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You didn't read the post you're responding to, and shouldn't be responding. In fact, you didn't read the part of the post you quoted, where I said it should be

You didn't read the post you're responding to, and shouldn't be responding. In fact, you didn't read the part of the post you quoted, where I said it should be a surprise to no one. But, unsurprisingly, the sort of people who stop reading at the first chance they see to correct something, are easily surprised, since actually understanding LLMs would require actually doing some nuanced reading.

pmoriarty 3y ago
Please consider HN's Guidelines[1] when replying. In particular: - Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that". - Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. - Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that". This guideline is likely one of the main reasons Hacker News comments are so simultaneously overconfident and undereducated. If you want HN to be a safe place for people interrupting informed conversation with whatever nonsense pops into their head, fine, but I don't want that, and until that guideline becomes a rule, I'm not going to be following it. People should read what they're responding to before responding. Note, in this case, it's objectively clear that the person did not read my post--I put something in my post to prove that fact. This isn't just snark. > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Is it kind to jump in at the first opportunity to correct someone without reading what they've said? Is it kind to spread misinformation that causes societal harm? This is a very shallow idea of kindness.
  - mustacheemperor 3y ago
    It seems that commenter did in fact read the article, so I for one as someone far less informed than both of you am interested to see the discussion carry on. On that note, >Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. “You didn’t even read it” is not the strongest plausible interpretation of that reply nor assumes good faith.
    - kerkeslager 3y ago
      > “You didn’t even read it” is not the strongest plausible interpretation of that reply nor assumes good faith. Really? Did you read the last paragraph of my post that they were responding to? Can you explain that?
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      - jrmg 3y ago
        Are you referring to asking anyone who replies to include the word ‘shape’ to prove they read to the end? I think that many people would either forget to do that when formulating their reply, or not do it deliberately because asking it of them is an obnoxious thing to do and they’d rather not encourage things like that.
albertzeyer 3y ago
I think you are misunderstanding sth. I did read your post. I'm also publishing peer-reviewed research articles related to this. I think I have some good understanding on this. I was simply saying that I partly disagree with you. And I still do. It's wrong that this should be a surprise to no-one. In fact, I think it is reasonable that it is surprising. It was indeed really unexpected that scaling up such models leads to such behavior. Now that we have such models, and see this behavior, sure you can say in hindsight, of course it's obvious, nothing unexpected. But this is wrong. It was unexpected to many people. And saying "it should not have been unexpected", I'm not really sure what you want to say with that. Yes, it would be nice if everyone's prediction are always correct. Obviously that's not the case. Or you are saying you think this is a particular trivial case. I would disagree. English is not my native language. Maybe I just understood sth wrong.
- cubefox 3y ago
  One of the few people who publicly predicted the amazing abilities of the GPT-2 successors was Scott Alexander: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/19/gpt-2-as-step-toward-general-intelligence/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/19/gpt-2-as-step-toward-g... There may have been others who expected similar miracles, but there certainly weren't many. We can conclude that at least GPT-3 took most by surprise. (I don't know how many people even knew about GPT before GPT-2 came out, it's probably hard to get a sample.) Heck, even the vast majority of people here on HN wasn't much interested in GPT-3 before ChatGPT, their new cheaper API prices, and GPT-4 came out. And when we talk about "normal people", they didn't know GPT-3 at all, they only noticed Dall-E 2, somewhat, and finally were caught by surprise when word about ChatGPT spread in a matter of weeks.
- fzeroracer 3y ago
  I recommend rereading the last line of his post. I think it's overly aggro, but you did not read his post since you ignored the very last line of it.
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pmoriarty 3y ago

Please consider HN's Guidelines[1] when replying. In particular: - Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that". - Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. - Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

kerkeslager 3y ago
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that". This guideline is likely one of the main reasons Hacker News comments are so simultaneously overconfident and undereducated. If you want HN to be a safe place for people interrupting informed conversation with whatever nonsense pops into their head, fine, but I don't want that, and until that guideline becomes a rule, I'm not going to be following it. People should read what they're responding to before responding. Note, in this case, it's objectively clear that the person did not read my post--I put something in my post to prove that fact. This isn't just snark. > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Is it kind to jump in at the first opportunity to correct someone without reading what they've said? Is it kind to spread misinformation that causes societal harm? This is a very shallow idea of kindness.
- mustacheemperor 3y ago
  It seems that commenter did in fact read the article, so I for one as someone far less informed than both of you am interested to see the discussion carry on. On that note, >Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. “You didn’t even read it” is not the strongest plausible interpretation of that reply nor assumes good faith.
  - kerkeslager 3y ago
    > “You didn’t even read it” is not the strongest plausible interpretation of that reply nor assumes good faith. Really? Did you read the last paragraph of my post that they were responding to? Can you explain that?
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      [deleted]
    - jrmg 3y ago
      Are you referring to asking anyone who replies to include the word ‘shape’ to prove they read to the end? I think that many people would either forget to do that when formulating their reply, or not do it deliberately because asking it of them is an obnoxious thing to do and they’d rather not encourage things like that.

albertzeyer 3y ago

I think you are misunderstanding sth. I did read your post. I'm also publishing peer-reviewed research articles related to this. I think I have some good understanding on this. I was simply saying that I partly disagree with you. And I still do. It's wrong that this should be a surprise to no-one. In fact, I think it is reasonable that it is surprising. It was indeed really unexpected that scaling up such models leads to such behavior. Now that we have such models, and see this behavior, sure you can say in hindsight, of course it's obvious, nothing unexpected. But this is wrong. It was unexpected to many people. And saying "it should not have been unexpected", I'm not really sure what you want to say with that. Yes, it would be nice if everyone's prediction are always correct. Obviously that's not the case. Or you are saying you think this is a particular trivial case. I would disagree. English is not my native language. Maybe I just understood sth wrong.

cubefox 3y ago
One of the few people who publicly predicted the amazing abilities of the GPT-2 successors was Scott Alexander: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/19/gpt-2-as-step-toward-general-intelligence/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/19/gpt-2-as-step-toward-g... There may have been others who expected similar miracles, but there certainly weren't many. We can conclude that at least GPT-3 took most by surprise. (I don't know how many people even knew about GPT before GPT-2 came out, it's probably hard to get a sample.) Heck, even the vast majority of people here on HN wasn't much interested in GPT-3 before ChatGPT, their new cheaper API prices, and GPT-4 came out. And when we talk about "normal people", they didn't know GPT-3 at all, they only noticed Dall-E 2, somewhat, and finally were caught by surprise when word about ChatGPT spread in a matter of weeks.
fzeroracer 3y ago
I recommend rereading the last line of his post. I think it's overly aggro, but you did not read his post since you ignored the very last line of it.
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