> When you have a thought, are you "predicting the next thing"

Yes. This is the core claim of the Free Energy Principle[0], from the most-cited neuroscientist alive. Predictive processing isn't AI hype - it's the dominant theoretical framework in computational neuroscience for ~15 years now.

> much of our experience of the world does not entail predicting things

Introspection isn't evidence about computational architecture. You don't experience your V1 doing edge detection either.

> How confident are you that the abstractions "search" and "thinking"... are really equatable?

This isn't about confidence, it's about whether you're engaging with the actual literature. Active inference[1] argues cognition IS prediction and action in service of minimizing surprise. Disagree if you want, but you're disagreeing with Friston, not OpenAI marketing.

> How does Heisenberg's famous principle complicate this

It doesn't. Quantum uncertainty at subatomic scales has no demonstrated relevance to cognitive architecture. This is vibes.

> Companies... are claiming these tools do more than they are actually capable of

Possibly true! But "is cognition fundamentally predictive" is a question about brains, not LLMs. You've accidentally dismissed mainstream neuroscience while trying to critique AI hype.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn2787

[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262045353/active-inference/