Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Marcus Daniels]

Values systems are the entailments of arbitrary preferences.  Some preferences 
have had longer to churn than others and so have had more time to be elaborated 
and more people reflecting on them.  This doesn't make them more valuable 
because they lack grounding.  The adherents of these values often have more 
members though.  If these people could be freed, they could ponder the 
entailments of other arbitrary preferences.   Maybe this collective activity 
can all be written down and some general patterns captured by a LLM or similar. 
  I find the entire exercise is a lot of effort for no clear purpose, and a 
bike ride more satisfying.

On Oct 8, 2023, at 5:26 PM, Steve Smith  wrote:




Hope: "doing the right thing, no matter how you think it will turn out"


On 10/8/23 2:21 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
I would center nihilism not on devaluation but on deconstruction.  If value is 
about a set of lived experiences, is it a detached reflection on something 
special that was discovered, or more because of membership in that ecology – 
because of an investment?
Deep membership makes it harder to talk objectively about discoveries and to 
move on to making other discoveries.  Generally attaching to one value system 
means not attaching to another value system.   For example, adopting the value 
of tolerance logically is at odds with policing intolerance, e.g., one Jewish 
neighbor remarked this morning he drove past a home with a Hamas flag on it and 
was scared.   (Reducing that fear by removing the flag would be reducing 
tolerance.)

It seems to me that ideas that work have power and things that don’t work don’t 
have power.   It is reasonable to be skeptical about investment in ideas that 
may require years or decades of investment and not result in a return.  
Unpacking an idea to a Silicon Valley venture capitalist as to why there could 
be a return is deconstruction not devaluation.

I see these folks on MSNBC talking about the nihilism of DJT or Bannon and I 
don’t really get it.   Democracy isn’t a value system; it is a way to avoid 
(violent) conflict in a pluralistic society.   There’s a case to be made for 
the merits of such societies, and a case to be made for limiting violence.  
They should make those cases, not just throw out a placeholder word like 
nihilism to judge the people who don’t value those types of societies.   
(Apparently many people in North America.)

Marcus

From: Friam  on 
behalf of David Eric Smith 
Date: Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 10:40 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding
Zang!  I had not made that connection.

Hmmh.  What do I think?  I seem to have viewed uninterpreted models much as I 
view a hammer or a shovel; as a tool in the world for doing a certain job (in 
this case, a job of perceiving the world in valid ways), neither here nor there 
w.r.t. questions of nihilism.

Where then would I try to center nihilism?  (It’s being a topic I haven’t spent 
a lot of time on historically).  Maybe if I had to choose one phrase, it would 
be “the devaluation of values”.   Brown uses it in her book, but I think it is 
old and standardized.  Don’t know if it came from Nietzsche or Weber, or is 
much older than either of them.

How would I orient to try to address such questions, that I do not want to go 
into support of bombs?  I think my current cast of mind is that there is a 
large class of “discovered thing”, meaning that they are not willed into 
existence, but are brought into existence (if there is even any bringing) 
through lived experience, and “noticed” after the fact.  Or maybe given in the 
ineffable from the start, and noticed along the way (all of Descartes’s cogito, 
the rest of “the self”, and much else).  It seems to me that there is room for 
aesthetics to be given much more and better attention than perhaps it has had 
in philosophy (or whoever is in charge of this question).  Aesthetics certainly 
not being the only domain from which discovered things can originate, but 
useful in that we can recognize it as a source, but not have the impulse to 
conflate it with dogma, as many other notions of “belief” tend to drift into.

Hmm.

Eric



On Oct 8, 2023, at 12:30 PM, Marcus Daniels 
 wrote:

Eric writes:

“Bears on how many things make up the machinery of nihilism, extending well 
beyond relations I recognized as part of an integration, though mentioning many 
things I rail against in daily life.”

The willingness of physicists to use uninterpreted models, e.g., quantum 
mechanics, seems like nihilism to me.  I don’t mean that in a judgmental way, 
nor do I mean it in an admiring way.  On the other hand, there are many people, 
I reckon most people, that provide their beliefs as both explanations and 
justifications.   Bombs follow soon after.


