3 ms·

> in Python the creators explicitly defined everything about the language and created a concrete API for programming with it. More to the point, in any progra

> in Python the creators explicitly defined everything about the language and created a concrete API for programming with it. More to the point, in any programming language the API is just a way of exposing deterministic logic and building reliable structures. In other words, there is an expected, verifiable output for any given input that you're looking to attain with 100% reproducibility. Even copy/pasting regex rules as "incantations" is more like programming than devising prompts is. The regex can be tested and won't give a different output each time it's used. I was at a bar the other night and heard a woman in her fifties talking about how her husband tries to use GPT for everything now. They were sitting with a woman in nursing school, who had an paper due, and the husband had GPT write a paper for her subject, reading it aloud on his phone. The nursing student became alarmed and said she couldn't turn something like that in, and it was important for her to write it herself. The husband seemed sure she could get away with it. "My professor is very smart," she said. At that point, I interjected and told the husband, "it's also frequently wrong." If people who use it actually need be told that, no wonder they think they're "programming".

mcaledonensis 4y ago
Engineering disciplines had often started like this. When something is non-deterministic and unpredictable, people call it magic. But it doesn't need to remain this way. To give an example in construction and architecture, from about a thousand years back: Then all the host of craftsmen, fearing for their lives, found out a proper site whereon to build the tower, and eagerly began to lay in the foundations. But no sooner were the walls raised up above the ground than all their work was overwhelmed and broken down by night invisibly, no man perceiving how, or by whom, or what. And the same thing happening again, and yet again, all the workmen, full of terror, sought out the king, and threw themselves upon their faces before him, beseeching him to interfere and help them or to deliver them from their dreadful work. Filled with mixed rage and fear, the king called for the astrologers and wizards, and took counsel with them what these things might be, and how to overcome them. The wizards worked their spells and incantations, and in the end declared that nothing but the blood of a youth born without mortal father, smeared on the foundations of the castle, could avail to make it stand. -- excerpt from, The Project Gutenberg EBook of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, by Unknown It takes a bit of effort to get rid of astrologists and false magicians and put in a bit of drainage to stabilize the thing. But it can be done. And in time skyscrapers can be architected, engineered and built. There is plenty of actual research available on prompt engineering. And it is great that the community is engaged and is experimenting. Gamification and play are always great! Here's my attempt at it - A Router Design in Prompt: https://mcaledonensis.substack.com/p/a-router-design-in-prompt https://mcaledonensis.substack.com/p/a-router-design-in-prom...
- noduerme 4y ago
  I view that quote a bit differently. For 99.9% of the time since the emergence of modern humans, the ways of doing things and building things were passed down as spells and performed as / accompanied by rituals. Some of the spells and rituals may have evolved to improve outcomes, such as hygiene or efficiency, things like ceremonial bathing, shunning pork, or building monuments with stone from a certain place. Many other spells and rituals were just along for the evolutionary ride; they were perceived to work, but actually had no effect. Some potion for a headache could contain a dozen ingredients, but only the willow bark actually did anything. Some incantation said over laying stones worked no better or worse than laying them in silence. The thing was, neither the effective nor the ineffective spells were derived from first principles. If putting blood on the pillars seemed to work, no one asked "well, why does it work?" No one set out on the long task of hypothesis and experimentation, theory and formal proof. Until people began doing that, no one discovered why one method was better than another, and so people could only iterate a tiny bit at a time. If you handed a charged-up iPhone to a person in the 9th Century (or for that matter, a young child in this century), they would have a wonderful time figuring out all the things they could make it do by touching icons in a certain order. They would learn the sequences. But they would be no closer to understanding what it is or how it works. If the same sequences gave slightly different results each time, they would not even understand why. Maybe one time they said "Aye Sire" and it spoke. If they say it more like "Hey Siri" it speaks more often. But does this get them any closer to understanding what Siri is? Playing with a magical black box toy is fun, but you can't get to reproducible results, let alone first principles, unless you can understand why its output is different each time. The closest you can get are spells and rituals. I'd submit that the attraction to creating spells around GPT is rather an alarming step backwards, and hints that people are already trying to turn it into a god.
  - mcaledonensis 4y ago
    Well, let me tell you how that particular quote had continued. These false magicians (that were proposing to spill the blood onto the foundation) were shamed and dismissed. Drainage was constructed and the castle was built. Building castles is stochastic and unpredictable. Any complex system is. Yet it is possible to get reproducible results. At least on a large enough sample. I agree, people that are trying to turn it into a god for real are clearly misguided. Large language model is a world model, not a god. Yet, there is nothing wrong in play. Attraction to casting spells is a quite natural one, and it's not a problem. With the current progress of science there is very high chance that some people will also do some science, besides having fun casting spells.

