I had high hopes for this essay because I’ve tried many times to get people online to articulate what they mean by “it doesn’t really understand, it only appears to understand” — my view is that all these arguments against the possibility of LLMs thinking apply equally well to human beings because we don’t understand the process that produces human thinking either.

But the essay is a huge letdown. The European vs. American framing obscures more than it illuminates. The two concepts of intelligence are not really analyzed at all — one could come up with interpretations under which they’re perfectly compatible with each other. The dismissal of Marx and Freud, two of the deepest thinkers in history, is embarrassing, saying a lot more about the author than about those thinkers.

(For anyone who hasn't read much Freud, here's a very short essay that may surprise you with its rigor: https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/...)