35 ms·

This sounds very wise but doesn’t seem to describe any of my use cases. Maybe some use cases are divination but it is a stretch to call all of them that. Just

This sounds very wise but doesn’t seem to describe any of my use cases. Maybe some use cases are divination but it is a stretch to call all of them that. Just looking at my recent AI prompts: I was looking for the name of the small fibers which form a bird’s feather. ChatGPT told me they are called “barbs”. Then using straight forward google search i could verify that indeed that is the name of the thing i was looking for. How is this “divination”? I was looking for what is the g-code equivalent for galvo fiber lasers are and ChatGPT told me there isn’t really one. The closest might be the sdk of ezcad, but it also listed several other opensource control solutions too. Wanted to know what are the hallmarking rules in the UK for an item which consist of multiple pieces of sterling silver held together by a non-metalic part. (Turns out the total weight of the silver matters, while the weight of the non-metalic part does not count.) Wanted to translate the hungarian phrase “besurranó tolvaj” into english. Out of the many possible translations chatGPT provided “opportunistic burglar” fit the best for what I was looking for. Wanted to write an sql alchemy model and i had an approximate idea of what fields i needed but couldn’t be arsed to come up with good names for them and find the syntax to describe their types. ChatGPT wrote it for me in seconds what would have taken me at least ten minutes otherwise. These are “divination” only in a very galaxy brained “oh man, when you open your mind you see everything is divination really”. I would call most of these “information retrieval”. The information is out there the LLM just helps me find it with a convenient interface. While the last one is “coding”.