mcaledonensis 4y ago

Engineering disciplines had often started like this. When something is non-deterministic and unpredictable, people call it magic. But it doesn't need to remain this way. To give an example in construction and architecture, from about a thousand years back: Then all the host of craftsmen, fearing for their lives, found out a proper site whereon to build the tower, and eagerly began to lay in the foundations. But no sooner were the walls raised up above the ground than all their work was overwhelmed and broken down by night invisibly, no man perceiving how, or by whom, or what. And the same thing happening again, and yet again, all the workmen, full of terror, sought out the king, and threw themselves upon their faces before him, beseeching him to interfere and help them or to deliver them from their dreadful work. Filled with mixed rage and fear, the king called for the astrologers and wizards, and took counsel with them what these things might be, and how to overcome them. The wizards worked their spells and incantations, and in the end declared that nothing but the blood of a youth born without mortal father, smeared on the foundations of the castle, could avail to make it stand. -- excerpt from, The Project Gutenberg EBook of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, by Unknown It takes a bit of effort to get rid of astrologists and false magicians and put in a bit of drainage to stabilize the thing. But it can be done. And in time skyscrapers can be architected, engineered and built. There is plenty of actual research available on prompt engineering. And it is great that the community is engaged and is experimenting. Gamification and play are always great! Here's my attempt at it - A Router Design in Prompt: https://mcaledonensis.substack.com/p/a-router-design-in-prompt https://mcaledonensis.substack.com/p/a-router-design-in-prom...

noduerme 4y ago
I view that quote a bit differently. For 99.9% of the time since the emergence of modern humans, the ways of doing things and building things were passed down as spells and performed as / accompanied by rituals. Some of the spells and rituals may have evolved to improve outcomes, such as hygiene or efficiency, things like ceremonial bathing, shunning pork, or building monuments with stone from a certain place. Many other spells and rituals were just along for the evolutionary ride; they were perceived to work, but actually had no effect. Some potion for a headache could contain a dozen ingredients, but only the willow bark actually did anything. Some incantation said over laying stones worked no better or worse than laying them in silence. The thing was, neither the effective nor the ineffective spells were derived from first principles. If putting blood on the pillars seemed to work, no one asked "well, why does it work?" No one set out on the long task of hypothesis and experimentation, theory and formal proof. Until people began doing that, no one discovered why one method was better than another, and so people could only iterate a tiny bit at a time. If you handed a charged-up iPhone to a person in the 9th Century (or for that matter, a young child in this century), they would have a wonderful time figuring out all the things they could make it do by touching icons in a certain order. They would learn the sequences. But they would be no closer to understanding what it is or how it works. If the same sequences gave slightly different results each time, they would not even understand why. Maybe one time they said "Aye Sire" and it spoke. If they say it more like "Hey Siri" it speaks more often. But does this get them any closer to understanding what Siri is? Playing with a magical black box toy is fun, but you can't get to reproducible results, let alone first principles, unless you can understand why its output is different each time. The closest you can get are spells and rituals. I'd submit that the attraction to creating spells around GPT is rather an alarming step backwards, and hints that people are already trying to turn it into a god.
- mcaledonensis 4y ago
  Well, let me tell you how that particular quote had continued. These false magicians (that were proposing to spill the blood onto the foundation) were shamed and dismissed. Drainage was constructed and the castle was built. Building castles is stochastic and unpredictable. Any complex system is. Yet it is possible to get reproducible results. At least on a large enough sample. I agree, people that are trying to turn it into a god for real are clearly misguided. Large language model is a world model, not a god. Yet, there is nothing wrong in play. Attraction to casting spells is a quite natural one, and it's not a problem. With the current progress of science there is very high chance that some people will also do some science, besides having fun casting spells.