The Obfuscation of Intelligence — Part 2…
Modernity, Post-Modernity and the Tower of Babel
“But by “semiosis” I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
“To be a nominalist consists in the undeveloped state of one’s mind of the apprehension of Thirdness as Thirdness. The remedy for it consists in allowing ideas of human life to play a greater part in one’s philosophy. Metaphysics is the science of Reality”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
“It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since, as Swift says, it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought” …
— Roger Scruton
“Logic and metaphysics make no special observations; but they rest upon observations which have been made by common men”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
“Logic is the study of the laws of signs so far as these denote things — those laws of signs which determine what things they denote and what they do not”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
obfuscate
/ˈɒb.fʌs.keɪt/ ˈɑːb.fə.skeɪt
to throw into shadow
confuse
to be evasive, unclear, or confusing
to make something less clear and harder to understand, especially intentionally
A crisis of Theology (or an absence thereof), a crisis of Philosophy, a crisis of Metaphysics and a crisis of Science.
Endemic orthodox Modern & Post-Modern ideas that ignore:
To further illustrate the erosion in our sense of coherence by the broad-based embracement of the ideas of Modernity and Post-Modernity including the prevailing orthodox narrative of Artificial General Intelligence and the impending Singularity, United States Corporation Apple Inc. released a research paper in June 2025 titled The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity.
A quote from its conclusion:
“…In this paper, we systematically examine frontier Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) through the lens of problem complexity using controllable puzzle environments. Our findings reveal fundamental limitations in current models: despite sophisticated self-reflection mechanisms, these models fail to develop generalizable reasoning capabilities beyond certain complexity thresholds. We identified three distinct reasoning regimes: standard LLMs outperform LRMs at low complexity, LRMs excel at moderate complexity, and both collapse at high complexity. Particularly concerning is the counter-intuitive reduction in reasoning effort as problems approach critical complexity, suggesting an inherent compute scaling limit in LRMs. Our detailed analysis of reasoning traces further exposed complexity- dependent reasoning patterns, from inefficient “overthinking” on simpler problems to complete failure on complex ones. These insights challenge prevailing assumptions about LRM capabilities and suggest that current approaches may be encountering fundamental barriers to generalizable reasoning”…
— The Illusion of Thinking:Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity
[ LINK ]
Please also read:
- A knockout blow for LLMs?LLM “reasoning” is so cooked they turned my name into a verb [ LINK ];
- When billion-dollar AIs break down over puzzles a child can do, it’s time to rethink the hype [ LINK ];
- Why DO large language models hallucinate? The Henrietta Chronicles continue, guest starring Harry Shearer [ LINK ];
- Advanced AI suffers ‘complete accuracy collapse’ in face of complex problems, study finds — ‘Pretty devastating’ Apple paper raises doubts about race to reach stage of AI at which it matches human intelligence [ LINK ]; and
- Apple Researchers Just Released a Damning Paper That Pours Water on the Entire AI Industry — “The illusion of thinking… frontier [reasoning models] face a complete accuracy collapse beyond certain complexities.” [ LINK ].
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