The Efficiency Attenuation Phenomenon: A Computational Challenge to the Language of Thought Hypothesis
arXiv:2603.22312v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper computationally investigates whether thought requires a language-like format, as posited by the Language of Thought (LoT) hypothesis. We introduce the “AI Private Language” thought experiment: if two artificial agents develop an efficient, inscrutable communication protocol via multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), and their performance declines when forced to use a human-comprehensible language, this Efficiency Attenuation Phenomenon (EAP) challenges the LoT. We formalize this in a cooperative navigation task under partial observability. Results […]