How are we disentangling comprehension of natural language itself from comprehension of the subject matter being discussed via said language sample?
I think that by most reasonable metrics LLMs can reasonably be said to comprehend natural language itself. However they clearly are deficient in logic and reasoning, as well as comprehension of many of the concepts that the natural language is used to express.
I don't think so. I am not setting the "goalpost" here, it was expressed as "LLMs have cracked natural language comprehension".
I just don't think they have. There are tons of statements I would agree with regarding what LLMs have achieved, but this one is not part of them :-).