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daveguy

> An abstraction is a deterministic, pure function, than when given A always returns B.

That is just not correct. There is no rule that says an abstraction is strictly functional or deterministic.

In fact, the original abstraction was likely language, which is clearly neither.

The cleanest and easiest abstractions to deal with have those properties, but they are not required.

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This is such a funny example because language is the main way that we communicate with LLMs. Which means you can make tie both of your points together in the same example: If you take a scene and describe it in words, then have an LLM reconstruct the scene from the description, you'd likely get a scene that looks very different then the original source. This simultaneous makes both your point and the person you're responding to's point:

1. Language is an abstraction and it's not deterministic (it's really lossy)

2. LLMs behave differently than the abstractions involved in building software, where normally if you gave the same input, you'd expect the same output.

Yes, most abstractions are not as clean as leak free functional abstractions. Most abstractions in the world are leaky and lossy. Abstraction was around long before computers were invented.

What is the thing that language itself abstracts?

Your thought's I'd say, but it's more of a two way street than what I think of as abstraction.

Okay, language was the original vehicle for abstraction if everyone wants to get pedantic about it. And yes, abstraction of thought. Only in computerland (programming, mathematics and physics) do you even have the opportunity to have leak-free functional abstractions. That is not the norm. LLM-like leaky abstractions are the norm.

This is clearly not true. For example, the Pythagorean theorem is an old, completely leak free, abstraction with no computer required.

Sorry for being pedantic, I was just curious what you mean at all. Language as abstraction of thought implies that thought is always somehow more "general" than language, right? But if that was the case, how could I read a novel that brings me to tears? Is not my thought in this case more the "lossy abstraction" of the language than the other way around?

Or, what is the abstraction of the "STOP" on the stop sign at the intersection?

Psst. Mathematics didn't come before language.

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