4 ms·

Not the way LLMs do. Typically, humans are only hypocritical when they're trying to conceal their true values. For example, when someone makes a "states' rights

by bccdee 3y ago

Not the way LLMs do. Typically, humans are only hypocritical when they're trying to conceal their true values. For example, when someone makes a "states' rights for me but not for thee" argument, they don't actually believe in "states' rights." They're just cynically arguing whatever position will forward their agenda. An LLM, conversely, will sometimes directly gainsay itself, hallucinating different versions of its own output from just paragraphs earlier. That's not just hypocrisy—that's not having any actual concept of truth beyond an imperfect idea of when a sentence does or doesn't look "realistic."

famouswaffles 3y ago
>Typically, humans are only hypocritical when they're trying to conceal their true values. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196841/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196841/ People sure as hell think they know what previous mental states and preferences inform their decisions but that's just as likely to be nice post-hoc rationalization than truth. You're a co-pilot at best. You don't actually know why you make the decisions you do. No need for any "concealing my true self" rhetoric
- bccdee 3y ago
  The article you linked has nothing to do with your claim and neither the article nor your claim have anything to do with my point. The article demonstrates proof of choice-supportive bias, not that people have no recollection of their previous mental states. And LLMs don't merely exhibit choice-supportive bias—they wantonly contradict things they said moments earlier and wildly hallucinate things that never happened.
  - famouswaffles 3y ago
    I didn't say people have no recollection of previous mental states. I said people don't know what mental states and preferences actually inform decisions. They just think they do. And previous mental states can't be recreated. Hitler has his share of Jews saved from the Holocaust. For example, he befriended a Jew girl, Rosa Bernile Nienau among a few others and kept regular contact with her. So tell me, what "secret self" was Hitler hiding ? Humanity is chock full of contradictory actions. This nonsense "secret self" theory doesn't even make sense for most of them. >they wantonly contradict things they said moments earlier and wildly hallucinate things that never happened. Brains do this in spades. Sense data you perceive is partly fabricated for the concious self. This is why you see a second tick by faster when you suddenly look at the clock. This is why it seems you see something when you shift your eyes quickly instead of the completely black you should be seeing. Memories are always part-fabrications too. Only what the brain perceives as "key" is stored, making up the rest. Every time you recall a memory, the brain rewrites part of it, often introducing more fabrications. It's extremely easy to implant targeted false memories for this exact reason. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_the_mall_technique https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_the_mall_technique And then there's the results of the split brain experiments too https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7305066/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7305066/ So this idea that your brain doesn't "hallucinate" or make up details is very laughable. Your brain is quite literally constantly doing that and with the concious mind completely unaware.
    - bccdee 3y ago
      > Brains do this in spades. Sense data you perceive is partly fabricated for the concious self. You must be sprinting to move the goalposts that far that fast. I'm not talking about convenient sensory illusions or details of perception. I'm talking about ChatGPT telling bold-faced and obvious lies about things it said mere sentences earlier. Would you engage with my points instead of switching to totally unrelated topics like Hitler's single Jewish friend? Humans are not perfectly rational beings and our memory is faulty, but we are broadly rational and have a generally consistent model of the world; LLMs are painfully inconsistent and exhibits wild bouts of irrationality, and this behaviour is totally in line with the way they are trained.
      - oezi 3y ago
        I think it is a mistake to consider this an inherent weakness of LLMs. Nothing precludes a system architecture for a next generation LLM to have loops for rationality or morality reasoning which filter the output. We are likely to see many human psychotic disorders arising in the LLM output when we start doing this but we will likely see less of the pivoting on answers we see now.
        bccdee 3y ago
        No, you're massively anthropomorphizing them. You can't just add a "loop for rationality"—writing is a second-order product of first-order reasoning. If a model trained on that second-order product isn't reproducing the first-order behaviour, you can't just tack it on in an extra module. It's like trying to teach something to dance based on the footprints of dancers. Depending on the dance, maybe it'll work and maybe not, but with the dance of reason and the footprints of writing it's not working, and no extra module we tack on will change the relationship between the dance and the footprints. It's a fundamental flaw in the LLM architecture.

by bccdee 3y ago

famouswaffles 3y ago

>Typically, humans are only hypocritical when they're trying to conceal their true values. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196841/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3196841/ People sure as hell think they know what previous mental states and preferences inform their decisions but that's just as likely to be nice post-hoc rationalization than truth. You're a co-pilot at best. You don't actually know why you make the decisions you do. No need for any "concealing my true self" rhetoric

bccdee 3y ago
The article you linked has nothing to do with your claim and neither the article nor your claim have anything to do with my point. The article demonstrates proof of choice-supportive bias, not that people have no recollection of their previous mental states. And LLMs don't merely exhibit choice-supportive bias—they wantonly contradict things they said moments earlier and wildly hallucinate things that never happened.
- famouswaffles 3y ago
  I didn't say people have no recollection of previous mental states. I said people don't know what mental states and preferences actually inform decisions. They just think they do. And previous mental states can't be recreated. Hitler has his share of Jews saved from the Holocaust. For example, he befriended a Jew girl, Rosa Bernile Nienau among a few others and kept regular contact with her. So tell me, what "secret self" was Hitler hiding ? Humanity is chock full of contradictory actions. This nonsense "secret self" theory doesn't even make sense for most of them. >they wantonly contradict things they said moments earlier and wildly hallucinate things that never happened. Brains do this in spades. Sense data you perceive is partly fabricated for the concious self. This is why you see a second tick by faster when you suddenly look at the clock. This is why it seems you see something when you shift your eyes quickly instead of the completely black you should be seeing. Memories are always part-fabrications too. Only what the brain perceives as "key" is stored, making up the rest. Every time you recall a memory, the brain rewrites part of it, often introducing more fabrications. It's extremely easy to implant targeted false memories for this exact reason. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_the_mall_technique https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_the_mall_technique And then there's the results of the split brain experiments too https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7305066/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7305066/ So this idea that your brain doesn't "hallucinate" or make up details is very laughable. Your brain is quite literally constantly doing that and with the concious mind completely unaware.
  - bccdee 3y ago
    > Brains do this in spades. Sense data you perceive is partly fabricated for the concious self. You must be sprinting to move the goalposts that far that fast. I'm not talking about convenient sensory illusions or details of perception. I'm talking about ChatGPT telling bold-faced and obvious lies about things it said mere sentences earlier. Would you engage with my points instead of switching to totally unrelated topics like Hitler's single Jewish friend? Humans are not perfectly rational beings and our memory is faulty, but we are broadly rational and have a generally consistent model of the world; LLMs are painfully inconsistent and exhibits wild bouts of irrationality, and this behaviour is totally in line with the way they are trained.
    - oezi 3y ago
      I think it is a mistake to consider this an inherent weakness of LLMs. Nothing precludes a system architecture for a next generation LLM to have loops for rationality or morality reasoning which filter the output. We are likely to see many human psychotic disorders arising in the LLM output when we start doing this but we will likely see less of the pivoting on answers we see now.
      - bccdee 3y ago
        No, you're massively anthropomorphizing them. You can't just add a "loop for rationality"—writing is a second-order product of first-order reasoning. If a model trained on that second-order product isn't reproducing the first-order behaviour, you can't just tack it on in an extra module. It's like trying to teach something to dance based on the footprints of dancers. Depending on the dance, maybe it'll work and maybe not, but with the dance of reason and the footprints of writing it's not working, and no extra module we tack on will change the relationship between the dance and the footprints. It's a fundamental flaw in the LLM architecture.