kelseyfrog 1y ago
Sure, some people stepped up to the Oracle and asked how to conquer Persia. Others probably asked where they left their sandals. The quality of the question doesn't change the structure of the act. You presented clear, factual queries. Great. But even there, all the components are still in play: you asked a question into a black box, received a symbolic-seeming response, evaluated its truth post hoc, and interpreted its relevance. That's divination in structural terms. The fact that you're asking about barbs on feathers instead of the fate of empires doesn't negate the ritual, you're just a more practical querent. Calling it "information retrieval" is fine, but it's worth noticing that this particular interface feels like more than that, like there's an illusion (or a projection) of latent knowledge being revealed. That interpretive dance between human and oracle is the core of divination, no matter how mundane the interaction. I don't believe this paints with an overly broad brush. It's a real type of interaction and the subtle distinction focuses on the core relationship between human and oracle: seeking and interpreting.
- gaganyaan 1y ago
  > you asked a question into a black box, received a symbolic-seeming response, evaluated its truth post hoc, and interpreted its relevance So any and all human communication is divination in your book? I think your point is pretty silly. You're falling into a common trap of starting with the premise "I don't like AI", and then working backwards from that to pontification.
  - kelseyfrog 1y ago
    Hacker News deserves a stronger counterargument than “this is silly.” My original comment is making a structural point, not a mystical one. It’s not saying that using AI feels like praying to a god, it's saying the interaction pattern mirrors forms of ritualized inquiry: question → symbolic output → interpretive response. You can disagree with the framing, but dismissing it as "I don’t like AI so I’m going to pontificate" sidesteps the actual claim. There's a meaningful difference between saying "this tool gives me answers" and recognizing that the process by which we derive meaning from the output involves human projection and interpretation, just like divination historically did. This kind of analogy isn't an attack on AI. It’s an attempt to understand the human-AI relationship in cultural terms. That's worth engaging with, even if you think the metaphor fails.
    - hexaga 1y ago
      > Hacker News deserves a stronger counterargument than “this is silly.” Their counterargument is that said structural definition is overly broad, to the point of including any and all forms of symbolic communication (which is all of them). Because of that, your argument based on it doesn't really say anything at all about AI or divination, yet still seems 'deep' and mystical and wise. But this is a seeming only. And for that reason, it is silly. By painting all things with the same brush, you lose the ability to distinguish between anything. Calling all communication divination (through your structural metaphor), and then using cached intuitions about 'the thing which used to be called divination; when it was a limited subset of the whole' is silly. You're not talking about that which used to be called divination, because you redefined divination to include all symbolic communication. Thus your argument leaks intuitions (how that-which-was-divination generally behaves) that do not necessarily apply through a side channel (the redefined word). This is silly. That is to say, if you want to talk about the interpretative nature of interaction with AI, that is fairly straightforward to show and I don't think anyone would fight you on it, but divination brings baggage with it that you haven't shown to be the case for AI. In point of fact, there are many ways in which AI is not at all like divination. The structural approach broadens too far too fast with not enough re-examination of priors, becoming so broad that it encompasses any kind of communication at all. With all of that said, there seems to be a strong bent in your rhetoric towards calling it divination anyway, which suggests reasoning from that conclusion, and that the structural approach is but a blunt instrument to force AI into a divination shaped hole, to make 'poignant and wise' commentary on it. > "I don’t like AI so I’m going to pontificate" sidesteps the actual claim What claim? As per ^, maximally broad definition says nothing about AI that is not also about everything, and only seems to be a claim because it inherits intuitions from a redefined term. > difference between saying "this tool gives me answers" and recognizing that the process by which we derive meaning from the output involves human projection and interpretation, just like divination historically did Sure, and all communication requires interpretation. That doesn't make all communication divination. Divination implies the notion of interpretation of something that is seen to be causally disentangled from the subject. The layout of these bones reveals your destiny. The level of mercury in this thermometer reveals the temperature. The fair die is cast, and I will win big. The loaded die is cast, and I will win big. Spot the difference. It's not structural. That implication of essential incoherence is what you're saying without saying about AI, it is the 'cultural wisdom and poignancy' feedstock of your arguments, smuggled in via the vehicle of structural metaphor along oblique angles that should by rights not permit said implication. Yet people will of course be generally uncareful and wave those intuitions through - presuming they are wrapped in appropriately philosophical guise - which is why this line of reasoning inspires such confusion. In summary, I see a few ways to resolve your arguments coherently: 1. keep the structural metaphor, discard cached intuitions about what it means for something to be divination (w.r.t. divination being generally wrong/bad and the specifics of how and why). results in an argument of no claims or particular distinction about anything, really. this is what you get if you just follow the logic without cache invalidation errors. 2. discard the structural metaphor and thus disregard the cached intuitions as well. there is little engagement along human-AI cultural axis that isn't also human-human. AI use is interpretative but so is all communication. functionally the same as 1. 3. keep the structural metaphor and also demonstrate how AI are not reliably causally entwined with reality along boundaries obvious to humans (hard because they plainly and obviously are, as demonstrable empirically in myriad ways), at which point go off about how using AI is divination because at this point you could actually say that with confidence.
navane 1y ago
What about the times you didn't get a coherent answer and you gave up and looked elsewhere?
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  Almost proves it is not an oracle then, not perceived as one. Rephrasing: LLMs are the modern day oracle that we disregard when it appears to be hallucinating, embrace when it appears to be correct. The popularity of LLMs may not be that we see them as mystical, but rather that they're right more often than they're wrong. “That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all.” — T.S. Eliot
dfxm12 1y ago
ChatGPT told me they are called “barbs”. Then using straight forward google search i could verify that indeed that is the name of the thing i was looking for. Why not just start with a straight forward Google search?
- shagie 1y ago
  If you are not familiar with the term, it can be hard to search for it. Google doesn't give you the answer (unless you're reading the AI summaries - then it's a question of which one you trust more). Instead it provides links to https://www.scienceofbirds.com/blog/the-parts-of-a-feather-and-how-feathers-work https://www.birdsoutsidemywindow.org/2010/07/02/anatomy-parts-of-a-feather/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Feather-structure-a-feather-shaft-rachis-and-the-feather-vane-barbs-and-barbules_fig3_303095497 These then require an additional parsing of the text to see if it has what you are after. Arguably, one could read the Wiki article first and see if it has, but it's faster to ask ChatGPT and then verify - rather than search, scan, and parse.
- ramchip 1y ago
  It gives you more effective search keywords. "Fibers in feathers" isn't too bad, but when it's quite vague like "that movie from the 70s where the guy drank whiskey and then there was a firefight and..." getting the name from the LLM makes it much faster to google.
bandoti 1y ago
Funny I just entered “feather” into Merriam-Webster dictionary and there’s your word “barb”. Point being, people should use a dictionary/thesaurus before burning fuel on an AI. 1 a : any of the light, horny, epidermal outgrowths that form the external covering of the body of birds NOTE: Feathers include the smaller down feathers and the larger contour and flight feathers. Larger feathers consist of a shaft (rachis) bearing branches (barbs) which bear smaller branches (barbules). These smaller branches bear tiny hook-bearing processes (barbicels) which interlock with the barbules of an adjacent barb to link the barbs into a continuous stiff vane. Down feathers lack barbules, resulting in fluffy feathers which provide insulation below the contour feathers.
- dingnuts 1y ago
  This is a great example because the LLM answer was insufficiently complete but if you didn't look up the result you wouldn't know. I think I remain an AI skeptic because I keep looking up the results and this kind of omission is more common than not.
chipsrafferty 1y ago
> Then using straight forward google search i could verify I think the concern is that people are asking it things that are harder to verify AND they are not making any attemp to verify it because they assume it's correct 100%

kelseyfrog 1y ago

Sure, some people stepped up to the Oracle and asked how to conquer Persia. Others probably asked where they left their sandals. The quality of the question doesn't change the structure of the act. You presented clear, factual queries. Great. But even there, all the components are still in play: you asked a question into a black box, received a symbolic-seeming response, evaluated its truth post hoc, and interpreted its relevance. That's divination in structural terms. The fact that you're asking about barbs on feathers instead of the fate of empires doesn't negate the ritual, you're just a more practical querent. Calling it "information retrieval" is fine, but it's worth noticing that this particular interface feels like more than that, like there's an illusion (or a projection) of latent knowledge being revealed. That interpretive dance between human and oracle is the core of divination, no matter how mundane the interaction. I don't believe this paints with an overly broad brush. It's a real type of interaction and the subtle distinction focuses on the core relationship between human and oracle: seeking and interpreting.

