unprompted/Notes/do-people-think.md

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title	date	layout	tags	permalink
Do ~~Machines~~ People Think?	2026-04-02	column.njk	column	/columns/2026/do-people-think/

Rough Notes

• Thinking:
  • Can we flip this around, and define it by reduction? What isn't thinking?
    1. Reaction
    2. Reflex
    3. Conditioned behavior
  • But what part of thinking isn't grounded in some conditioned behavior? Some reflex triggered by a problem to solve?
  • But thinking seems to involve "modeling," and for our purposes, we mean a mental model.
  • This mental model gets tested, calibrated, exercised.
    • So how is this different than a program?
  • Digital vs. Analog?
  • Inputs, the decisions, are much fuzzier for organic mental models (and thinking)
  • Computers are (seemingly) deterministic
    • But, if we shed this assumption, what happens to our distinction?
  • If computers can "approximate" the fuzziness with digital values...
    • same question, what happens to our distinction?
  • Thinking as a survival skill
    • Thinking as communication
    • Socialization
    • Connecting with neighbors and "vibing."
    • Thinking as an emergent behavior, among a pool of people
    • Maybe the mob mentality is the purest expression of thought.
      • Without self, or ego.
  • What does it map to, in the scheme of things?
    • I keep thinking about connections
    • And how stifling it is to exist in isolation
    • But to become ingrained in something
    • And to connect with the people, the pieces
    • To have an exchange, that's the essence of thinking
  • Some kind of transformation, born from the coordination and interaction of many players
  • Bottling it within youself, just as senses, impressions without a voice, with no expression or transformation
  • We form groups, we organize, and we process together. That's thinking

Quotes

"[he thinks] that the idealistic creations of his mind... also represent reality." - Claude Bernard

"Much thinking is done in completely personal, idiosyncratic terms, so much so that how it is done is incommunicable." - Gerald Weinberg

Questions

• Who is Claude Bernard?

  • Famous French Physiologist (1813-78).

• How would I define "thinking?"

• Is "thinking" in isolation really thinking? Or, is thinking in a social / anthropological sense a connector?

• Do machines Think?

  • Yes
    • True thought has structure, a sequence, clear logical steps.
    • It is neither random nor unpredictable. It follows clear, irrefutable logic.
    • Anything else is noise
  • No
    • Machines are bound by rules. They can only follow a pre-programmed sequence of steps
    • The sequence may have rich variety, but lacks in originality.
    • Thinking is about novelty. Making leaps of intuition and instinct.
    • If we can pave the way between with logic or reasoning, that's nice, but not essential.
  • I reject this approach as flawed, lacking both nuance and merit.
    • Total aside: the point shouldn't be to subscribe absolutely to one side or the other, and claim it the undeniable truth.
    • These are devices, anchor points around which we can scaffold our reasoning, and draw tighter bounds around the concept being examined.
    • They themselves are not to be confused with the subject at hand.
      • by extension, we won't say that one or the other, both or neither are the thing itself.
      • Like confusing the map for the terrain.
        • these are navigational aids
  • So probably not a single definition of thinking
    • there's the intuitive kind, that machines might struggle with
    • There's the expansive, logical kind, machines are better suited for.

Links

[1] - Hamming, R. (1997). The art of doing science and engineering: Learning to learn. CRC. https://archive.org/details/artofdoingscienc0000rich [2] - Weinberg, Gerald M. An Introduction to General Systems Thinking. Wiley, 1975. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/introductiontoge00gera.