[GoLUG] LLMs can't reason

[Kyle Terrien]

On Mon, Jun 16, 2025 at 01:54:33AM -0700, Ron wrote:
> Kyle Terrien wrote on 2025-06-13 19:26:
> 
> > It shouldn’t need to be pointed out that the philosophies which argue
> > against the existence of a soul are much younger
> 
> Irrelevant.

It is very relevant.  Those propounding a new theory have to disprove
the old one.  So far, they have not.

> Special Relativity is relatively (pun intended) quite new but measured to be
> highly accurate - more than anything that came before.

Einstein’s theory of relativity is an amazing piece of work, but the
burden of proof was still on Einstein and his fans to prove they were
correct, or more correct than Newton, Mach, et al.

And they are still proving so.  Recently (in the past 10 years), we
have finally observed gravitational waves, and (with the help of
computational enhancements) observed a black hole---some hard evidence
that Einstein’s theory was correct.

> > unlike the philosophy which does argue for (and presents evidence) of
> > the existence of the soul.
> 
> Show this evidence.
> 
> Philosophical meanderings are not in the same county as evidence.

The answers to almost all of your questions are in the resource I
linked in the last message.  Here it is again:

https://www.radioreplies.info/radio-replies-vol-1.php?t=5

> > If there is no soul, then we are merely spiritless automatons
> 
> This is nonsensical; a soul explains nothing and the assumption that
> we're "spirited" in the literal sense is a jumping to a foregone conclusion.
> 
> 
> 
> > If there is no soul, than what animates a living being?
> 
> So, fish, insects, cows, and worms have souls to animate them?

Yes, but they have animal souls, not human souls.  (See the above
link.)

> (If so, is it sinful to eat meat?)

No, because an animal soul is different, and humans are above animals.
(See the above link.)

> > If it is a chemical, then why can’t anyone isolate the chemical?
> 
> Many of the chemicals required for (Earthly) life have been isolated.
> 
> Nucleotides like adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine (ACGT in our DNA).
> 
> There's also peptides, amino acids, etc.

A cell is alive, and yet the chemicals themselves are dead.  If you
were to add all the chemical ingredients together yourself, it will
still be dead, because all the ingredients are dead.

(See the above link.)

> > Injecting such a chemical into a dead body could in theory reanimate
> > it.
> 
> That's an unlikely assumption.
> 
> But we've seen adding electricity can reanimate a dead body.

Someone actually pulled off a Dr. Frankenstein operation?

Electricity can animate, but it cannot give life.  I recall a squirrel
which unwittingly bridged the hot and neutral electric lines.  He hung
on so tightly that someone from the electric company had to extract
him.  It was not life hanging onto wires, but rigor mortis exacerbated
by electricity.

> > Thus, the bottom line is this: if the soul exists, then it exists
> > regardless of how strongly you assert that it’s “just an opinion”.
> 
> That "if" is carrying a lot of weight.
> 
> If the soul exists, then someone should be able to show empirical evidence
> of it.  Until then, it's truly "just an opinion" regardless of how strongly
> it's asserted as a fact.

(If you want the hard details, then see the above link.)

The view for the majority of human history was the opposite.  Have any
of the “experts” of the new theory of life shown empirical evidence
that the soul doesn’t exist?  (AFAIK, they have not, but they have
waved away many of the uncomfortable questions.)

Like with Einstein’s relativity, it’s the burden of those proving a
new theory to present evidence, not the other way around.

> All we've been given here is some motivated reasoning to reach a
> preordained conclusion.
> 
> 
> No evidence.

(See the above link.)


-- 
[*] Kyle Terrien
    Terrenus => from the Earth, to the Cloud
    https://terren.us/

Dilexisti justitiam, et odisti iniquitatem.  -- Psalmus 44:8