Explanation missing.
> If you've ever programmed, or worked with programmers, that is not an extraordinary claim at all.
One step ahead of you. I already say this is engineered to encourage belief "I want to be good, big brain, and open source is good, I want to be good big brain".
It's marketing.
> A mental model of the software is what allows a programmer [yadda yadda]
I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I'm saying the paper doesn't provide any relevant information regarding the phenomena.
> Those neural pathways can only be activated by natural learning and manual programming.
Again, probably true. But the paper doesn't provide any relevant information regarding this phenomena.
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Your answer seems to disagree with me, but displays a disjointed understanding of what I'm really addressing.
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As a lighthearted fun analogy, I present:
https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf
The paper does not prove the existence of chickens. It says chicken a lot, but never addresses the phenomena of chickens existing.