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Isn't "reasoning" a functional property though? If from the outside it performs all the functions of reasoning, it doesn't matter what is happening inside of the black box.

Here's a silly example I thought of. We can ask whether a certain bird is capable of "sorting". We can place objects of different sizes in front of the bird, and we observe that the bird can rearrange them in order of increasing size. Does it matter what internal heuristics or processes the bird is using? If it sorts the objects, it is "sorting".

To me, it seems perfectly obvious that GPT-4 is reasoning. It's not very good at it and it frequently makes mistakes. But it's also frequently able to make correct logical deductions. To me this is all stupid semantic games and goalpost-moving.



> Isn't "reasoning" a functional property though? If from the outside it performs all the functions of reasoning, it doesn't matter what is happening inside of the black box.

Yes, that's my point exactly.




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