Marcus
-. --- - / ...- 

Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Steve Smith]

   Hope: "/doing the right thing, no matter how you think it will turn
   out/"


On 10/8/23 2:21 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:


I would center nihilism not on devaluation but on deconstruction. If 
value is about a set of lived experiences, is it a detached reflection 
on something special that was discovered, or more because of 
membership in that ecology – because of an investment?
Deep membership makes it harder to talk objectively about discoveries 
and to move on to making other discoveries. Generally attaching to one 
value system means not attaching to another value system.   For 
example, adopting the value of tolerance logically is at odds with 
policing intolerance, e.g., one Jewish neighbor remarked this morning 
he drove past a home with a Hamas flag on it and was scared. (Reducing 
that fear by removing the flag would be reducing tolerance.)


It seems to me that ideas that work have power and things that don’t 
work don’t have power.   It is reasonable to be skeptical about 
investment in ideas that may require years or decades of investment 
and not result in a return. Unpacking an idea to a Silicon Valley 
venture capitalist as to why there could be a return is deconstruction 
not devaluation.


I see these folks on MSNBC talking about the nihilism of DJT or Bannon 
and I don’t really get it.   Democracy isn’t a value system; it is a 
way to avoid (violent) conflict in a pluralistic society.   There’s a 
case to be made for the merits of such societies, and a case to be 
made for limiting violence.  They should make those cases, not just 
throw out a placeholder word like nihilism to judge the people who 
don’t value those types of societies.   (Apparently many people in 
North America.)


Marcus

*From: *Friam  on behalf of David Eric 
Smith 

*Date: *Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 10:40 AM
*To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 


*Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

Zang!  I had not made that connection.

Hmmh.  What do I think?  I seem to have viewed uninterpreted models 
much as I view a hammer or a shovel; as a tool in the world for doing 
a certain job (in this case, a job of perceiving the world in valid 
ways), neither here nor there w.r.t. questions of nihilism.


Where then would I try to center nihilism?  (It’s being a topic I 
haven’t spent a lot of time on historically).  Maybe if I had to 
choose one phrase, it would be “the devaluation of values”.   Brown 
uses it in her book, but I think it is old and standardized.  Don’t 
know if it came from Nietzsche or Weber, or is much older than either 
of them.


How would I orient to try to address such questions, that I do not 
want to go into support of bombs?  I think my current cast of mind is 
that there is a large class of “discovered thing”, meaning that they 
are not willed into existence, but are brought into existence (if 
there is even any bringing) through lived experience, and “noticed” 
after the fact.  Or maybe given in the ineffable from the start, and 
noticed along the way (all of Descartes’s cogito, the rest of “the 
self”, and much else).  It seems to me that there is room for 
aesthetics to be given much more and better attention than perhaps it 
has had in philosophy (or whoever is in charge of this question). 
 Aesthetics certainly not being the only domain from which discovered 
things can originate, but useful in that we can recognize it as a 
source, but not have the impulse to conflate it with dogma, as many 
other notions of “belief” tend to drift into.


Hmm.

Eric



On Oct 8, 2023, at 12:30 PM, Marcus Daniels 
wrote:

Eric writes:

“Bears on how many things make up the machinery of nihilism,
extending well beyond relations I recognized as part of an
integration, though mentioning many things I rail against in daily
life.”


The willingness of physicists to use uninterpreted models, e.g.,
quantum mechanics, seems like nihilism to me.  I don’t mean that
in a judgmental way, nor do I mean it in an admiring way.  On the
other hand, there are many people, I reckon most people, that
provide their beliefs as both explanations and justifications.  
Bombs follow soon after.


Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Marcus Daniels]

I would center nihilism not on devaluation but on deconstruction.  If value is 
about a set of lived experiences, is it a detached reflection on something 
special that was discovered, or more because of membership in that ecology – 
because of an investment?
Deep membership makes it harder to talk objectively about discoveries and to 
move on to making other discoveries.  Generally attaching to one value system 
means not attaching to another value system.   For example, adopting the value 
of tolerance logically is at odds with policing intolerance, e.g., one Jewish 
neighbor remarked this morning he drove past a home with a Hamas flag on it and 
was scared.   (Reducing that fear by removing the flag would be reducing 
tolerance.)

