Comment by rng_civ

The whole point of this post is that we are trying to:

  * Classify the computational power of Transformers (when it stumbles on certain easier problems but can solve harder ones)

  * Find a "minimal" change to the Transformer that would allow it to compute these problems.

Solving these 2 problems by giving LLMs arbitrary access to external plugins is a cop out. You would not:

  * Call youself a chef just because you own a restaraunt (you need to cook too!)

  * Or (more program-y), say that C code meets Rust's memory safety standards simply because you can write the main function in C and write the rest of the program in Rust

Allowing arbitrary external plugins seems absurdly overkill and not 'minimal' (although that doesn't mean it isn't interesting from a practical perspective!), which is what I assumed that the rain1 was originally pointing out.