Thoughts on thinking

No, that's not true.

Quick, what's 51 plus 92?

Now: Did you think back to a time someone else added these numbers together, or are you doing it yourself, right now, in your head? I'm sure it's not the first time these numbers have ever been summed, but that doesn't matter. You're doing it now, independently.

Just because something isn't unique, doesn't make it derivative. We rediscover things every day.

But I do know what numbers are. I've also done addition before, so I know what the steps are. The result of 51 + 92 is derivative from (at least) these two concepts, which derive from others and so on. Maybe I'm stretching the meaning of derivative here, but to me derivative doesn't mean strictly recalling something verbatim.

> Just because something isn't unique, doesn't make it derivative. We rediscover things every day.

This is the argument I use to dunk on ranters who spam conversations with “How can you say Christopher Columbus discovered the new world when there were already people living there?”

I do think you're stretching the meaning of derivative. At that point, what can ever be called original? Every idea depends on pre-existing concepts. Even Newton stood on the shoulders of giants.

In fairness, Columbus thought he had found India, even after other, smarter people had told him otherwise. You can't give him too much credit, especially given that he was considered a monster even by contemporary monsters like Isabella I of Spain, his sponsor, who founded the Spanish Inquisition and still thought his treatment of the Taino natives was unconscionable. She wanted him to convert them to Christianity, and instead he exterminated them.

Pointing out that we can mechanically apply an algorithm on novel inputs is possibly the worst defence of human creativity I can think of in this context.

Those are all good arguments against praising Columbus. Especially his insistence that he had found India is a strong argument against saying he discovered America.

The specific argument “but it's not a discovery because it was already inhabited” is a particularly literal-minded child applying their teacher’s prohibitions on plagiarism to the real world.

Good thing I'm not nebulously defending creativity, then.

I'm directly replying to the notion that something is derivative if it is "based on something we've experienced or seen." The fact that rote math calculations are generally less original than creative expressions makes my argument stronger, not weaker.

Right, but the general context of the thread is a discussion about how human thought or creative activity more generally contrasts with (current) machine capabilities. That's the sense in which I thought that adding two numbers is the worst example. It's notably the paradigmatic thing that machines are better at than any human

That is the nature of current models. Don't pretend that it will always be this way.

Your argument is moot anyway, how exactly is adding numbers together proving that such a thing isn't derivative?

I add numbers together, because I got taught to in school, because my teachers got taught to, because humans learnt to a very long time ago, because they observed a collection of things of different numbers. Perhaps the first human to count enjoyed an original thought. Or any who did independently, communication is the origin of derivation. And us humans are alllll about communicating.

Adding numbers is not an original thought, not in this context.

That's my overarching point. That most of human thought is derivative.

Even emotion, sure you're happy that you ate a tasty food. But you're happy because your body is flooding you with chemicals to reward you for it, as with many humans over time, it's how it was selected.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just incredibly interesting to me to compare the way I think we act to the way these early models are acting. That's all.

You've redefined the word "derivative" so broadly as to make it meaningless. If everything is derivative, then we can no longer draw distinctions in originality. How, then, can we discuss the fact that some things are plainly more original than others?

This just feels evasive to me.

It just feels like an odd gotcha to me. You're not wrong, but the literal meaning of "discovery" was never what those conversations were about.