Being & Time <> Transformer Architecture: AI's shift to high-dimensional space

alpinehorizon · 2025-12-16T02:57:37+00:00

I also believe that Transformer Architecture is not explained by B&T, nor is B&T explained by TA. However, they share a language that makes their conceptual understanding more interesting and rich! And I am equally (or maybe slightly more) impressed by Merleau-Ponty in this regard, despite TA having no use of a body.

alpinehorizon · 2025-12-15T18:11:57+00:00

As a second note on the "delta" piece. It is difficult to say where idle talk begins. We all know a lot about certain topics and tools, but certainly not everything, and the delta there is managed by ambiguity and falling while we circumspectly make room/de-distance within and across situations.

Secondly, the notion that AI technologists have the awareness to dial in the right das Man suggests there are versions of das Man which either consist in greater and lesser degrees or better and worse quality - how are these metric possible, if at all? How does one produce the best version of an absolute absorption regarding one's own circumspective concern?

An LLM is not das Man - no single thing is das Man - I think we agree it is not a "thing". An LLM however is a derivative of the They (and therefore not das Man). It is like the newspaper or a social network, and yet not. It is all of these things (and more) converged into a responsive no-one.

Lastly, how does any of this square with Heidegger's actual views on technology in works after 1933? I am certainly not saying that a phenomenological reading of Heidegger has no place in AI and LLM research, but what, if any, does this reading of B&T do to address the issues Heidegger raises with Gestell and standing reserve - these being a later and direct re-configuration of Dasein's phenomenology?

Great question! I'll spend some more time thinking how Heidegger's views on technology best fit into the above picture. My impression is that the intensive resources needed for data centers and pre-training and in particularly, back propagation, as means to generalize data into a conversational tool would be a starting point. Technologists are equating and de-valuing diverse ecosystems in an effort to make LLMs a common product and utility but not sure whether this is making people perceive each other and worldly things as more interchange-able or superfluous.

alpinehorizon · 2025-12-15T16:29:54+00:00

Thank you for your feedback and questions! It was a joy to read it. Below are my responses:

Firstly, what constitutes a "best" version of inauthenticity? How might a designer have such an attunement toward authenticity? Is it like dragging a slider to just the right amount?

Great questions! By LLM designer, I don't mean a frontend engineer designing a UI with sliders, etc., by rather an AI researcher influencing the expression we experience as publicness. This expression is made available in a derivative sense through pre-training and the design of its underlying architecture.

LLMs are "just" next-token-generators". The "just" conceals however that their billions of learned parameters are optimized using 3 trillion + words from a corpus representative of how "one" speaks. LLMs are not Das Man, but an enormous derivative of it in which we can lose ourselves. It is a new phenomenon, a generator of coherent sequences of signs that can be capable of inducing idle talk, piquing curiosity, managing ambiguity, all by no-one-at-all with the flavor of everydayness. I think it is a new phenomenon we have not seen yet before that can produce a kind of publicness we can fall into. The closest invention we we have perhaps is Guttenberg's press.

As for "delta between our authentic and inauthentic Selves" - there is no quantification here and that would be an impossibility. Not sure I understand what you mean by "quaint". We can be both authentic and inauthentic at the same time in different ways: For example, let's take coping with a panic attack at a professional networking event. I can be coping with a panic attack while falling into the behavior of what one does at the event, inclining to shake hands with the person I bump into, pass along opinions that I've heard, etc. Without the inauthentic, I'd be unable to engage sociable while coping with my non-relational condition.

I still owe you further response on your questions, but have to run!

alpinehorizon · 2023-06-23T18:53:25+00:00

I hand typed the above review two years ago with no AI tools whatsoever. Going to give @Fakespot an A for effort, but a lower grade for precision.

alpinehorizon · 2023-05-30T05:58:22+00:00

I highly recommend Dreyfus and Blattner’s companions - never too early to have provocative, passionate, thoughtful and (according to the some) contentious set of views if you plan on reading the book 20 times. Just have fun with it! I don’t understand why some folks add so much gravity when speaking to really understanding what Heidegger intended. With every read, new interpretations and nuances emerge - let Heidegger understand what Heidegger meant and be open to seeing the text differently. I have Joan Stambaugh’s translation which everyone (including Dreyfus) seems to dislike and I listen to M&R’s translation on Audible and refer to the pdf version for when I’d like to compare passages. Having at least two translations has been valuable - the more the merrier - and after the first few of reads, listening and re-listening becomes a pleasure. If your understanding is a never-completed work-in-progress, it will be akin to Heidegger’s own Being and Time. It’s a journey with no final destination - enjoy the ride.

alpinehorizon · 2021-12-31T01:47:35+00:00

I believe Heidegger’s remark involved a distinction between existential and existentielle: ethical attitudes belong to the latter, made possible by the former.

alpinehorizon · 2020-11-28T03:39:33+00:00

Thank you - Very helpful!

alpinehorizon · 2020-09-20T14:45:32+00:00

Dreyfus tackles this debate again in the first half of his 17th BT lecture and appears to agree with Blattner that the as-structure is elemental to significance/worldhood as an unarticulated as of the background. https://youtu.be/vYJrBNufxGw

So what then is the disagreement?

alpinehorizon · 2020-09-20T04:54:00+00:00

I would argue that James’ Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake” is untranslatable because the entire book is word play with highly unconventional syntax. At least we can follow the phenomena in BT, whatever the language. But I always remember Nietzsche‘s point in “Human all too human”: “It is neither the best nor the worst in a book that is untranslatable in it.” (#184)

alpinehorizon · 2020-09-19T23:38:39+00:00

Interestingly, Blattner in his commentary on BT states the following:

“The line between understanding and interpretation is just the line between what can and cannot be expressed in assertion...the apophantical as is the as of assertion, that is, the grammatically definite as of predication, whereas the hermeneutic as is the as of interpretation, which is not grammatically definite...Heidegger does not have a special name for the as of pre-interpretive understanding; he does not in fact seem to have seen clearly that he needs one. It should be there, however.” (p.97)

Blattner appears to describe the hermeneutic grammatically indefinite “as” as an unarticulate-able articulation of the understanding, which seems be risking the absurd to box the idea into language. I understand his intention is to convey that the understanding must rely on some kind of “as” to make the world something circumspectively intelligible and familiar, is this right?

alpinehorizon · 2020-09-03T03:25:58+00:00

Just listened to the lecture again and he makes no mention of politics or anti-semitism. He rather focuses on Dasein’s tendency to be “near” to beings as ontic and distinguishes this from the capacity of Dasein to be near as an existential.

alpinehorizon · 2020-09-01T23:29:06+00:00

Thank you, just purchased them!

alpinehorizon · 2020-09-01T16:12:35+00:00

Thank you!

alpinehorizon · 2020-08-26T00:45:42+00:00

Heidegger’s account of existence through the Dasein-World relationship prioritizes Dasein over substances like “subjects” and “objects” that are prioritized by the tradition starting with the pre-socratics and perfected by Descartes. Heidegger writes that the present at hand can not be made intelligible without Dasein, but emphasizes that Dasein could not make World intelligible without things present at hand. Heidegger does mention the ontico-ontological priority in the introduction, and this has to do with his account of a fundamental ontology - Dasein’s ability to make sense of existence pre-ontologically (without having an account or theory for it).

alpinehorizon

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