Hacker News: cognitif

New comment by cognitif in "Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards"

cognitif — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 18:08:35 +0000

> we believe they are conscious when and because we care about them. Crucially, that includes ourselves.

Why? Ok nevermind, fine. It could be true that someone believes someone else is conscious because they care about them. Next sentence:

> Consciousness is, in other words, a model or a belief, not an inherent property.

Wait, no, that doesn’t follow at all. A belief that someone is conscious is not the same as someone being conscious. What follows, instead, is that a belief in someone being conscious is a belief. Thanks, I learned nothing.

New comment by cognitif in "'World Models,' an old idea in AI, mount a comeback"

cognitif — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 04:29:34 +0000

Sounds like the “open-world assumption” used in RDF, with coherence maintained by OWL. (Well, at least it’s a hint of a proposal.)

New comment by cognitif in "LLMs aren't world models"

cognitif — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 01:24:05 +0000

> Language models aren't world models for the same reason languages aren't world models. Symbols, by definition, only represent a thing. They are not the same as the thing. The map is not the territory, the description is not the described, you can't get wet in the word "water".

Symbols, maps, descriptions, and words are useful precisely because they are NOT what they represent. Representation is not identity. What else could a “world model” be other than a representation? Aren’t all models representations, by definition? What exactly do you think a world model is, if not something expressible in language?

New comment by cognitif in "In the belly of the MrBeast"

cognitif — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 05:41:19 +0000

What does that have to do with LLMs?

New comment by cognitif in "Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought"

cognitif — Sun, 20 Oct 2024 17:49:11 +0000

What does consciousness or subjective experience have to do with the relationship between language and cognition? I’m not following your argument.