Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

This is "category" in the sense of Gilbert Ryle's category error.

A logical type or a specific conceptual classification dictated by the rules of language and logic.

This is exactly getting hung up on the precise semantic meaning of the words being used.

The lack of precision is going to have huge consequences with this large of bets on the idea that we have "intelligent" machines that "think" or have "cognition" when in reality we have probabilistic language models and all kinds of category errors in the language surrounding these models.

Probably a better example here is that category in this sense is lifted from Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Types.

It is the loose equivalent of asking why are you getting hung up on the type of a variable in a programming language? A float or a string? Who cares if it works?

The problem is in introducing non-obvious bugs.





Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: