I have also seen conversations get derailed based on such disagreements.
I expect to largely adopt this terminology going forward
May I ask to which audience(s) you think this terminology will be helpful? And what particular phrasing(s) do you plan on trying out?
The quote above from Chalmers is dense and rather esoteric; so I would hesitate to use its particular terminology for most people (the ones likely to get derailed as discussed above). Instead, I would seek out simpler language. As a first draft, perhaps I would say:
Let’s put aside whether LLMs think on the inside. Let’s focus on what we observe—are these observations consistent with the word “thinking”?
Good point that the Chalmers quote isn’t going to be helpful to everyone. In practice, I’m mostly imagining giving a quick informal sense of what I mean by eg ‘quasi-thinking’, or even just having a parenthetical aside with a link back to this post if people want to dive deeper, eg I might write something like
It seems clear that LLMs believe (or quasi-believe) most of the facts presented in synthetic document fine-tuning.
I think you’re right in pointing to observable consequences in your paraphrase. In informal discussion, I’ve found it useful to say things like
When I say ‘the model has goal X’, I don’t mean to make a claim about whether the model ‘really’ has goals in some deep sense; I just mean that for practical purposes the model consistently behaves as if it has goal X.
I’ve edited the original post slightly to give a plainer meaning before the Chalmers quote.
I have also seen conversations get derailed based on such disagreements.
May I ask to which audience(s) you think this terminology will be helpful? And what particular phrasing(s) do you plan on trying out?
The quote above from Chalmers is dense and rather esoteric; so I would hesitate to use its particular terminology for most people (the ones likely to get derailed as discussed above). Instead, I would seek out simpler language. As a first draft, perhaps I would say:
Good point that the Chalmers quote isn’t going to be helpful to everyone. In practice, I’m mostly imagining giving a quick informal sense of what I mean by eg ‘quasi-thinking’, or even just having a parenthetical aside with a link back to this post if people want to dive deeper, eg I might write something like
I think you’re right in pointing to observable consequences in your paraphrase. In informal discussion, I’ve found it useful to say things like
I’ve edited the original post slightly to give a plainer meaning before the Chalmers quote.