If you’ve read about them, Open AI probably has too.
From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West Sent: Friday, March 22, 2024 8:32 AM To: friam@redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the inequities of uniquity this is 'unique' only if you exclude Vedic, Buddhist, Taoist, ... thought. davew On Fri, Mar 22, 2024, at 9:54 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote: 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 <mailto: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 <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > > On Behalf Of glen > Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2024 11:50 AM > To: friam@redfish.com <mailto: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 <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> > >> On Behalf Of glen >> Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2024 7:49 AM >> To: friam@redfish.com <mailto: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> <mailto: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"? > -- ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . 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