
On Mind, Language and Machines - 0x0f0f0f
https://0x0f0f0f.github.io/posts/2020/02/on-mind-language-and-machines/
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peterhj
> Prof. Matsuzawa, through his cognitive research of chimpanzee Ai

I had to do a double take there.

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caleb-allen
Wonderful essay!

I've found myself going through a similar path in my own research and
thinking.

My hope is that an optimism of computation picks up over the coming decade and
beyond; an optimism that computation can serve us at the individual level,
beyond what others have created for us.

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openfuture
In the cultures with the abrahamic religions (especially, but also elsewhere)
the 'language of the birds' is considered a mythical 'divine language', some
characters in the 'holy books' who are famed for wisdom or considered prophets
are supposed to have understood it.

I'm sure this has motivated many to study birdsong and it's interesting that
their language is regular, maybe birds are FSM like our computers :^)

Edit: I guess that would mean their societies are petri nets / statecharts =þ

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thekhatribharat
A few days back, HN saw
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22193451](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22193451)
which told us not everyone uses an internal monologue for their thinking
process.

Now this article hints _evolution favored_ the internal monologue design of
thinking process, over alternatives.

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0x0f0f0f
I've read that post. It's still a mistery to me the fact that there are people
without internal monologues that can speak without any sort of problem.
Chomsky and Berwick hinted that recursive language may have evolved as "an
internal monologue" in their "Why Only Us" essay, where they surely can
explain their evolutionary point of view better than me.

I guess if that there really are people without "the internal tool of
thought", they should volunteer to be studied, especially with brain imaging
and functional tests. They could help us understand more about where language
comes from.

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bunnya
It's less of a "do not have internal monologue" as experience them differently
to those who have a stream of consciousness. Personally, I experience
consciousness internally as a bunch of concepts and ideas, rather than actual
verbose language. It doesn't proclude the generation of ideas or so on, and I
definitely don't struggle with speaking.

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0x0f0f0f
I can only guess that one has a more verbal or visual imagination depending on
his/her development, and it would be interesting if we knew more about the
genomic factors taking place in the development of the stream of
consciousness. Depending on the context I also have both verbal and visual
streams of consciousness. A funny thing is that my verbal mental streams are
far more fluid in English, which is not my fully native language, than in
Italian. When I write in Italian my imagination is much more visual and less
descriptive.

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K0SM0S
Same here, my French got relegated to the back of my mind, English took over
(that was of my own volition first, to learn best, but then it became habit).

Sometimes I revert to writing in French; it takes a little time like bicycle
to come back really well. It often framed my mind in a different way, provided
I never thought of problem X in French. Weird. I'm more likely to speak in
"poetic" terms in French, and more "logic" in English. Weird that my own
abstractions shift like that. Real tangible things are not affected it seems.
With other people it makes me a slightly different person (I suppose I mimic
the cultural traits I attribute to each language, as if emotions or even
volition got influenced by it).

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onemoresoop
Same here but with a different first language and English as a second. I tend
to be more poetic with my first language but use it a lot more sparingly
nowadays. As far as I am aware most of my internal monologue isn't verbalized
but it does happen. Over all I wouldn't rely too much on my internal
monologue, it feels that it slows down my thinking to put whatever abstract
thought I have into words.

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K0SM0S
You just made me realize that we might all "skip the words" when we have
internalized a concept.

Case in point for me: math. For instance these days I'm working on geometric
modelling, and when I see a wedge (exterior product of two 1D vectors = a 2D
surface) I don't even read or say it, I just "see" the concept (not even a
parallelogram, I don't visualize, it's just this abstraction for 2D which
relates to number theory, physical spaces, etc). Then if I do something with
this, I kind of navigate a map or graph (where e.g. gradients or dot products
are sort of nodes). I'm gonna be 10x slower if I have to put words in it when
talking to someone for instance.

Does that begin to describe how non-verbal thinkers think about pretty much
everything?

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onemoresoop
Yes. Daniel Kahneman's 'Thinking fast and slow' comes to mind. I haven't read
the book but listened to a few podcasts about it. I think it comes down to
what mode of thinking is being employed. Some use more than the other, some
have a balanced use.

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K0SM0S
That's a great point.

I read the book and indeed, there's something of that dichotomy between what
he calls "system 1" and "system 2".

System-2 is the very thorough, conscious thought; the visual or otherwise
perceptible, representable as abstract but tangible objects (like please think
of an elephant: this thing you see right now in your mind is an _abstract but
tangible object_ ). System-1 by comparison is more intuitive, and I think can
typically be illustrated by procedural memory: things you know but forgot how
you learned, like riding a bike or playing chess.

In interviews he explains that, while most questions would confuse system-2
for "intelligence" or "logic", it's really not: a chess master for instance
uses system 1 a lot to instinctively select only strong moves, or a chef uses
system-1 to select only compatible and worthy ingredients — and then system-2
may think in depth about this small subset. The idea is that the system-1 of a
master would beat the hell out of any layman's system-2 for a given skillset.

So when you really internalize, learn something, it's like the schema for it
in your brain moves gradually from the system-2 space to the system-1 space so
to speak. In many ways, there's no possible mastery without system-1. That's
what makes "expertise" as we call it, this "6th" sense for a domain.

Video games are so much like that: first you have to think about everything,
but gradually it becomes 'second nature' like walking or driving.

Now here's my point: the whole process of "thinking to oneself" is system-2.
All of it. By definition, if we use Kahneman's term. System-1 is more like the
underlying parameters of a thinking space (like knowing the rules at a deep
level of instinct), wherein system-2 manipulates variables.

Let's risk the analogy that:

\- system-1 feels like each person's particular 'optimization' of 'brain
hardware' or 'OS': for instance, I may have a GPU-like skill or such a
"driver" or "ad hoc firmware" to process math (because training); you may have
a great NN-like skill to process consulting problems in your domain (result of
years of experience); it's all related to training and personal story i.e.
compounded construction, effort over time.

\- Whereas system-2 is the software layer, the apps, this inner-userland where
you push buttons and 'see' results, and largely transmissible through
communication, teaching (again in my words, system-2 objects are
'representable', abstract but tangible, as evidenced by the fact we can take
objects from brain to brain). You can do almost anything in system-2, but most
of it is weak and orders of magnitude slower absent of further optimization.

I think it warrants more in-depths discussions and research probably, but
that's my ballpark view. What's intriguing about this "inner speech"
discrepancy in thinking is precisely that systems-2 are commonly thought to be
relatively standard computers between human beings (again, I can take an app
from mine and teach it to yours, so there's some level of direct compatibility
there). Evidently, that's not entirely true, and the deeper question is
whether it points to a different architecture or simply a matter of
perception; how isomorphic are different approaches at the end of the day.

