> Bullshit has an illusion of reasoning instead of actual reasoning.
Bullshit is a good case to consider, actually. What is the relationship between bullshit and reasoning? You could argue that bullshit is fallacious reasoning, "pseudo-reasoning" based on incorrect rules of inference.
But these models don't use any rules of inference; they produce output that resembles the result of reasoning, but without reasoning. They are trained on text samples that presumably usually are the result of human reasoning. If you trained them on bullshit, they'd produce output that resembled fallacious reasoning.
No, I don't think the touchstone for actual reasoning is a human mind. There are machines that do authentic reasoning (e.g. expert systems), but LLMs are not such machines.
> Bullshit is a good case to consider, actually. What is the relationship between bullshit and reasoning?
None in principle, at least if you take the common definition of bullshit as saying things for effect, without caring whether they're true or false.
Fallacious reasoning will make you wrong. No reasoning will make you spew nonsense. Truth and lies and bullshit, all require reasoning for the structure of what you're saying to make sense, otherwise it devolves to nonsense.
> But these models don't use any rules of inference
Neither do we. Rules of inference came from observation. Formal reasoning is a tool we can employ to do better, but it's not what we naturally do.
> None in principle, at least if you take the common definition of bullshit as saying things for effect, without caring whether they're true or false.
Maybe splitting hairs, but I’d argue that the bullshitter is reasoning about what sounds good, and what sounds good needs at least some shared assumptions and resulting logical conclusion to hang its hat on. Maybe not always, but enough of the time that I would still consider reasoning to be a key component of effective bullshit.
Bullshit is a good case to consider, actually. What is the relationship between bullshit and reasoning? You could argue that bullshit is fallacious reasoning, "pseudo-reasoning" based on incorrect rules of inference.
But these models don't use any rules of inference; they produce output that resembles the result of reasoning, but without reasoning. They are trained on text samples that presumably usually are the result of human reasoning. If you trained them on bullshit, they'd produce output that resembled fallacious reasoning.
No, I don't think the touchstone for actual reasoning is a human mind. There are machines that do authentic reasoning (e.g. expert systems), but LLMs are not such machines.