It seems to me that ideas that work have power and things that don’t work don’t 
have power.   It is reasonable to be skeptical about investment in ideas that 
may require years or decades of investment and not result in a return.  
Unpacking an idea to a Silicon Valley venture capitalist as to why there could 
be a return is deconstruction not devaluation.

I see these folks on MSNBC talking about the nihilism of DJT or Bannon and I 
don’t really get it.   Democracy isn’t a value system; it is a way to avoid 
(violent) conflict in a pluralistic society.   There’s a case to be made for 
the merits of such societies, and a case to be made for limiting violence.  
They should make those cases, not just throw out a placeholder word like 
nihilism to judge the people who don’t value those types of societies.   
(Apparently many people in North America.)

Marcus

From: Friam  on behalf of David Eric Smith 

Date: Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 10:40 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding
Zang!  I had not made that connection.

Hmmh.  What do I think?  I seem to have viewed uninterpreted models much as I 
view a hammer or a shovel; as a tool in the world for doing a certain job (in 
this case, a job of perceiving the world in valid ways), neither here nor there 
w.r.t. questions of nihilism.

Where then would I try to center nihilism?  (It’s being a topic I haven’t spent 
a lot of time on historically).  Maybe if I had to choose one phrase, it would 
be “the devaluation of values”.   Brown uses it in her book, but I think it is 
old and standardized.  Don’t know if it came from Nietzsche or Weber, or is 
much older than either of them.

How would I orient to try to address such questions, that I do not want to go 
into support of bombs?  I think my current cast of mind is that there is a 
large class of “discovered thing”, meaning that they are not willed into 
existence, but are brought into existence (if there is even any bringing) 
through lived experience, and “noticed” after the fact.  Or maybe given in the 
ineffable from the start, and noticed along the way (all of Descartes’s cogito, 
the rest of “the self”, and much else).  It seems to me that there is room for 
aesthetics to be given much more and better attention than perhaps it has had 
in philosophy (or whoever is in charge of this question).  Aesthetics certainly 
not being the only domain from which discovered things can originate, but 
useful in that we can recognize it as a source, but not have the impulse to 
conflate it with dogma, as many other notions of “belief” tend to drift into.

Hmm.

Eric



On Oct 8, 2023, at 12:30 PM, Marcus Daniels  wrote:

Eric writes:

“Bears on how many things make up the machinery of nihilism, extending well 
beyond relations I recognized as part of an integration, though mentioning many 
things I rail against in daily life.”

The willingness of physicists to use uninterpreted models, e.g., quantum 
mechanics, seems like nihilism to me.  I don’t mean that in a judgmental way, 
nor do I mean it in an admiring way.  On the other hand, there are many people, 
I reckon most people, that provide their beliefs as both explanations and 
justifications.   Bombs follow soon after.


Marcus
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Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Roger Critchlow]

Oops, found the roundtable discussion appendix and missed Wendy Brown's
actual Tanner lecture:

Politics and Knowledge in Nihilistic Times:  Thinking with Max Weber -
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG52tEGghTA - “Politics”
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXm_0DxoS_k - “Knowledge”

-- rec --


On Sun, Oct 8, 2023 at 1:27 PM Roger Critchlow  wrote:

> The book sounds intriguing, but it's not in my lending library.
>
> Happily, there are lots of Tanner Lecture videos available online:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI-MCqeCILs Wendy Brown from 2019
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJprCvmrpoY Kim Stanley Robinson from
> March 2023
>
> -- rec --
>
>
> -- rec --
>
> On Sun, Oct 8, 2023 at 11:56 AM David Eric Smith 
> wrote:
>
>> It’s a good point/counterpinet, Pieter.
>>
>> I don’t want to stand against using new tools to relieve a scarcity
>> constraint, and surely education has been a severe one.
>>
>> I have what appears to be an enormous suspicion of a bait and switch, in
>> which suddenly we find ourselves in a world where simultaneously:
>>
>> 1. Sal Khan and Daphne Koller own everything, and nobody else owns
>> anything; and
>>
>> 2. People have no skills (say I, as I use the scary-good google translate
>> to take enormous pressure, though less shame, off me for not learning a
>> language I should have learned by now).
>>
>> Or, as a popular bumper sticker in Santa Fe used to say post-2016: Where
>> are we going?  And what am I doing in this handbasket?
>>
>> I should mention, on this point, that part of my cast of mind was shaped
>> by an article I read some time ago in some education chronicle, about how
>> the command-and-control interface to the computer was taking up more and
>> more space in classrooms, and kids were starting to show severe systematic
>> deficits in particular areas.  They could command anything they wanted into
>> existence on the computer, and failed to learn that the rest of the world
>> of people doesn’t work that way.  Negotiating skills were mentioned in the
>> article.  My description of a dystopian non-education was meant to suggest
>> that for several students to have to hear exactly the same thing would
>> require them to come to terms with the fact that it will fit them
>> differently, and they should become used to handling that too.
>>
>> It is interesting that I could never use a chatbot as a first stage of
>> writing something, as the optimistic chatbots suggest everybody will do,
>> and which I can believe for some people will be a good fit.  For me, I
>> can’t even take looking at a page of my own writing when I am in a tangle,
>> as a start to getting out of it.  All that pre-formed text is in the way of
>> whatever part of my brain tries to bring into focus what I should do next.
>> I know that chatbots and writing is not your point about education, and
>> don’t mean to derail those points; the chatbots-and-journalism theme was
>> one of the things from the original thread that put me onto the education
>> sidetrack.  What (at least in my imagination) they have in common is that
>> there are certain mental operations that I only do when I have “space”, and
>> many of these tools seem designed to make sure nobody ever has to leave any
>> “space” unfilled by some external stimulus, ever again.  I worry about it
>> as a development-weakening prosthetic, though I understand that the
>> argument for that would need to be made case by case, versus the likely
>> (and I believe you, in many cases demonstrated) economies and advantages of
>> personalization.
>>
>> Fortunately, I am neither designing anything nor voting on anything just
>> now, so there is no danger I will hold anybody else back who is trying to
>> make something work.
>>
>> Eric
>>
>>
>> On Oct 8, 2023, at 7:45 AM, Pieter Steenekamp 
>> wrote:
>>
>> I'd like to reflect how LLM's and AI could disrupt education.
>>
>> My paradigm is not to think in terms of the current educational model,
>> but to throw out all preconceived ideas and to design it from scratch.
>> There are obviously zillions of ways to do it and a good model will need to
>> evolve, but the following are merely two examples to trigger new and novel
>> approaches, one from Sal Khan and one from my own experience.
>>
>> 1 Sal Khan's approach to use AI to personalize education is based on the
>> idea that every student can benefit from a customized learning path that
>> adapts to their needs and preferences. He argues that AI can help scale the
>> benefits of one-to-one tutoring, which has been shown to improve students'
>> performance significantly. He also believes that AI can enhance the role of
>> teachers by providing them with useful feedback, insights, and assistance.
>> He envisions a future where every student has access to an AI-powered
>> personal tutor and every teacher has an AI teaching assistant.
>>
>> Sal Khan is the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, a nonprofit education
>> platform that offers free online 

Re: [FRIAM] cults

[Roger Critchlow]

Feels like an AI-fake, or maybe time erodes us into the worst imaginings of
our enemies.

