Introduction to Computing: Explorations in Language, Logic, and Machines by David Evans

https://computingbook.org/

The difference between the mathematical mind (esprit de geometrie) and the perceptive mind (esprit de finesse): the reason that mathematicians are not perceptive is that they do not see what is before them, and that, accustomed to the exact and plain principles of mathematics, and not reasoning till they have well inspected and arranged their principles, they are lost in matters of perception where the principles do not allow for such arrangement. [...] These principles are so fine and so numerous that a very delicate and very clear sense is needed to perceive them, and to judge rightly and justly when they are perceived, without for the most part being able to demonstrate them in order as in mathematics; because the principles are not known to us in the same way, and because it would be an endless matter to undertake it. We must see the matter at once, at one glance, and not by a process of reasoning, at least to a certain degree. [...] Mathematicians wish to treat matters of perception mathematically, and make themselves ridiculous [...] the mind [...]does it tacitly, naturally, and without technical rules.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670)

Hubert L. Dreyfus, What Computers Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason (1972)

"Whether this resembles human reasoning is irrelevant."

Such an unreasonable way to think about any form of reasoning.

A page of Kant, or worse even Russell, is enough to remind how 'reason' isn't as transparently stochastic as these people presume it to be.

This is exactly what happens when you don't actually do the grounding, philosophically and otherwise, for the concepts you use. At least McCarthy's approach was entirely grounded in symbolic logic.

I'm tired of these researchers and their research, like how blindsighted and ignorant do you have to be to claim something about "reasoning" without knowing the first thing about it?

A basic undergraduate course in epistemology and logic is really all you need to start questioning the foundations of whatever that is being called "reasoning". I'm not even asking to go deeper into the faculty of understanding, just don't label things as irrelevant which form the foundations of the very concept you wish to build.

And the very reasonable people from Mozilla have decided to group and suggest names for tab groups using LLMs. Like really? As if a browser wasn't already consuming useless compute and power for the terrible web that it browses? Now I have to also waste unnecessary compute on naming tab groups?