That’s all very spot on. 👍 😀
And the fact that our imagination isn’t limited by real physics, but we can imagine alternatives, hence we have fantasy stories. This is I think a very good example of how our minds do not depend entirely on reality.
I can’t spare the “CPU cycles”, so to say.
Absolutely there are limitations, but when you have solved the abstract puzzle and learned it by heart, then you can! But we can only really focus on one thing at a time. I actually tried way back in the 80’s to train myself to focus on 2 things at a time. But pressuring myself too hard was such a disturbing experience I stopped. I think it may be possible, but there is also risk of going insane.
I don’t think self-awareness is a necessary component of this “virtual environment”.
Well that’s a tough one I admit, because trying to understand the limits, I have also observed our cat, to try to determine how it thinks and what the limits are.
It seems to me that cats are not capable of manipulating their environment mentally. For instance if the cat is hunting a mouse that hides behind a small obstacle, the cat cannot figure out to move the obstacle to get at the mouse. This is also an example of different degrees of awareness. It seems like this thing we take for granted, most animals aren’t capable of. So I think this virtual environment is necessary at least for the level of consciousness we have. But I agree that it may not be a necessity for more basic self awareness, because I think our cat is self aware. He can clearly distinguish between me an my wife, this is obvious because his behavior is very different towards us. If he can distinguish between us, it seems logical that he is also able to tell himself as being different from us. AFAIK that’s a pretty big part of what self awareness is.
But I also think that we don’t have to be aware of our consciousness all the time, only when it’s relevant.
at least, quite some diversity in the nature of this virtual environment.
Absolutely yes, HUGE differences. I’m personally a bit of a fan of the multi talent Piet Hein, a multi talent who was a theoretical physicist. He could hold complex geometrical shapes in his head and see if they fit together, in a way no one else at the university could, and he played mental ping-pong" with Niels Bohr, and just like he was very good at it, there are people who are similarly bad at it. I find it hard to understand how their thought process works, because curiously this is also a thing among smart people AFAIK.
I admit I’m not really aware of any results from the study of it, but it is an interesting subject.
I am reminded of the concept of latent representations in AI.
From your link:
we argue that language space may not always be optimal for reasoning.
I absolutely agree. It’s like discerning between the abstract and the concrete, and if you can visualize it as a person, you can probably also understand it. So I wonder if people with aphantasia think in a way that is similar to abstract thinking for everything? Maybe each way has it’s own strength?
We utilize the last hidden state of the LLM as a representation of the reasoning state (termed “continuous thought”)
So it’s not like a virtual reality, but wow that sounds awesome. 😎
It sure is impressive how fast things are developing now.
That’s all very spot on. 👍 😀
And the fact that our imagination isn’t limited by real physics, but we can imagine alternatives, hence we have fantasy stories. This is I think a very good example of how our minds do not depend entirely on reality.
Absolutely there are limitations, but when you have solved the abstract puzzle and learned it by heart, then you can! But we can only really focus on one thing at a time. I actually tried way back in the 80’s to train myself to focus on 2 things at a time. But pressuring myself too hard was such a disturbing experience I stopped. I think it may be possible, but there is also risk of going insane.
Well that’s a tough one I admit, because trying to understand the limits, I have also observed our cat, to try to determine how it thinks and what the limits are.
It seems to me that cats are not capable of manipulating their environment mentally. For instance if the cat is hunting a mouse that hides behind a small obstacle, the cat cannot figure out to move the obstacle to get at the mouse. This is also an example of different degrees of awareness. It seems like this thing we take for granted, most animals aren’t capable of. So I think this virtual environment is necessary at least for the level of consciousness we have. But I agree that it may not be a necessity for more basic self awareness, because I think our cat is self aware. He can clearly distinguish between me an my wife, this is obvious because his behavior is very different towards us. If he can distinguish between us, it seems logical that he is also able to tell himself as being different from us. AFAIK that’s a pretty big part of what self awareness is.
But I also think that we don’t have to be aware of our consciousness all the time, only when it’s relevant.
From your link:
I absolutely agree. It’s like discerning between the abstract and the concrete, and if you can visualize it as a person, you can probably also understand it. So I wonder if people with aphantasia think in a way that is similar to abstract thinking for everything? Maybe each way has it’s own strength?
So it’s not like a virtual reality, but wow that sounds awesome. 😎
It sure is impressive how fast things are developing now.