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Comment by csdvrx | Hacker News Reader

Intransitive preferences is well known to experimental economists, but a hard pill to swallow for many, as it destroys a lot of algorithms (which depends on that) and require more robust tools like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic

> just one of the many tools of reason.

Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_(economics)#Transit... then read https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7058914/ and you will see there's a lot of data suggesting that indeed, it's just one of the many tools!

I think it's similar to how many dislike the non-deterministic output of LLM: when you use statistical tools, a non-deterministic output is a VERY nice feature to explore conceptual spaces with abductive reasoning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning

It's a tool I was using at a previous company, mixing LLMs, statistics and formal tools. I'm surprised there aren't more startups mixing LLM with z3 or even just prolog.

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Thanks for the links, the "tradeoff" aspect of paraconsistent logic is interesting. I think one way to achieve consensus with your debate partner might be to consider that the language rep is "just" a nondeterministic decompression of "the facts". I'm primed to agree with you but

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41892090

(It's very common, esp. with educationally traumatized Americans, e.g., to identify Math with "calculation"/"approved tools" and not "the concepts")

"No amount of calculation will model conceptual thinking" <- sounds more reasonable?? (You said you were ok with nondeterministic outputs? :)

Sorry to come across as patronizing

if conceptual thinking is manipulating abstract concepts after having been given concrete particulars, I'd say it relies heavily upon projection, which, as generalised "K" (from SKI), sounds awfully like calculation.

And this is why I think gibson1 is wrong: we can argue about which projections or systems of logic should be used, concepts are still "calculations".

Here is why I think Gibson could in principle still be right (without necessarily summoning religious feelings)

[if we disregard that he said "concepts are key" -- though we can be yet more charitable and assume that he doesn't accept (median) human-level intelligence as the final boss]

  Para-doxxing ">" Under-standing

(I haven't thought this through, just vibe-calculating, as it were, having pondered the necessity of concrete particulars for a split-second)

(More on that "sophistiKated" aspect of "projeKtion": turns out not to be as idiosynKratic as I'd presumed, but I traded bandwidth for immediacy here, so I'll let GP explain why that's interesting, if he indeed finds it is :)

Wolfram (selfstyled heir to Leibniz/Galois) seems to be serving himself a fronthanded compliment:

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/12/combinators-a-ce...

>What I called a “projection” then is what we’d call a function now; a “filter” is what we’d now call an argument )

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