The philosophical leap from voltages to matrices, i.e. allowing that a physical system could ever be ‘doing’ high level description X. This is a bit weird at first but also clearly true as soon you start treating X as having a specific meaning in the world as opposed to just being a thing that occurs in human mind space.
The empirical claim that this high level description X fits what the computer is doing.
I think the pushback to the post is best framed in terms of which frame is best for talking to people who deny that it’s ‘really doing X’. In terms of rhetorical strategy and good quality debate, I think the correct tactic is to try and have the first point mutually acknowledged in the most sympathetic case, and try to have a more productive conversation about the extent of the correlation, while I think aggressive statements of ‘it’s always actually doing X if it looks like its doing X’ are probably unhelpful and become a bit of a scissor. (memetics over usefulness har har!)
Hmm, yeah there’s clearly two major points:
The philosophical leap from voltages to matrices, i.e. allowing that a physical system could ever be ‘doing’ high level description X. This is a bit weird at first but also clearly true as soon you start treating X as having a specific meaning in the world as opposed to just being a thing that occurs in human mind space.
The empirical claim that this high level description X fits what the computer is doing.
I think the pushback to the post is best framed in terms of which frame is best for talking to people who deny that it’s ‘really doing X’. In terms of rhetorical strategy and good quality debate, I think the correct tactic is to try and have the first point mutually acknowledged in the most sympathetic case, and try to have a more productive conversation about the extent of the correlation, while I think aggressive statements of ‘it’s always actually doing X if it looks like its doing X’ are probably unhelpful and become a bit of a scissor. (memetics over usefulness har har!)