-- rec --

On Fri, Oct 6, 2023 at 12:02 PM Marcus Daniels  wrote:

> I was tempted to dive into the L vs. E as it may apply to psychology and
> sociology, but will just offer this instead.  Formal deprogramming!   Say
> the quiet part, H, lol.
>
> [image: 231006072811-clinton-1006.jpg]
>
> Video: Clinton calls for 'formal deprogramming' of MAGA 'cult members' |
> CNN Politics
> 
> cnn.com
> 
>
> 
>
>
> On Oct 5, 2023, at 2:04 PM, glen  wrote:
>
> Rather than -emic vs -etic, I prefer Lagrangian vs Eulerian,
> respectively. This avoids the concept of "inside" vs "outside", which then
> avoids the scoping issue Marcus raised re: nation vs other types of
> boundaries.
>
> A self-imposed identity is just as imposed as an other-imposed identity.
> While some of us may chafe at other-imposed vs self-imposed, I think
> there's another type of person, those who resist any stable identity,
> whether other- or self-imposed. And resistance is the wrong way to frame
> it. It's more like a tendency to swirl around in an attractor versus a
> tendency to hop from one basin to another.
>
> He/Him may be relatively accurate today. But I'm not committing to its
> accuracy tomorrow.
>
> On 10/5/23 12:50, Steve Smith wrote:
>
> on Emic vs Etic  POVs.  My
> own "individualism" is armatured significantly around "/I don't like to be
> told/" with being */told who I am/* perhaps the most egregious, even if I'm
> being told that "/I'm someone who doesn't like to be told who I am"/.
>
> --
> glen
>
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Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Roger Critchlow]

The book sounds intriguing, but it's not in my lending library.

Happily, there are lots of Tanner Lecture videos available online:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI-MCqeCILs Wendy Brown from 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJprCvmrpoY Kim Stanley Robinson from
March 2023

-- rec --


-- rec --

On Sun, Oct 8, 2023 at 11:56 AM David Eric Smith 
wrote:

> It’s a good point/counterpinet, Pieter.
>
> I don’t want to stand against using new tools to relieve a scarcity
> constraint, and surely education has been a severe one.
>
> I have what appears to be an enormous suspicion of a bait and switch, in
> which suddenly we find ourselves in a world where simultaneously:
>
> 1. Sal Khan and Daphne Koller own everything, and nobody else owns
> anything; and
>
> 2. People have no skills (say I, as I use the scary-good google translate
> to take enormous pressure, though less shame, off me for not learning a
> language I should have learned by now).
>
> Or, as a popular bumper sticker in Santa Fe used to say post-2016: Where
> are we going?  And what am I doing in this handbasket?
>
> I should mention, on this point, that part of my cast of mind was shaped
> by an article I read some time ago in some education chronicle, about how
> the command-and-control interface to the computer was taking up more and
> more space in classrooms, and kids were starting to show severe systematic
> deficits in particular areas.  They could command anything they wanted into
> existence on the computer, and failed to learn that the rest of the world
> of people doesn’t work that way.  Negotiating skills were mentioned in the
> article.  My description of a dystopian non-education was meant to suggest
> that for several students to have to hear exactly the same thing would
> require them to come to terms with the fact that it will fit them
> differently, and they should become used to handling that too.
>
> It is interesting that I could never use a chatbot as a first stage of
> writing something, as the optimistic chatbots suggest everybody will do,
> and which I can believe for some people will be a good fit.  For me, I
> can’t even take looking at a page of my own writing when I am in a tangle,
> as a start to getting out of it.  All that pre-formed text is in the way of
> whatever part of my brain tries to bring into focus what I should do next.
> I know that chatbots and writing is not your point about education, and
> don’t mean to derail those points; the chatbots-and-journalism theme was
> one of the things from the original thread that put me onto the education
> sidetrack.  What (at least in my imagination) they have in common is that
> there are certain mental operations that I only do when I have “space”, and
> many of these tools seem designed to make sure nobody ever has to leave any
> “space” unfilled by some external stimulus, ever again.  I worry about it
> as a development-weakening prosthetic, though I understand that the
> argument for that would need to be made case by case, versus the likely
> (and I believe you, in many cases demonstrated) economies and advantages of
> personalization.
>
> Fortunately, I am neither designing anything nor voting on anything just
> now, so there is no danger I will hold anybody else back who is trying to
> make something work.
>
> Eric
>
>
> On Oct 8, 2023, at 7:45 AM, Pieter Steenekamp 
> wrote:
>
> I'd like to reflect how LLM's and AI could disrupt education.
>
> My paradigm is not to think in terms of the current educational model, but
> to throw out all preconceived ideas and to design it from scratch. There
> are obviously zillions of ways to do it and a good model will need to
> evolve, but the following are merely two examples to trigger new and novel
> approaches, one from Sal Khan and one from my own experience.
>
> 1 Sal Khan's approach to use AI to personalize education is based on the
> idea that every student can benefit from a customized learning path that
> adapts to their needs and preferences. He argues that AI can help scale the
> benefits of one-to-one tutoring, which has been shown to improve students'
> performance significantly. He also believes that AI can enhance the role of
> teachers by providing them with useful feedback, insights, and assistance.
> He envisions a future where every student has access to an AI-powered
> personal tutor and every teacher has an AI teaching assistant.
>
> Sal Khan is the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, a nonprofit education
> platform that offers free online courses, videos, and exercises for
> learners of all ages. He has been a pioneer in using technology to
> democratize education and make it accessible to anyone, anywhere. He has
> also been exploring the potential of AI to transform education for the
> better. In his 2023 TED talk¹, he demonstrated Khanmigo, an AI-powered
> guide that can help students with various subjects, skills, and tasks.
> Khanmigo can detect students' mistakes and misconceptions, 

Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[David Eric Smith]

It’s a good point/counterpinet, Pieter.

I don’t want to stand against using new tools to relieve a scarcity constraint, 
and surely education has been a severe one.

I have what appears to be an enormous suspicion of a bait and switch, in which 
suddenly we find ourselves in a world where simultaneously:

1. Sal Khan and Daphne Koller own everything, and nobody else owns anything; 
and 

2. People have no skills (say I, as I use the scary-good google translate to 
take enormous pressure, though less shame, off me for not learning a language I 
should have learned by now).  

Or, as a popular bumper sticker in Santa Fe used to say post-2016: Where are we 
going?  And what am I doing in this handbasket?

I should mention, on this point, that part of my cast of mind was shaped by an 
article I read some time ago in some education chronicle, about how the 
command-and-control interface to the computer was taking up more and more space 
in classrooms, and kids were starting to show severe systematic deficits in 
particular areas.  They could command anything they wanted into existence on 
the computer, and failed to learn that the rest of the world of people doesn’t 
work that way.  Negotiating skills were mentioned in the article.  My 
description of a dystopian non-education was meant to suggest that for several 
students to have to hear exactly the same thing would require them to come to 
terms with the fact that it will fit them differently, and they should become 
used to handling that too.  

It is interesting that I could never use a chatbot as a first stage of writing 
something, as the optimistic chatbots suggest everybody will do, and which I 
can believe for some people will be a good fit.  For me, I can’t even take 
looking at a page of my own writing when I am in a tangle, as a start to 
getting out of it.  All that pre-formed text is in the way of whatever part of 
my brain tries to bring into focus what I should do next.  I know that chatbots 
and writing is not your point about education, and don’t mean to derail those 
points; the chatbots-and-journalism theme was one of the things from the 
original thread that put me onto the education sidetrack.  What (at least in my 
imagination) they have in common is that there are certain mental operations 
that I only do when I have “space”, and many of these tools seem designed to 
make sure nobody ever has to leave any “space” unfilled by some external 
stimulus, ever again.  I worry about it as a development-weakening prosthetic, 
though I understand that the argument for that would need to be made case by 
case, versus the likely (and I believe you, in many cases demonstrated) 
economies and advantages of personalization.

Fortunately, I am neither designing anything nor voting on anything just now, 
so there is no danger I will hold anybody else back who is trying to make 
something work.

