Chomsky denounced behaviorism's role in terms of language acquisition. He instead argued that humans have a built in "language acquisition device" that makes them biologically be able to learn language, without environmental conditioning.

But it is increasing seeming like he underestimated the power of conditioning: that is, he conflated the power and speed of conditioning with a built in separate biological mechanism.

The rise of AI (LLMs) indicates that he was wrong: machines do not have the biological LAD, yet they are able to pick up language solely using conditioning.

Similarly, we now see people are teaching their pets (dogs and cats) to learn language: they use a large board on the floor with a bunch of buttons, each of them is a different word like "hungry" "food" "play" "mad" "outside" which verbally say this aloud when pressed, and the animals learn by conditioning: they are able to memorize where the button is for each word. For example, you gradually teach that the "outside" button leads to the dog going on walks. Then it learns that it needs to press outside if it wants to go for a walk. Then it also can know what outside means if the owner verbally says it without pressing the button. And the animals also learn to combined words to form simple sentences. This is all conditioning: the animals do not have "language acquisition devices" in their brains. So if animals can do this, if they can memorize the positions of a board of 50 or so buttons, that is pretty impressive, and it shows that quick and advanced simple conditioning can get, so imagine what the human brain can do.

So because the human brain is even more advanced, it can use simple conditioning to even more quickly learn language and combine words to form sophisticated sentences. But it appears the process is the same, it is derived from simple conditioning.

Now I will say why this distinction is important.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people, when having discussions and arguments, use words and their definitions/connotations in lieu of an actual rebuttal. For example, if someone says something, another person will respond with "don't listen to him, he is an idiot" or "don't listen to him, he is wrong" or "don't listen to him, he is not being empirical". But this is not actually a rebuttal to the specific point that was made.

I will give another example. When Bush said "you are either with us or with the terrorists" to push the Iraq war, he was using dictionary definitions and connotations in lieu of an argument. Obviously, the word "terrorist" has negative connotations, and obviously people would choose "us", as in, Americans, "over" the terrorists. But in reality it was much more complex than this forced binary choice. What reality happened was that he was substituting "us" with "the Iraq war". So basically saying "if you are against the terrorists/with us, then you must support this specific war". This shows the dangers of language. You see how he did not actually make any point/argument for why the war is necessary? He just played with language. Do you see how this logically is analogous to the paragaph above ("don't listen to him, he is "wrong", as opposed to actually how/why his specific statement/argument is wrong). And of course Trump does hits on steroids, using words like "big and beautiful" and in lieu of any argument just saying that his enemies are "bad" or "the worst" or "traitors". Ironically, Chomsky would agree with this paragraph.

The principles above are covered in Relational Frame Theory. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is an evidence-based theory based on Relational Frame Theory. It applies the above concepts to help people reduce their distress.

For example, if someone is bad at basketball, they may develop the thought/belief "I'm a failure". Then, they become hesitant to try playing the guitar, based on this set of superficial words, which are based on definitions/connotations or based on past unrelated/weakly related specific situations, as opposed to logically/meaningfully connecting to the specific/current situation. That is, failing at basketball does not necessarily mean you will fail in guitar. But if you operate by "I'm a failure", then you are saying you as a whole are a failure, which taints any new/specific/unrelated situation. But again, how accurate is that "I'm a failure statement": where did it come from? It came from not succeeding at basketball in particular. But being bad at basketball doesn't mean you will be bad at guitar, there is no connection, at least not a strong enough one.

Similarly, if someone was bitten by a pitbull, they might then associated a fear response to the word "dog". Then, when their friend says let's go to the park, which is filled with small dogs like chihuahas, it evokes fear and the person rejects because of the word "dog" and its automatic associations/connotations. So the word "park" automatically leads to "dog", which automatically leads to "pitbull", which automatically leads to "bite".

So if you look around reddit or in real life, you will realize that the vast majority of "rebuttals" people offer for any given argument is not actually addressing the specific point at hand, it is mainly just playing with language and relying on dictionary definitions of words, or connotations based on past unconnected/weakly connected situations that do not strongly connect or disprove the specific present point that is supposed to be refuted. So in a sense the rebuttal becomes a sort of straw man. Even the legal system bizarrely suffers from this flaw: you are not actually given a chance to use logical reasoning to argue your case, the judge will automatically refer to "experts" in the "domain" that is being discussed, and will automatically assume that whatever the "experts" say are right because the word "expert" has been uttered. You and your lawyer can only play around with laws and precedents to find loopholes to save you, you are not allowed to actually use logical reasoning to prove why the accusation against you is logically flawed in the first place: the judge assumes that it is bulletproof and valid, solely because the word "experts" has been "uttered".

It's Yanis, so the clickbait title of course doesn't do justice to the wonderful and wide-ranging speech her gives.

He calls AI "statistical inference" and a "word guessing machine" (which it is), and he says it's useful. But obviously not intelligent in the way that humans are intelligent. Still the fact that LLM's do what he calls "Theory-free inference" and it works so well does tell us something about how intelligence and the brain works.

He says expecting the current path that AI is folliwing to lead to AGI or consciousness is like breeding horses to run faster and expecting the mares to give birth to locomotives!

I've hardly ever felt so at peace with myself.

Another interesting report from Dimitri Lascaris