alt Hacker News> Language models aren't world models for the same reason languages aren't world models. Symbols, by definition, only represent a thing. They are not the same as the thing. The map is not the territory, the description is not the described, you can't get wet in the word "water".
Symbols, maps, descriptions, and words are useful precisely because they are NOT what they represent. Representation is not identity. What else could a “world model” be other than a representation? Aren’t all models representations, by definition? What exactly do you think a world model is, if not something expressible in language?
> Aren’t all models representations, by definition? What exactly do you think a world model is, if not something expressible in language?
I was following the string of questions, but I think there is a logical leap between those two questions.
Another question: is Language the only way to define models? An imagined sound or an imagined picture of an apple in my minds-eye are models to me, but they don't use language.