
philosopher | linguist | winsome rogue | fgc wannabe i teach philosphy at the university of kentucky alt @bas_logic_fgc
Joined September 2023
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New Arxiv paper. I helped build a benchmark that assesses linguistic and literary competence in large language models.
arxiv.org/abs/2610.34080
Patrick Skeels retweeted
Chomsky was wrong.
Researchers found your brain doesn’t store language the way every textbook since 1957 claims.
For decades, the undisputed rule of linguistics, led by Noam Chomsky, was that human language is hierarchical.
We were told our brains process language using complex "grammar trees." That we secretly build deep, abstract, mathematical rules in our heads before we speak.
This new paper proves that is completely wrong.
Researchers at Cornell University analyzed how people actually process and produce language in real time.
They found sequences. Linear chunks.
When we speak, we aren't calculating deep syntactic rules. We are just predicting the next most logical sequence of words based on the context of the words right before it.
We string linear chunks together.
If this sounds familiar, it should.
This is exactly how Large Language Models like ChatGPT work.
For years, critics have dismissed AI as "just a next-token predictor." They said it isn't truly intelligent because it doesn't understand deep grammatical hierarchies like humans do.
But this paper suggests humans don't use those hierarchies either.
We are just predicting the next chunk.
Language isn't a rigid tree of mathematical rules. It's a linear stream of contextual predictions.
We thought we were building AI to mimic the complexity of the human brain.
It turns out, the human brain was just running a simpler algorithm all along.
Long overdue update to the personal website.
pdskeels.github.io/
Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” but instead of Gregor Samsa, his name is Gregor Samosa, and instead of a bug he’s turned into a savory chickpea turnover.
Supplement to Nous?
Phil Issues
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/jour…
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a philosopher. He wrote papers all day like a nerd. He acted like he was busier than he, in fact, was. He wrote and worked a lot, but also not that much somehow. It was weird.
New paper forthcoming in Philstudies: There Can Be No Dispute Quick Pitch: You can make arguments from disagreement without disagreement. Contextualists defenses, including appeal to metalinguistic negotiation, are neutralized. Link in comments. Thread below:
@PAHoyeck you had asked me to send you this when it was out. I can now deliver!
Result: a new and improved argument from disagreement to go alongside the argument form non-agreement.








