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You're assuming that humans reliably pursue correctness rather than plausibility. The whole scientific system specifically being designed to suppress plausible

You're assuming that humans reliably pursue correctness rather than plausibility. The whole scientific system specifically being designed to suppress plausible-sounding-but-incorrect claims says otherwise.

happytiger 3y ago
That’s an astute observation.
Jensson 3y ago
> The whole scientific system specifically being designed to suppress plausible-sounding-but-incorrect claims says otherwise. But that we have came up with a scientific system is proof that humans actually can tell the difference, we might be bad at it but we still manage to do it. Humans that can't tell the difference are very unreliable and usually shunned in engineering and other STEM fields.
- layer8 3y ago
  Doesn’t a claim become instantly implausible when we see how it is incorrect? It's only plausible as long as it might still turn out to be correct. Furthermore, sometimes mistakes are made when assessing correctness, even in mathematical proofs. A correctness judgement thus still has a degree of plausibility associated with it. I'm thus not sure if the distinction being made here isn't just one of degree.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    > I'm thus not sure if the distinction being made here isn't just one of degree. I think humans has two levels here, "that sounds plausible" and "I can't imagine how this could be wrong so I am willing to risk my life on it". The second can still be wrong, but usually it isn't. For example when you walk on a bridge, you assume the bridge is there and confidently put down your foot even though you would die if that part of the bridge happened to be an hallucination. So science is a set of statements and experiments that sums up to facts that humans can't imagine are wrong. Sometimes they are still a bit wrong, but then only slightly like newtons equations or theories that aren't backed up by experiments. But in general science is full of facts that humans stake their life on every day. LLMs doesn't seem to have that certainty layer, something so certain that the LLM would stake its life on it. I'd for sure never stake my life on anything an LLM says as it is today, but I happily do it for humans every time I take the elevator etc.
    - layer8 3y ago
      I would count your bridge example firmly in the plausibility category, in that I would find the bridge implausible, but not impossible, to collapse. In Bayesian speak, it’s a matter of credence. We usually don’t consciously think about it when our brain decides it's good enough with sufficient certainty, but in the end it's still based on a likelihood judgement.
- FeepingCreature 3y ago
  Right, but the point is the scientific system is a cultural accomplishment, it didn't get hardcoded into our brains. We should hence not expect "only believe things that are actually true" as a standard for AGI either, hence LLMs are not necessarily disqualified by being bad at it.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    For living beings there is a class of errors that kills you, there is no coming back from that. Our brains were trained to figure out what facts it is willing to stake its life on, I am sure all bigger living beings has such a part of their brain, so I'd say that yes we have that programmed into us. The scientific method is just a way to make humans use that reliable part of their brain instead of the plausible part, even in situations that aren't life or death. I don't think it is possible to come up with something like the scientific method without having a built-in sense of what facts are.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      >without having a built-in sense of what facts are. There is no such thing in 'higher intelligence' beyond protoception. Pretty much every mammal has the same built in sense that you do, and yet none of them are carting around human intelligence. More so, when human children are left feral and not raised around other humans we typically consider them mentally disabled. Again, they learn the protoception stuff just fine, but all the stuff that "puts us above" the mammals is missing, it is not inane. Your counting, reading, and tools use are all learned behaviors after birth and form a continuous chain of learned behaviors taught by people (and more recently books and computers). There is a reason that after development of the scientific method that most human endeavors experienced an exponential growth curve. It's because we don't recognise facts from fiction at a much higher rate than other animals, it's that we teach each other fact from fiction better than other animals.
      - Jensson 3y ago
        > Pretty much every mammal has the same built in sense that you do, and yet none of them are carting around human intelligence Having a sense of what are facts and what are assumptions doesn't mean you are smart, but not having it means you are pretty dumb. LLMs doesn't have that. Natural language is more powerful than programming languages since it lets us communicate assumptions, guesses, uncertainty etc, to other intelligent beings. So a good LLM needs to be able to consider certainty level of statements and act accordingly, todays LLMs doesn't do that so generate dumber responses than a human would since they lack a sanity checker.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

happytiger 3y ago

That’s an astute observation.

Jensson 3y ago

> The whole scientific system specifically being designed to suppress plausible-sounding-but-incorrect claims says otherwise. But that we have came up with a scientific system is proof that humans actually can tell the difference, we might be bad at it but we still manage to do it. Humans that can't tell the difference are very unreliable and usually shunned in engineering and other STEM fields.

layer8 3y ago
Doesn’t a claim become instantly implausible when we see how it is incorrect? It's only plausible as long as it might still turn out to be correct. Furthermore, sometimes mistakes are made when assessing correctness, even in mathematical proofs. A correctness judgement thus still has a degree of plausibility associated with it. I'm thus not sure if the distinction being made here isn't just one of degree.
- Jensson 3y ago
  > I'm thus not sure if the distinction being made here isn't just one of degree. I think humans has two levels here, "that sounds plausible" and "I can't imagine how this could be wrong so I am willing to risk my life on it". The second can still be wrong, but usually it isn't. For example when you walk on a bridge, you assume the bridge is there and confidently put down your foot even though you would die if that part of the bridge happened to be an hallucination. So science is a set of statements and experiments that sums up to facts that humans can't imagine are wrong. Sometimes they are still a bit wrong, but then only slightly like newtons equations or theories that aren't backed up by experiments. But in general science is full of facts that humans stake their life on every day. LLMs doesn't seem to have that certainty layer, something so certain that the LLM would stake its life on it. I'd for sure never stake my life on anything an LLM says as it is today, but I happily do it for humans every time I take the elevator etc.
  - layer8 3y ago
    I would count your bridge example firmly in the plausibility category, in that I would find the bridge implausible, but not impossible, to collapse. In Bayesian speak, it’s a matter of credence. We usually don’t consciously think about it when our brain decides it's good enough with sufficient certainty, but in the end it's still based on a likelihood judgement.
FeepingCreature 3y ago
Right, but the point is the scientific system is a cultural accomplishment, it didn't get hardcoded into our brains. We should hence not expect "only believe things that are actually true" as a standard for AGI either, hence LLMs are not necessarily disqualified by being bad at it.
- Jensson 3y ago
  For living beings there is a class of errors that kills you, there is no coming back from that. Our brains were trained to figure out what facts it is willing to stake its life on, I am sure all bigger living beings has such a part of their brain, so I'd say that yes we have that programmed into us. The scientific method is just a way to make humans use that reliable part of their brain instead of the plausible part, even in situations that aren't life or death. I don't think it is possible to come up with something like the scientific method without having a built-in sense of what facts are.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    >without having a built-in sense of what facts are. There is no such thing in 'higher intelligence' beyond protoception. Pretty much every mammal has the same built in sense that you do, and yet none of them are carting around human intelligence. More so, when human children are left feral and not raised around other humans we typically consider them mentally disabled. Again, they learn the protoception stuff just fine, but all the stuff that "puts us above" the mammals is missing, it is not inane. Your counting, reading, and tools use are all learned behaviors after birth and form a continuous chain of learned behaviors taught by people (and more recently books and computers). There is a reason that after development of the scientific method that most human endeavors experienced an exponential growth curve. It's because we don't recognise facts from fiction at a much higher rate than other animals, it's that we teach each other fact from fiction better than other animals.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      > Pretty much every mammal has the same built in sense that you do, and yet none of them are carting around human intelligence Having a sense of what are facts and what are assumptions doesn't mean you are smart, but not having it means you are pretty dumb. LLMs doesn't have that. Natural language is more powerful than programming languages since it lets us communicate assumptions, guesses, uncertainty etc, to other intelligent beings. So a good LLM needs to be able to consider certainty level of statements and act accordingly, todays LLMs doesn't do that so generate dumber responses than a human would since they lack a sanity checker.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]