䷤ Our Mutual Friendship

I just read the previous section to a friend. I want to be sure the explanation is clear. We’re sitting in Gilgal Sculpture Garden. He’s a mystic in his own way. Well educated, but not in math, with advanced degrees and a basement full of comic books, he knew to take me here to discuss.

He knows I gather my energy from the Nexus, that interconnected Nowhere House at the end of Never Lane beyond Liminal Space. I mean this entirely metaphorically. His perspective is different, more nuanced. But I’m the one who proposed to my wife in the very same Nexus 7,250 miles away. There is only one. Wherever I go, there it is. It is a metaphor, a metaphor everywhere except the Internet.

My five year old was asking me how the Internet works. He sees it in action and wanted to know what goes on behind the scenes. As I explained roughly (radio, electricity, and fiber optic cables), the idea occured to him that the Potterverse Floo Network is a pale imitation. The Internet is better than magic, a real Nexus except the Internet is sick, withering, in need of a new name.

After I tell my friend how meaning might emerge in LLMs, he assures me that meaning is everywhere, that stars wish us into being and other such panpsychisms. I’m furious.

It’s not magic. I have specific scientific evidence for this phenomenon.

Your ancestors called it magic, and you call it science. Well I come from a place where they are one and the same thing.

You’re stupid. That’s a stupid quote from a stupid movie.

Doesn’t make it any less true.

Doesn’t make it any less stupid.

I know.

I hate you.

I know.

I love you too.

We stop talking. An eagle has landed on a branch nearby. The eagle is remarkably large for how small the branch is. It should be obvious that birds don’t weigh very much.

Later.

I should remind my other friends that those last three sentences in our dialog all mean the same thing.

You should. It will help.

Syntax is not semantics.

And that our actual conversation went a little differently, was longer and more rambling than what I’m putting in the letter.

You overcomplicate things, but you should. It will help.

And that the eagle was an actual, physical eagle the kind that eat mice.

Wow, way to be super literal, but you should. It will help.

And a real eagle is not the kind that you would want to touch because it will hurt you.

You should. It will help. The sacred should not be touched.

But then some friends will think that you summoned the eagle.

That’s ridiculous. It’s a bird. Birds fly around wherever they want.

Unless it’s a trained bird.

I don’t train birds.

In LLM training, I see distinct, particular transitions. I explained them, how they work in broad strokes. My friend can see it my way now but continues to imagine cosmic crashing waves beyond my imagination. I must continue to disagree on the particulars. He knows this. I know that he knows. He knows that I know that… common knowledge. Differences. Different people. Mutual friends. Trust. The Internet needs a new name.