You certainly don't know what it means to die. But you know what "car" is and "crash" is because you have had (and maybe witnessed) analogues physical experiences.

An LLM has never had any analogous physical experiences so it doesn't know what either is. In fact a text model has never seen a car.

People in the 16th century had the notion of scrying mirrors - presumably without analogous experience. I'm sure you could explain FaceTime to a person from then. "This magic glass shows me the view and transports the sound from the magic glass of a friend or family member and vice versa, with their informed consent."

Exactly. You would explain the concept to them using analogous experiences they have had. What experience has an LLM had?

This has nothing to do with experience. What experience can you have when people explain to you behavior of many dimensional hyperbolic space? When you learn SVD matrix decomposition?

You don't need experience, you need some basic concepts.

Abstract mathematical concepts can eventually be traced back to simple integers, which are traced back to an experience of things in the world (a toddler learns to count 1, 2, 3).

And it is precisely because higher mathematics is so far abstracted away from physical experience is the reason why many people struggle with it.

Besides, many great mathematicians have explained their knowledge as an "experience" even "spiritual experience". Not all experiences are physical. Ramanujan described his experience of mathematics as lights and sounds and patterns, and this is common among geniuses.

> you need some basic concepts

Agreed. All basic concepts are an experience.

I have not witnessed a car crash and I feel I do understand what it is. Similarly a 16th century person doesn't "Call me on FaceTime" because the words are not known. You could very easily explain the concept to them.

You would explain the concept to them using analogous experiences they have had. What experience has an LLM had?

Maybe you would. That's not a requirement. If humans could only learn from experience and analogues entire fields would be dead. No advanced math for example.

There are a ton of things you can learn without experiencing it yourself and without analogues. For example, car crashes are bad to be in. Even though I have not personally experienced one, nor have I experienced some analogue of it.

Never experienced pain? Never experienced physically slamming into something? Are you like a toddler who doesn’t yet understand basic physics and object permanence? Then you certainly don’t know what a car crash is.

Philosophers have been discussing this for a while now, you and OP may be interested in their arguments.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/

https://courses.physics.illinois.edu/phys419/sp2021/Jackson1...

The creator of the knowledge argument, frank jackson, has since embraced materialism and therefore does not believe the knowledge argument is an impediment for unembodied AI.