

That doesn't mean that simulated reasoning isn't useful, it's wildly useful. But a thing is not its simulation.

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upvoteby throw3108222 hours ago|
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> a thing is not its simulation.

"The King leaned over, looked and saw, yes, the Middle Ages simulated to a T, all digital, binary , and nonlinear, and there was the land of Dandelia, The Icicle Forest, the palace with the Helical Tower, the Aviary That Neighed, and the Treasury with a Hundred Eyes as well, and there was Ineffabelle herself, taking a slow, stochastic stroll through the simulated garden, and her circuits glowed red and gold as she picked simulated daisies, and hummed a simulated song."

(Stanislaw Lem, Cyberiad)

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upvoteby michaelchisari1 hours ago|
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"In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

"Suarez Miranda,Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658"

- On Exactitude in Science by Jorge Luis Borges

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upvoteby arcanemachiner3 hours ago|
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Yes, there is an LLM feature that we have anthropomorphized as "reasoning" or "thinking", where an LLM has a scratch space where it can dump tokens that help to improve the final output.
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upvoteby otabdeveloper42 hours ago|
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> that help to improve the final output

Do they actually help? Are you sure?

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upvoteby throw3108223 hours ago|
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Of course they do, how else do you think they manage to implement new features in large codebases, or to prove new theorems? But you don't even have to assume they do because of the results- you can read their chain of thought.
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upvoteby chrisjj3 hours ago|
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The Eliza effect.
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upvoteby throw3108222 hours ago|
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It's indeed so powerful that even my compiler and my unit tests fell victim of this delusion.
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upvoteby 38484994493 hours ago|
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[flagged]
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upvoteby ToValueFunfetti2 hours ago|
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For the love of all that is sacred, please stop doing this. I'm begging you. The whole social media landscape is dying and you are creating a throwaway to participate in ruining this small corner. I assume this is not your first. And no one is convinced by this! The guidelines are there for your benefit as well. You achieve nothing but hastening the destruction of one of the last half-decent communities. Sorry for the melodrama.
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upvoteby 38484994492 hours ago|
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[flagged]
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upvoteby ToValueFunfetti2 hours ago|
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The top two comments in this thread agree with the point you just made. This is true of essentially any thread on the subject. If this place sucks, it would have to be because of people like you. If not, you in particular may not be very good at noticing.
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