Post #4362843
2026-08-03 08:33 UTC
"Understanding" and "statistical extrapolation" *can* often lead to the same place, but when they *don't*, "understanding" provides a way forward, while "extrapolation" founders. Both work fine, but only one fails gracefully. The two tricks only *appear* the same, but they are fundamentally different.
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Replies (1)
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@pluralistic@mamot.fr 2026-08-03 08:33
AI's investor story - and the science fiction tales of AI's eventual capabilities that underpin that investor story - makes heavy use of this conjurer's trick, in which two different outcomes are equated to one another because they resemble each other. This "ignore the journey, focus on the destination" idea is baked *very deeply* into the way we think about AI. Take the "Turing Test," a complicated and nuanced thought-experiment proposed in 1950. 11/