Prompt:
Express a unique concept. Make it as profound as possible
https://chat.openai.com/share/649bd4ca-f856-451e-83a2-01fc2cfe47fb
On Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 6:50 AM glen <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:
I guess the question returns to one's criteria for assuming
decoupling between the very [small|fast] and the very
[large|slow]. Or in this case, the inner vs. the outer:
Susie Alegre on how digital technology undermines free thought
https://freethinker.co.uk/2024/03/interview-susie-alegre/
It would be reasonable for Frank to argue that we can
generate the space of possible context definitions,
inductively, from the set of token definitions, much like an
LLM might. Ideally, you could then measure the expressiveness
of those inferred contexts/languages and choose the largest
(most complete; by induction, each context/language *should*
be self-consistent so we shouldn't have to worry about that).
And if that's how things work (I'm not saying it is), then
those "attractors" with the finest granularity (very slow to
emerge, very resistant to dissolution) would be the least
novel. Novelty (uniqueness) might then be defined in terms of
fragility, short half-life, missable opportunity. But that
would also argue that novelty is either less *real* or that
the universe/context/language is very *open* and the path
from fragile to robust obtains like some kind of Hebbian
reinforcement, use it or lose it, win the hearts and minds or
dissipate to nothing.
I.e. there is no such thing as free thought. Thought can't
decouple from social manipulation.
On 3/21/24 13:38, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> In the LLM example, completions from some starting state or
none, have specific probabilities. An incomplete yet-unseen
(unique) utterance would be completed based on prior
probabilities of individual tokens.
>
> I agree that raw materialist uniqueness won't necessarily
or often override constraints of a situation. For example,
if an employer instructs an employee how to put a small,
lightweight product in a box, label it, and send it to a
customer by UPS, the individual differences metabolism of the
employees aren't likely to matter much when shipping more
small, lightweight objects to other customers. It could be
the case for a professor and student too. The attractors
come from the instruction or the curriculum. One choice
constrains the next.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
> Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2024 11:50 AM
> To: friam@redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the inequities of uniquity
>
> I was arguing with that same friend yesterday at the pub. I
was trying to describe how some of us have more cognitive
power than others (he's one of them). Part of it is "free"
power, freed up by his upper middle class white good diet
privilege. But if we allow that some of it might be genetic,
then that's a starting point for deciding when novelty
matters to the ephemerides of two otherwise analogical
individuals (or projects if projects have an analog to
genetics). Such things are well-described in twin studies.
One twin suffers some PTSD the other doesn't and ... boom ...
their otherwise lack of uniqueness blossoms into uniqueness.
>
> His objection was that even identical twins are not
identical. They were already unique ... like the Pauli
Exclusion Principle or somesuch nonsense. Even though it's a
bit of a ridiculous argument, I could apply it to your sense
of avoiding non-novel attractors. No 2 attractors will be
identical. And no 1 attractor will be unique. So those are
moot issues. Distinctions without differences, maybe. Woit's
rants are legendary. But some of us find happiness in
wasteful sophistry.
>
> What matters is *how* things are the same and how they
differ. Their qualities and values (nearly) orthogonal to
novelty.
>
>
> On 3/21/24 11:29, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> If GPT systems capture some sense of "usual" context based
on trillions of internet tokens, and that corpus is regarded
approximately "global context", then it seems not so
objectionable to call "unusual", new training items that
contribute to fine-tuning loss.
>>
>> It seems reasonable to worry that ubiquitous GPT systems
reduce social entropy by encouraging copying instead of new
thinking, but it could also have the reverse effect: If I am
immediately aware that an idea is not novel, I may avoid
attractors that agents that wrongly believe they are
"independent" will gravitate toward.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2024 7:49 AM
>> To: friam@redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the inequities of uniquity
>>
>> A friend of mine constantly reminds me that language is
dynamic, not fixed in stone from a billion years ago. So, if
you find others consistently using a term in a way that you
think is wrong, then *you* are wrong in what you think. The
older I get, the more difficult it gets.
>>
>> But specifically, the technical sense of "unique" is
vanishingly rare ... so rare as to be merely an ideal,
unverifiable, nowhere, non-existent. So if the "unique" is
imaginary, unreal, and doesn't exist, why not co-opt it for a
more useful, banal purpose? Nothing is actually unique. So
we'll use the token "unique" to mean (relatively) rare.
>>
>> And "unusual" is even worse. Both tokens require one to
describe the context, domain, or universe within which the
discussion is happening. If you don't define your context,
then the "definitions" you provide for the components of that
context are not even wrong; they're nonsense. "Unusual"
implies a usual. And a usual implies a perspective ... a
mechanism of action for your sampling technique. So "unusual"
presents even more of a linguistic *burden* than "unique".
>>
>> On 3/20/24 13:14, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>>> What's wrong with "unusual"? It avoids the problem.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 1:55 PM Steve Smith
<sasm...@swcp.com <mailto:sasm...@swcp.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I'm hung up on the usage of qualified
"uniqueness" as well, but in perhaps the opposite sense.
>>>>
>>>> I agree with the premise that "unique" in it's
purest, simplest form does seem to be inherently singular.
On the other hand, this mal(icious) propensity of qualifying
uniqueness (uniqueish?) is so common, that I have to believe
there is a concept there which people who use those terms are
reaching for. They are not wrong to reach for it, just
annoying in the label they choose?
>>>>
>>>> I had a round with GPT4 trying to discuss this,
not because I think LLMs are the authority on *anything* but
rather because the discussions I have with them can help me
brainstorm my way around ideas with the LLM nominally
representing "what a lot of people say" (if not think).
Careful prompting seems to be able to help narrow down *all
people* (in the training data) to different/interesting
subsets of *lots of people* with certain characteristics.
>>>>
>>>> GPT4 definitely wanted to allow for a wide range
of gradated, speciated, spectral uses of "unique" and gave me
plenty of commonly used examples which validates my position
that "for something so obviously/technically incorrect, it
sure is used a lot!"
>>>>
>>>> We discussed uniqueness in the context of
evolutionary biology and cladistics and homology and
homoplasy. We discussed it in terms of cluster analysis. We
discussed the distinction between objective and subjective,
absolute and relative.
>>>>
>>>> The closest thing to a conclusion I have at the
moment is:
>>>>
>>>> 1. Most people do and will continue to treat
"uniqueness" as a relative/spectral/subjective qualifier.
>>>> 2. Many people like Frank and myself (half the
time) will have an allergic reaction to this usage.
>>>> 3. The common (mis)usage might be attributable to
conflating "unique" with "distinct"?
>
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