Naur's "Programming as Theory Building" and LLMs replacing human programmers

Although I'm sympathetic to the author's argument, I don't think they've found the best way to frame it. I have two main objections i.e. points I guess LLM advocates might dispute.

Firstly:

> LLMs are capable of appearing to have a theory about a program ... but it’s, charitably, illusion.

To make this point stick, you would also have to show why it's not an illusion when humans "appear" to have a theory.

Secondly:

> Theories are developed by doing the work and LLMs do not do the work

Isn't this a little... anthropocentric? That's the way humans develop theories. In principle, could a theory not be developed by transmitting information into someone's brain patterns as if they had done the work?

> To make this point stick, you would also have to show why it's not an illusion when humans "appear" to have a theory.

This idea has already been explored by thought experiments such as John Searle's so-called "Chinese room" [0]; an LLM cannot have a theory about a program, any more than the computer in Searle's "Chinese room" understands "Chinese" by using lookup tables to generate canned responses to an input prompt.

One says the computer lacks "intentionality" regarding the topics that the LLM ostensibly appears to be discussing. Their words aren't "about" anything, they don't represent concepts or ideas or physical phenomena the same way the words and thoughts of a human do. The computer doesn't actually "understand Chinese" the way a human can.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

The flaw of the Chinese Room argument is the need to explain why it does not apply to humans as well.

Does a single neuron "understand" Chinese? 10 neurons? 100? 1 million?

If no individual neuron or small group of neurons understand Chinese, how can you say any brain made of neurons understands Chinese?