MIT's davidbau argues evidence of metacognition is circular: thoughts about thoughts
davidbau · x · 2026-10-02
In a debate with @DruckerDaniel and @smusab, davidbau poses an epistemological puzzle: the evidence we can offer for truly knowing our own knowledge consists of more thoughts about our own thinking — the very thing we're trying to establish, making the argument circular. He then asks how an outside observer could distinguish an Alice who genuinely thinks about her own thinking from a Bob who only speaks words about it, a question at the heart of whether LLMs possess real metacognition.
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