Against LLM Reductionism

Article strongly resonates with me. I find most LLM criticism is "just" a bad version of Searle's chinese room. Its just a lack of imagination and foresight really. Critics are "unimpressed" because they lack understanding. If someone isn't awed by the Grand Canyon, for example, I think that says something about the observer not the Canyon.

Cells are just "stochastic molecular machines," how could "scaling" them up to multicelluar aggregates with 10^13 cells do anything meaningful. Bouncing a bunch of billards balls around doesn't make mind. But of course it does, and of course LLMs are more than parrots or pastiche or whatever low quality criticism the ignorant are peddling.

Sure life is "just" a dissipative process falling down an energy gradient. But aren't all processes like that? It seems so odd to assert without evidence a reductive "explanation" to discredit observable emergent behavior. It's just the mind as the new "aether."

Where is michelson-morley for the mind?