Ok I have a question, if adversarial game theory helps neural nets learn world models then why can't logic help. After all the former is just a special case of the latter.

My Sunday morning speculation is that LLMs, and sufficiently complex neural nets in general, are a kind of Frankenstein phenomenon, they are heavily statistical, yet also partly, subtly doing novel computational and cognitive-like processes (such as world models). To dismiss either aspect is a false binary; the scientific question is distinguishing which part of an LLM is which, which by our current level of scientific understanding is virtually like trying to ask when is an electron a wave or a particle.

You seem to be confusing/overgeneralizing the understandable resentment of "some Cantonese" who likely had bad experiences of postcolonialism and/or authoritarian-revanchist state policies. If Hong Kong diaspora has a poor reception towards newcomers to their local microculture, maybe it's because the people attempting to engage are not treading lightly with those actual historical legacies in mind.

"Taiwanese lectures Hong Konger about Hong Kong" is a recurring meme on Threads among local Hong Kongers. I didn't expect I'd experience one here.

I mean, I know I am supposed to refute your point with rational points, but I really don't know what to say except that you're wrong, and you're confusing the cultural divide between Cantonese speakers and non-Cantonese speakers, and the political tensions between Hong Kong and mainland China.

Note that I never said "Hong Kong" in my comment because the majority of Cantonese speakers are actually in mainland China.

Yours is the first comment I strongly agree with; as a multilingual/bicultural Asian American, children don't have this supposed difficulty hearing tones.

Most of it is passively paying attention. It should not be a struggle, it's one of those the more you struggle and overintellectualize the less time you are focusing on paying attention and letting your hearing ability do its work it was evolved to do.

The other thing is this whole emphasis on accents is misdirected. Teachers do not place this excessive emphasis on accents, it is people who want to sound "authentic" which is not a very wise goal of language learning in the first place.

I do think that learning music can help a little, especially a sonically complex instrument like violin and the like.

(caveat: I'm way oversimplifying on my Saturday afternoon, but that's my tentative views on this that I would try to argue for.)

I agree on not over-intellectualizing the tones.

I've seen people struggle to pronounce a word when I explicitly tell them what tones it contains, but then pronounce it perfectly when I ask them to just imitate me.

But I disagree about accents. One of the major flaws in most foreign language education, in my opinion, is that pronunciation is not emphasized heavily enough at the beginning. Being able to pronounce the basic sounds correctly has a huge impact on how native speakers perceive your language skills, even if you're not very advanced in the language.

> Being able to pronounce the basic sounds correctly has a huge impact on how native speakers perceive your language skills, even if you're not very advanced in the language.

That's true, but it counsels against trying to develop better pronunciation early.

If you sound like a native despite having just started to learn the language, people will naturally conclude that you are mentally retarded.

That's better than locking in a strong accent the rest of your life. Once you learn to speak a language, it's very difficult to fix your accent.

There are two problems with this:

(1) It doesn't get any more difficult to fix your accent. But most people won't, because there's virtually no benefit to doing it.

This is related to

(2) Once you learn to speak a language, you're not at any risk of people thinking that you can't speak it, even if you speak with a strong accent.

It does actually get much more difficult to fix your accent as you improve in a language. You have to significantly regress, slowing down your speech and taking pains to say everything correctly. You can lock in a good accent early on with much less effort.

There's really no risk in having too good of an accent early on. People will assume you're more advanced than you are, but once you tell them you're learning, they'll simply be impressed by your lack of an accent. There are worse things that could happen.

Yes but Regular Mandarin has different tones, Beijing Mandarin is not Hong Kong-style Mandarin is not Taiwanese Mandarin and so when a foreigner chooses "Reference Mandarin", they are choosing what, exactly?

Point being, this idea of a Universal Reference is exactly the kind of linguistic erasure that is wrongheaded to begin with. Nor does this completely prevent comprehension, these debates underestimate how much human communication is contextual, you read what I wrote above and most of it was your mind already filling in (gasp, like an LLM) the next words enabling you to read relatively quickly.

But you could if you wanted to, probably.

It is fundamentally different because with an API that other person understands it, but with an LLM neither you nor the LLM understand it

It's a modern stage, it doesn't really matter who is physically there.

The EU aligned countries would be crazy to let the US set these rules for some temporary maintenance of income. They've all tended to social Democrats and socialist governments and have a better lifestyle than the US at half or 1/4 the GDP. That goes away if they let the US set pure power based rules, then 1/2 the GDP really is being half an American and if being a whole American was so great no one would have voted for Trump.

For a second I thought it meant the novel sheets UI Steve Jobs showed off in the original Mac OS X.

The problem with Taiwanese (I am one) is ideological, they see themselves as too socially different than mainland China. Reliance on US support, or TSMC as another popular absurd copium, for security guarantee, is not realistic, and any Taiwanese can see this now. Absent other ways to secure its self determination, Taiwan is stuck playing a thin-line game between a crazy eagle and a very possessive panda.

I 100% agree with what you say, no discussion on that. My argument is that, if/when push comes to shove, Taiwanese leadership will pick the peace option given past US behaviour.