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It really is remarkable the strength of claims that otherwise smart people will make about the impossibility of AI doing something. As evidenced by IGI's reply, I think usually if someone has gotten this far without updating, you shouldn't expect a mere compilation of strong evidence to change their minds, but just to prompt the smallest possible retreat.
I had an amazing conversation with an academic economist that went along similar lines. I asked why his profession generally wasn't willing to even entertain the idea that AI could act as a substitute for human labor, and he said "well it's not happening yet, and making predictions is beyond the scope of our profession". Just mind-boggling.
To empathize a little, I think that people intuitively understand that admitting that a machine will be able to do everything important better than them permanently weakens their bargaining position. As someone who hopes humanity will successfully form a cartel before it's too late, I fear we're in a double-bind where acknowledging the problem we face makes it worse.
FWIW I don't think I'm engaged in motivated reasoning here, if only because I no longer need to seek wage for a living. Though I'll admit it is pretty funny that Andreessen says the only job AI can't do is Venture Capitalist.
I think I simply disagree with the postulate that cognition is entirely reducible to statistical inference.
I'm still confused what you're claiming. Who is claiming that cognition is entirely reducible to statistical inference? In any case, are the LLM companies somehow committed to never using anything but statistical inference?
LLMs are by definition big piles of algebra built from large datasets, so this is a tautology. They would be something different if they were something different.
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