No empirical fact is restricted to a singular vector through human language.
"..if we think of truth as something of granite-like solidity and of personality as something of rainbow-like intangibility and reflect that the aim of [human writing] is to weld these two into one seamless whole, we shall admit that the problem is a stiff one and that we need not wonder if [human writers], for the most part failed to solve it." - Virginia Woolf
[human writing, human writers] = [biography, biographers] in the original quote. My edit is because I infer that her statements key point is that of the biological subjectivity inherent to all human prose.
Given that in human terms, empirical == dominant consensus, you are merely using
a different word for 'primacy' in this context. It makes no difference to the structure.
Because : consensus of what? of sheer numbers of human adherents? of other statistic? historical evidence? of widest agreement by those with higher education in that field? of those with the most money to afford advertising? other? a consensus of multiple consensus(es)?
The dynamic of myriad possible vectors through language to express a given 'truth' remains, whether we define truth as empirical or consensus.
This is well-trodden ground of the theory of knowledge. People not being explicit about their assumptions about the world lead to destructive myths like "empirical fact" that collapse with the slightest institutional distrust.
Interesting point of view, thank you for sharing it.
Your founding premise, that observed data (that is one definition of 'empirical fact') and "consensus" are somehow opposing ideologies seems flawed however.
If you would prefer to read the term consensus in my original post, rather than empirical fact, then please do - it does not change my point.
And language itself is so very 'stochastic' too, due to complex subjectivity. Every word floats on a variable sea of individual choice.
For example, if I compose your post as :
--
"Good prose embodies intellect gradually evolved by myriad humans over time, so it wows me to see LLMs create it, though I soon realised that the intelligence is not being created by the LLM but rather is already present in the human-evolved input datasets - the prose itself! - which they statistically arrange."
--
..the particulars of the language are entirely different (and omit some of your chosen nuance) but most readers would receive the same "core truth" from it, the same measure of beneficial information.
Which highlights the great fluidity of language; that is another of the key underlying mechanisms allowing LLMs to flourish.
I think there is a distinction to draw there between stochasticity in the use and in the evolution of language (which is not clean as they are not independent). The language evolves stochastically, as it does so by being used in exchanges. But the use could be deterministic with the exchanges being random and the function of update based on exchange. I still think there is stochasticity in the use itself, I choose my words, go back and delete and rewrite, explain again in a different way when the audience looks at me unimpressed etc. I just don’t see fluidity as a proof of stochasticity of evolution or the other way around and in fact think the interaction is a quite interesting domain.
I present this as by-no-means a complete argument, but a very salient point imo is the notion of the 'accent'. It is the most prominent etymology mutation in language (driving inter-language variance between adjacent cultures), and exists not only in the human but in the animal kingdom. Its basis? The maxillofacial expression of the most dominant speaker(s) within a group, which shapes their vocal inflection and passes to the wider culture by social effect.
Regardless, the fluidity of language is self-evident to an extent : it is partly embodied in the entire concept we call figures-of-speech (a linguistic phrasing can be literal, or sarcastic, or described by metaphor, ...). Partly in the common reality that our dictionaries list multiple possible definitions for many words. Partly in the fact that (many) synonyms exist. Partly in sheer human individuality.
Successful people can play the Tornado of Souls guitar solo, imo. If Sam (or any of you) ever do that, let me know. And we will toast to our mutual success.
Also, ^that's my book. It's free. You just read it. Making this today's Most Read Book in the World. Wow - success!
Primarily, other rich people - waiting keenly in the wings for the Buy Signal.
Because the nature of this whole thing is a cycle. The worst of it is that the consequences echo downwards until they hit social strata that can't handle any loss (because they have little). That's where the social cost really beds in, in the thousands and millions of ruined lives of ordinary people that are the collateral damage each time there's a failed round of the RL Investment Board Game funded by the world's wealthiest 10%.
> basic notification that something exists brings business
That's an abstraction, though. The real-world logic behind that statement is that by bringing net benefit to The Whole (through your chosen acts), you will be duly recognised as a contributor of value, and accordingly you will be busy.
The way that modern formal terminology (like Notification Brings Business) has become a set of self-standing tenets in its own right has let humanity forget that our entire motivation for this whole practice of being busy ("busi-ness") is to make everybody happier. Preferably by doing things that don't suck.
Based on your prior comment, I think you mean "effort taken for delivery" in an abstract way. I think that is part of it, but "increased revenue through additional or higher value transactions" is what I think about when I say "increase in business." This is something that can be affected by the true sense of advertising - giving notice about your business - but has diminishing marginal returns.
You give notice about your business, but it only becomes advertising by virtue of the socialised energy expenditure it takes to process the unsolicited imposition en-masse. Thus it is an economy of scale, leveraged by a singular entity.
Conceptually we might look at the simple Market Hawker. He finds that changing the environment to impose his message at scale (by loudly shouting at 30-second intervals) increases his revenue.
Abstracting that core mechanism of advertising into business jargon allows us to frame it as "giving notice about our business to increase revenue with more or bigger transactions". Nothing about that statement is false, after all. So a completely true balance sheet of the advertising proves that "Costs = I Shout, Revenue = Business Is Good". Pretty good deal. Really good deal, once the scale rides up, and he has a loudly-shouting-man installed at every corner.
Business balance sheet is very good, now. Revenue = Business_Is_Good x 500, Costs = 500 Men Shout. This is a very beneficial abstraction indeed. Formally omitting the scaled social and environmental costs of our business advertising by simply not including the vocabulary for those things makes it a wonderful revenue-increasing tool.
Given that our knowing-and-seeing industry is also the thing which enabled and then desperately shepherded humanity out-of every IT deficiency that has ever existed, our inside perspective is still highly fallible too.
Is not the average life of a non-PhD holder an equally-sustained and long amount of time spent on the intractable problem of reaching whatever incredibly complex state-of-humanity they embody?
So much of human political discourse of late is dedicated to ring-fencing off a particular demographic and presenting them as either The Solution or The Problem.
It may be that some types of academic ('of the Academy') learning predispose their adherents to see that distinct failure pattern, behind all the noise. I hope so.
There might be more awareness if, rather than the mainstream [people and news] narrative of "Oh no, some giant event is building and about to happen!", these financial schemes and their socialised downfalls were primarily, rightly labelled as simply the latest in a clearly repeating pattern of behaviour that we as a species are enabling.
I'm finding it almost hard to feel much angst about this cycle, not due to a lack of compassion, but because of the learned reality that if I spend all my energy on today's Big Finance misadventure, well it seems there'll be another tomorrow anyway...
"..if we think of truth as something of granite-like solidity and of personality as something of rainbow-like intangibility and reflect that the aim of [human writing] is to weld these two into one seamless whole, we shall admit that the problem is a stiff one and that we need not wonder if [human writers], for the most part failed to solve it." - Virginia Woolf
[human writing, human writers] = [biography, biographers] in the original quote. My edit is because I infer that her statements key point is that of the biological subjectivity inherent to all human prose.
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