Maybe I’m missing the detail on how complex the mapping function can be before we say the representations are incompatible.
When it comes to representational similarity analysis, we're trying to isolate the representations from the "coordinate systems" they sit in. If you take an image, and make a second image by rotating it 90 degrees and mirroring it, then, for the purposes of platonic representation hypothesis, they're the same image. Once you get past the "coordinate transform", the similarity between the first representation space and the 90-deg+mirror replica of it is total.
A mapping function between LE and BE can be constructed easily, and it's going to be lossless both ways. Which means that those two representations are fully compatible.
Now, INT16 and FP16? Those are far less compatible representations. There will be an overlap subspace where lossless conversion between the two is trivial, but this compatibility window will be relatively narrow.
But it's actually much weaker condition than it looks, because, for example, lot of representations of boolean circuits are equivalent up to linear transformations over Z_2^n.
Anyway, if they truly proven such a theorem you won't find "incompatible" representations of the same thing.
You're making a mistake there - focusing on the tip of the iceberg without considering what lies beneath it.
The bulk of what the human brain does isn't "decide whether skub is good or bad". The foundation that the human cognition is built upon is vast, and mostly invisible from the inside. You don't get to see the feature matching operators of your visual cortex, or the patterns that decide whether a sound is "soft" or "sharp". And a lot of those foundational features are assembled by biological development programs spun up all the way from DNA.
On that level, when it comes to the bulk of neural circuits and the processes implemented by them, the representations within a "Pro Skub" and an "Anti Skub" guy might easily be 90%+ compatible. The two people who had vastly different life experiences, worldviews and opinions would be more alike to two different LLMs fine tuned from the same base model than they would be to two different architectures trained on completely different datasets.
Suppose these two premises are true: 1. Objective reality exists. 2. There's a model and corpus of data that converges to approximate reality better than any other model.
Now, suppose we train different models with data sources restricted to different tribes/ ideologies/worldviews. Can we discover how their internal representations differ from each other, and from objective reality? What would we do with that knowledge?
>There's a model and corpus of data that converges to approximate reality better than any other model.
How you define "better" exactly is where you smuggle in your messy human value judgements.I say "better" models are ones which more efficiently convert the entire world to my particular brand of evangelical Christianity. And who are you to say otherwise??? :-/
"No no, I mean accurate not better." Sure. And your model inaccurately denies the existence of Yahweh...
Who decides what "reality" is, and how big the gap is? Will Exxon permit you to decide reality on climate change? Will the Catholic Church let you decide reality about abortion?
Humanity can't even agree on the existence or non-existence of various Gods, so we're far from a universally agreed "objective reality" to compare with. Inevitably the most powerful forces will get their way (Exxon etc), regardless of any idealistic notions of truth-seeking.
This is what happens when we defund (and worse, devalue) soft sciences like Philosophy class: a bunch of people making the same 300 year old mistakes all over again! :-\
Repeatable scientific experiments. Trying to argue objective reality doesn't exist is logically incoherent.
There is universal objective truth, and different opinions or world views are just "tribal membership". If onlymother tribes understood that!
Objective reality does not imply consistent measurement of that reality.
Objective reality may not actually exist. Once you start throwing around relativity and quantum effects things get weird, getting them to play nicely together might be even weirder,
"Objective reality does not imply consistent measurement of that reality."
Yet global science converges on a consistent world view. Everybody's telescopes all see the same things.
Modern technology only works because there is a objective reality.
Museum piece for example. Or super sports car that was bought as an investment and just sits in garage. Or junk car that is used as a source of spare parts. Or crash test vehicle (it is propelled with catapult). Or toy car. Or bus used for living...