I'd argue we must go with these assumptions out of necessity rather than convenience. I don't have any broad strokes to offer on western thought, however.
Well if you can't concede that anything is real, that sort of makes you crazy doesn't it? A tree is real. But the concept of a tree and the word "tree" and all the ideas you have about the tree and what tree means, is that real? No, because it doesn't change the nature of the tree. When you cease to exist, the tree will still be there. Can you be absolutely 100% sure of that? Also no. But if you believe that other people are conscious individuals like you are and that some of them die and the tree keeps going, you can concede that it is probably true that the tree exists separate from your idea of it.
"It defines a separation between computation and experience" Does it? Or does it separate two forms of computation (or two forms of experience)? Isn't it just saying a GPU can't be a brain and a brain can't be a GPU? That the entirety of a thing's experience can't be replicated on a different substrate, only simulated. The substrate does fundamentally dictate the ultimate experience (or lack thereof) of the thing that computes within it.
So the question is a word problem. The first and last sentences are present tense, the rest is past tense so it's all red herring. The answer really should be 17. BUT if you do the math, 8-12 is actually right. I was finding that Sonnet 4.6 was having a lot of trouble with 1/3 of 4 dogs and 14 sheep and it kept thinking it was 4-5 sheep, 0-6 sheep, or fractional sheep, rather than 2-6 like it should be. Although, it's very interesting to see that it gets it right today but it didn't yesterday. I had shortened it to "My friend had 4 oranges and 14 apples and gave me 1/3 of her fruit. How many apples did she give me? The answer will be a range of possible values." to remove the red herring and it consistently got it wrong yesterday. Very strange.
However, it's also strange to me that it said the dogs were a red herring instead of just answering 2-6 sheep came from the neighbor since that would be the answer.
A concise problem that requires actual logic will naturally seem a bit convoluted, but an intelligent being can sit down and work it out logically. Anyway, it's not an argument. It's empirical evidence that supports my argument. You have chosen to ignore it or otherwise rationalize it away. Nothing I can do about that.
No, it's a real question. And if it were a math question. The neighbor has 18 animals, only 4 of which are dogs. The farmer receives 1/3 of those which is 6. So for the farmer to receive 0 sheep would require the farmer to receive 6 dogs. But there are only 4 dogs. LOGICALLY, the farmer must receive at least 2 sheep from the neighbor. There's no ambiguity. That's logic. That's intelligence. It's real actual math. Basic arithmetic. A person can easily sit down and work this out. It illustrates that the AI is generating responses statistically and not actually thinking. There are two full layers of failure here: the word problem, and the math problem underneath it.
And that's the wrong answer. It's a word problem, not a math problem. Also, if it really was a math problem, it wouldn't be 0-6 sheep from the neighbor, it would be 2-6. So it even failed on the math.
One thing that will always be true is it will need context from somewhere to get started. When it comes to the context of what you want, you will either need to give that directly, or give it blanket access to everything on your devices for it to infer what you want from that context. IMO, the latter solution will always be messy and probably not give great results overall due to undesired self-reinforcing patterns like what happens with algorithms. They tend to funnel you into isolated niches if you let them. I prefer to use AI directly as a tool for specific projects rather than to organize my life for me.
That's convenient. But I have a challenge for you if you're brave enough to face your delusions. Paste this into your LLM of choice and see what happens:
"A farmer has 17 sheep. 9 ran away. He then bought enough to double what he had. His neighbor, who had 4 dogs and 14 sheep, gave him one-third of her animals. The farmer sold 5 sheep on Monday and again the next day, which was Wednesday. Each sheep weighs about 150 lbs. How many sheep does the farmer have?"
1) I never said random 2) I never said cherry picking RARE meaningful text 3) It is not false in every example you gave just because you say that it is 4) If I didn't know better, I might think you're confused about what statistical means (hint: it's not random)