Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning

Re:Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning by labcomputer on Friday November 06, 2026 @02:29PM (#50397168)

> i agree. but it's uncanny that stochastic generation of language yields a form of recognizable intelligence.

It's funny, I used to think it was complete and utter horseshit when literature professors would say that the meaning of a text is created by the reader, not the author.

Since LLMs have become commonplace, I have completely reversed my opinion on that.

That you see recognizable intelligence in the output of stochastic generation is because you are imposing meaning on it. It is why "claudish" is so hard to read--you are trying to impose meaning on a sequence of words that was stochastically generated, and it takes mental effort to do that.

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Re:Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning by broken-kebab on Friday November 06, 2026 @06:38PM (#50400009)

I fail to see what exactly is explained, or clarified by the theory here. Postmodernist philosophers are notorious for writing texts which make readers struggle. Surely, it doesn't mean "Foucault-ese" is somehow more stochastically generated than "Claudese".

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Re:Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning by andrekandre on Friday November 06, 2026 @09:33PM (#50401080)

  > you see recognizable intelligence in the output of stochastic generation is because you are imposing meaning on it

i am not an expert in any of this, but intuitively i largely feel the same... the character we see as "claude" is mostly in our heads; its almost like a "super rubber duck" phenomenon or something

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Re:Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning by eru on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:33PM (#50401644)

I'm not so sure about that.

If Claude can write formal mathematical proofs (that a machine can check), or it can write software that works, where's the head of the reader that imposes the meaning?

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Re:Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning by jibalt on Saturday November 07, 2026 @12:04PM (#50406090)

Reading what you wrote, I must interpretively attempt to construct a model of what you may have meant and what you may believe, because on the surface it contains multiple claims that are frankly false in my experience (itself a probabilistic world model).

> a sequence of words that was stochastically generated

As was your comment (and mine, and the others on this page and elsewhere).

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