Eric


> On Oct 8, 2023, at 7:45 AM, Pieter Steenekamp  
> wrote:
> 
> I'd like to reflect how LLM's and AI could disrupt education.
> 
> My paradigm is not to think in terms of the current educational model, but to 
> throw out all preconceived ideas and to design it from scratch. There are 
> obviously zillions of ways to do it and a good model will need to evolve, but 
> the following are merely two examples to trigger new and novel approaches, 
> one from Sal Khan and one from my own experience.
> 
> 1 Sal Khan's approach to use AI to personalize education is based on the idea 
> that every student can benefit from a customized learning path that adapts to 
> their needs and preferences. He argues that AI can help scale the benefits of 
> one-to-one tutoring, which has been shown to improve students' performance 
> significantly. He also believes that AI can enhance the role of teachers by 
> providing them with useful feedback, insights, and assistance. He envisions a 
> future where every student has access to an AI-powered personal tutor and 
> every teacher has an AI teaching assistant.
> 
> Sal Khan is the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, a nonprofit education 
> platform that offers free online courses, videos, and exercises for learners 
> of all ages. He has been a pioneer in using technology to democratize 
> education and make it accessible to anyone, anywhere. He has also been 
> exploring the potential of AI to transform education for the better. In his 
> 2023 TED talk¹, he demonstrated Khanmigo, an AI-powered guide that can help 
> students with various subjects, skills, and tasks. Khanmigo can detect 
> students' mistakes and misconceptions, provide effective feedback and 
> explanations, encourage Socratic dialogue and debate, and assist with writing 
> and storytelling. Khanmigo also acts as a teaching assistant for teachers, 
> helping them with lesson planning, grading, and progress reports.
> 
> Sal Khan's approach to use AI to personalize education is based on his vision 
> of creating a more humanistic and learner-centered education 

Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[David Eric Smith]

Zang!  I had not made that connection.

Hmmh.  What do I think?  I seem to have viewed uninterpreted models much as I 
view a hammer or a shovel; as a tool in the world for doing a certain job (in 
this case, a job of perceiving the world in valid ways), neither here nor there 
w.r.t. questions of nihilism.

Where then would I try to center nihilism?  (It’s being a topic I haven’t spent 
a lot of time on historically).  Maybe if I had to choose one phrase, it would 
be “the devaluation of values”.   Brown uses it in her book, but I think it is 
old and standardized.  Don’t know if it came from Nietzsche or Weber, or is 
much older than either of them.  

How would I orient to try to address such questions, that I do not want to go 
into support of bombs?  I think my current cast of mind is that there is a 
large class of “discovered thing”, meaning that they are not willed into 
existence, but are brought into existence (if there is even any bringing) 
through lived experience, and “noticed” after the fact.  Or maybe given in the 
ineffable from the start, and noticed along the way (all of Descartes’s cogito, 
the rest of “the self”, and much else).  It seems to me that there is room for 
aesthetics to be given much more and better attention than perhaps it has had 
in philosophy (or whoever is in charge of this question).  Aesthetics certainly 
not being the only domain from which discovered things can originate, but 
useful in that we can recognize it as a source, but not have the impulse to 
conflate it with dogma, as many other notions of “belief” tend to drift into.

Hmm.

Eric


> On Oct 8, 2023, at 12:30 PM, Marcus Daniels  wrote:
> 
> Eric writes:
> 
> “Bears on how many things make up the machinery of nihilism, extending well 
> beyond relations I recognized as part of an integration, though mentioning 
> many things I rail against in daily life.”
> 
> The willingness of physicists to use uninterpreted models, e.g., quantum 
> mechanics, seems like nihilism to me.  I don’t mean that in a judgmental way, 
> nor do I mean it in an admiring way.  On the other hand, there are many 
> people, I reckon most people, that provide their beliefs as both explanations 
> and justifications.   Bombs follow soon after.
> 
> Marcus
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Re: [FRIAM] Language Model Understanding

[Marcus Daniels]

Eric writes:

“Bears on how many things make up the machinery of nihilism, extending well 
beyond relations I recognized as part of an integration, though mentioning many 
things I rail against in daily life.”

The willingness of physicists to use uninterpreted models, e.g., quantum 
mechanics, seems like nihilism to me.  I don’t mean that in a judgmental way, 
nor do I mean it in an admiring way.  On the other hand, there are many people, 
I reckon most people, that provide their beliefs as both explanations and 
justifications.   Bombs follow soon after.

Marcus
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