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0 pointsTheNewsIsHere11mo ago0 comments

Exactly.

LLMs specifically and AI generally are not going to replace your Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Twenty One Pilots, Linkin Park, etc.

Speaking to the parent comment specifically - it strikes me as uninformed that “liberal arts and academic” disciplines rely only on language production. That’s absurd.

I have a hard science degree but I started my education in the humanities and spent time studying business and management in my education as well. That gave me an immense advantage that many technologists lack. More importantly it gave me insight into what people who only have a hard science education don’t understand about those fields. The take that they aren’t connected to reality is chiefly among those misunderstandings.

LLMs can’t replace any field for which advancement or innovation relies upon new thinking. This is different from areas where we have worked out mathematically articulable frameworks, like in organic chemistry. Even in those areas, actual experts aren’t replaceable by these technologies.

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ryandv11mo ago· 2 in thread

> The take that they aren’t connected to reality is chiefly among those misunderstandings.

On the contrary; nineteenth century leftist thinking, and post-modernism in particular, is infamous for dispensing with the notion of objective reality and the enterprise of science and empiricism entirely, rejecting them as grand narratives that exist merely to perpetuate the ruling power structures [0].

> Speaking to the parent comment specifically - it strikes me as uninformed that “liberal arts and academic” disciplines rely only on language production. That’s absurd.

If everything is narrative in structure and linguistically mediated, then yes, these disciplines are primarily focused on the production of language as a means for actuating reality.

[0] https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Nexus/gYnsEAAAQBAJ?hl=en...

TheNewsIsHereOP11mo ago

I could have been clearer.

The comment I replied to read as if the liberal arts are predicated on producing language rather than language with utility, which is something I’ve heard before coming from people who, often, have no real exposure to those areas of academia. I wasn’t attempting to paint with a broad brush in general terms across all of history or litigate specific schools of thought.

It’s certainly true that those disciplines rely on the production of language in much the same way (at least in application) as computer science relies on the production of some kind of logical expression device (be it an electronic abacus or a web application, or a paper formally analyzing an ISA).

ryandv11mo ago

> as if the liberal arts are predicated on producing language rather than language with utility

I'm sure that the liberal arts are engaged in activities and the production of language with some utility, but this is orthogonal to the question of its correspondence to reality or its epistemic value, as originally posed.

Playing the publish or perish game is different from developing some genuine insight, "justified true belief," into the state and mechanics of the world.

The grievance studies affair [0] is replete with "scholarly works" accepted for publication that are devoid of both epistemic and utilitarian value, ranging from the merely absurd to literally paraphrasing Hitler.

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

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