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> Most humans are not that good at reasoning themselves and fall for the same kind of fallacies over and over because of the way they were brought up Disagree

by patcon 2y ago

> Most humans are not that good at reasoning themselves and fall for the same kind of fallacies over and over because of the way they were brought up Disagree that it's easy to pin on "how they were brought up". It seems very likely that we may learn that the flaws are part of what makes our intelligence "work" and be adaptive to changing environments. It may be favourable in terms of cultural evolution for parents to indoctrinate flawed logic, not unlike how replication errors are part of how evolution can and must work. In other words: I'm not sure these "failures" of the models are actual failures (in the sense of being non-adaptive and important to the evolutionary processes of intelligence), and further, it is perhaps us humans that are "failing" by over-indexing on "reason" as explanation for how we arrived here and continue to persist in time ;)

eru 2y ago
> Disagree that it's easy to pin on "how they were brought up". Indeed. That might play a role, but another less politically charged aspect to look at is just: how much effort is the human currently putting in? Humans are often on autopilot, perhaps even most of the time. Autopilot means taking lazy intellectual shortcuts. And to echo your argument: in familiar environments those shortcuts are often a good idea! If you just do whatever worked last time you were in a similar situation, or whatever your peers are doing, chances are you'll have an easier time than reasoning everything out from scratch. Especially in any situations involving other humans cooperating with you, predictability itself is an asset.
- tsumnia 2y ago
  > And to echo your argument: in familiar environments those shortcuts are often a good idea! Only to continue to reaffirm the original post, this was some of the basis for my dissertation. Lower-level practice, or exposure to tons of interactive worked examples, allowed students to train the "mental muscle memory" for coding syntax to learn the more general CS concept (like loops instead of for(int i = 0...). The shortcut in this case is learning what the syntax for a loop looks like so that it can BECOME a shortcut. Once its automatic, then it can be compartmentalized as "loop" instead of getting anxious over where the semicolons go.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > Humans are often on autopilot, perhaps even most of the time I wonder what responsiveness/results someone would get running an LLM with just ~20 watts for processing and memory, especially if it was getting trained at the same time. That said, we do have a hardware advantage, what with the enormous swarm of nano-bots using technology and techniques literally beyond our best science. :p
  - eru 2y ago
    There's another advantage: Humans and human language have co-evolved to be compatible. Language makes no such allowance for the needs and quirks of LLMs. (However to a certain extent we design our LLMs to be able to deal with human language.)
- mistermann 2y ago
  Climate change and war are excellent examples demonstrating how far Humans are willing/obligated to take this convention.

by patcon 2y ago

eru 2y ago

> Disagree that it's easy to pin on "how they were brought up". Indeed. That might play a role, but another less politically charged aspect to look at is just: how much effort is the human currently putting in? Humans are often on autopilot, perhaps even most of the time. Autopilot means taking lazy intellectual shortcuts. And to echo your argument: in familiar environments those shortcuts are often a good idea! If you just do whatever worked last time you were in a similar situation, or whatever your peers are doing, chances are you'll have an easier time than reasoning everything out from scratch. Especially in any situations involving other humans cooperating with you, predictability itself is an asset.

tsumnia 2y ago
> And to echo your argument: in familiar environments those shortcuts are often a good idea! Only to continue to reaffirm the original post, this was some of the basis for my dissertation. Lower-level practice, or exposure to tons of interactive worked examples, allowed students to train the "mental muscle memory" for coding syntax to learn the more general CS concept (like loops instead of for(int i = 0...). The shortcut in this case is learning what the syntax for a loop looks like so that it can BECOME a shortcut. Once its automatic, then it can be compartmentalized as "loop" instead of getting anxious over where the semicolons go.
Terr_ 2y ago
> Humans are often on autopilot, perhaps even most of the time I wonder what responsiveness/results someone would get running an LLM with just ~20 watts for processing and memory, especially if it was getting trained at the same time. That said, we do have a hardware advantage, what with the enormous swarm of nano-bots using technology and techniques literally beyond our best science. :p
- eru 2y ago
  There's another advantage: Humans and human language have co-evolved to be compatible. Language makes no such allowance for the needs and quirks of LLMs. (However to a certain extent we design our LLMs to be able to deal with human language.)
mistermann 2y ago
Climate change and war are excellent examples demonstrating how far Humans are willing/obligated to take this convention.