Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal The Theory That Shatters Language Itself
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Jun 13, 2025 Elan Barenholtz, a cognitive scientist at Florida Atlantic University, dives deep into the unsettling idea that language operates as a self-contained system, detached from the external world. He reveals how AI can generate language devoid of inherent meaning, prompting a reevaluation of mind and perception. The conversation covers the fluidity of language, its relationship with sensory experiences, and the fascinating dynamics of language models. Barenholtz challenges traditional perceptions and highlights the complexities of understanding reality through linguistic constructs.
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Language as Autoregressive System
- Language operates as a self-contained, autoregressive system predicting the next word to generate coherent sequences.
- This simple predictive mechanism in AI models mirrors human language generation principles.
Language's Lack of Direct Reference
- Language is autonomous and does not inherently refer to anything external.
- Words gain meaning only through their relations within the linguistic system, not by direct grounding.
Universal Latent Space in Language
- Different language models use distinct embeddings that share a universal latent space, enabling possible translation and meaning bridging.
- This latent space may act as a bridge between linguistic and perceptual representations.
