Maybe disagreement here is that I don't even know what the literal meaning of terms like "think" *is*. You seem to feel that "think" refers to some specific way in which humans think. I don't know how they do, to me it just means something like "process information".
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So when you say "if Scott didn't intend them to be read literally" I notice I'm confused, since to me the intentional reading *is* the literal meaning.
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"My phone believes we are somewhere else than we really are" isn't a humorous metaphor to me, it's just a way of saying that the bits in my phone which track its position don't match its actual location, and those bits are "beliefs" due to their functional role in the app.
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And the content of any set of bits in any application (or any set of neurons in any brain) whose function is to track something in the real world, can be called a belief, and this is just what "belief" literally means to me.
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Replying to @xuenay @slatestarcodex
OK... I think you are blinded by an ideology here. More or less no one outside the AI-verse thinks dishwashers have beliefs.
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Replying to @Meaningness @slatestarcodex
It just seems like the most straightforward way of using language? I don't know what exactly it means for humans to believe or think something, so it seems like I should make the least number of assumptions about what the concept means, and then it becomes a very generic one.
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And intentional thinking seems to be evolved to let us make predictions about the behavior of agent-like entities, so one where the concept is defined through its functional role to the agent actually seems closest to how humans naturally think about beliefs.
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Replying to @xuenay @slatestarcodex
He was squarely in the AI-verse when he wrote that.
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Replying to @Meaningness @slatestarcodex
Well, at least I *tried* to back off a bit and look at the underlying reason of the disagreement to see if we could stop talking past each other and make the conversation more constructive. But you seem to be stuck in tribal name-calling mode so I guess I'll just call it a night.
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Well... I'm pointing out that you are making substantive claims that hardly anyone outside your tribe finds plausible. That doesn't mean they are wrong, but it does mean they need stronger support than "I use the word that way."
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Replying to @Meaningness @slatestarcodex
Thanks. I don't think "this is the way that I understand this word" is a particularly strong claim? and if you think it's an AI-tribal thing to use the word that way, then wouldn't it make sense for Scott to also use language that way?
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Then he wouldn't be saying anything crazy, just using different terminology. I think if you read through the post and apply this kind of interpretation to everything he says about the algorithm doing (not just "belief"), then the post will be much more reasonable.
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