> The eternal hope is that someday, somehow, we will be able to invent a natural language way of communicating something precise like a program, and it's just not going to happen
My take is more nuanced.
First, there is some evidence [1] that human language is neither necessary nor sufficient to enable what we experience as "thinking".
Second, our intuition, thinking etc are communicated via natural languages and imagery which form the basis for topics in the humanities.
Third, from communication via natural language - slowly emerges symbolism, and formalism which codifies intuitions in a manner which is operational, and useful.
As an example, socratic dialog was a precursor to euclidean geometry which operationally codifies our intuitions of space around us in a manner which becomes useful.
However, formalism is stale as there are always new worlds we experience which cannot be captured by any formalism. The genius of the human brain which is not yet captured in LLMs is to be able create symbolisms of these worlds almost on demand.
ie, if we were to order in terms of expressive power, it would be something like:
1) perception, cognition, thinking, imagination
2) human language
3) formal languages and computers codifying worlds experienced via 1) and 2)
Meanwhile, there is a provocative hypothesis [2] which argues that our "thinking" process lies outside computation as we know it.
My take is more nuanced.
First, there is some evidence [1] that human language is neither necessary nor sufficient to enable what we experience as "thinking".
Second, our intuition, thinking etc are communicated via natural languages and imagery which form the basis for topics in the humanities.
Third, from communication via natural language - slowly emerges symbolism, and formalism which codifies intuitions in a manner which is operational, and useful.
As an example, socratic dialog was a precursor to euclidean geometry which operationally codifies our intuitions of space around us in a manner which becomes useful.
However, formalism is stale as there are always new worlds we experience which cannot be captured by any formalism. The genius of the human brain which is not yet captured in LLMs is to be able create symbolisms of these worlds almost on demand.
ie, if we were to order in terms of expressive power, it would be something like:
1) perception, cognition, thinking, imagination 2) human language 3) formal languages and computers codifying worlds experienced via 1) and 2)
Meanwhile, there is a provocative hypothesis [2] which argues that our "thinking" process lies outside computation as we know it.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07522-w [2] https://www.amazon.com/Emperors-New-Mind-Concerning-Computer... [3] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667...