gaganyaan 1y ago
> you asked a question into a black box, received a symbolic-seeming response, evaluated its truth post hoc, and interpreted its relevance So any and all human communication is divination in your book? I think your point is pretty silly. You're falling into a common trap of starting with the premise "I don't like AI", and then working backwards from that to pontification.
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  Hacker News deserves a stronger counterargument than “this is silly.” My original comment is making a structural point, not a mystical one. It’s not saying that using AI feels like praying to a god, it's saying the interaction pattern mirrors forms of ritualized inquiry: question → symbolic output → interpretive response. You can disagree with the framing, but dismissing it as "I don’t like AI so I’m going to pontificate" sidesteps the actual claim. There's a meaningful difference between saying "this tool gives me answers" and recognizing that the process by which we derive meaning from the output involves human projection and interpretation, just like divination historically did. This kind of analogy isn't an attack on AI. It’s an attempt to understand the human-AI relationship in cultural terms. That's worth engaging with, even if you think the metaphor fails.
  - hexaga 1y ago
    > Hacker News deserves a stronger counterargument than “this is silly.” Their counterargument is that said structural definition is overly broad, to the point of including any and all forms of symbolic communication (which is all of them). Because of that, your argument based on it doesn't really say anything at all about AI or divination, yet still seems 'deep' and mystical and wise. But this is a seeming only. And for that reason, it is silly. By painting all things with the same brush, you lose the ability to distinguish between anything. Calling all communication divination (through your structural metaphor), and then using cached intuitions about 'the thing which used to be called divination; when it was a limited subset of the whole' is silly. You're not talking about that which used to be called divination, because you redefined divination to include all symbolic communication. Thus your argument leaks intuitions (how that-which-was-divination generally behaves) that do not necessarily apply through a side channel (the redefined word). This is silly. That is to say, if you want to talk about the interpretative nature of interaction with AI, that is fairly straightforward to show and I don't think anyone would fight you on it, but divination brings baggage with it that you haven't shown to be the case for AI. In point of fact, there are many ways in which AI is not at all like divination. The structural approach broadens too far too fast with not enough re-examination of priors, becoming so broad that it encompasses any kind of communication at all. With all of that said, there seems to be a strong bent in your rhetoric towards calling it divination anyway, which suggests reasoning from that conclusion, and that the structural approach is but a blunt instrument to force AI into a divination shaped hole, to make 'poignant and wise' commentary on it. > "I don’t like AI so I’m going to pontificate" sidesteps the actual claim What claim? As per ^, maximally broad definition says nothing about AI that is not also about everything, and only seems to be a claim because it inherits intuitions from a redefined term. > difference between saying "this tool gives me answers" and recognizing that the process by which we derive meaning from the output involves human projection and interpretation, just like divination historically did Sure, and all communication requires interpretation. That doesn't make all communication divination. Divination implies the notion of interpretation of something that is seen to be causally disentangled from the subject. The layout of these bones reveals your destiny. The level of mercury in this thermometer reveals the temperature. The fair die is cast, and I will win big. The loaded die is cast, and I will win big. Spot the difference. It's not structural. That implication of essential incoherence is what you're saying without saying about AI, it is the 'cultural wisdom and poignancy' feedstock of your arguments, smuggled in via the vehicle of structural metaphor along oblique angles that should by rights not permit said implication. Yet people will of course be generally uncareful and wave those intuitions through - presuming they are wrapped in appropriately philosophical guise - which is why this line of reasoning inspires such confusion. In summary, I see a few ways to resolve your arguments coherently: 1. keep the structural metaphor, discard cached intuitions about what it means for something to be divination (w.r.t. divination being generally wrong/bad and the specifics of how and why). results in an argument of no claims or particular distinction about anything, really. this is what you get if you just follow the logic without cache invalidation errors. 2. discard the structural metaphor and thus disregard the cached intuitions as well. there is little engagement along human-AI cultural axis that isn't also human-human. AI use is interpretative but so is all communication. functionally the same as 1. 3. keep the structural metaphor and also demonstrate how AI are not reliably causally entwined with reality along boundaries obvious to humans (hard because they plainly and obviously are, as demonstrable empirically in myriad ways), at which point go off about how using AI is divination because at this point you could actually say that with confidence.

navane 1y ago

What about the times you didn't get a coherent answer and you gave up and looked elsewhere?

JKCalhoun 1y ago
Almost proves it is not an oracle then, not perceived as one. Rephrasing: LLMs are the modern day oracle that we disregard when it appears to be hallucinating, embrace when it appears to be correct. The popularity of LLMs may not be that we see them as mystical, but rather that they're right more often than they're wrong. “That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all.” — T.S. Eliot

dfxm12 1y ago

ChatGPT told me they are called “barbs”. Then using straight forward google search i could verify that indeed that is the name of the thing i was looking for. Why not just start with a straight forward Google search?

shagie 1y ago
If you are not familiar with the term, it can be hard to search for it. Google doesn't give you the answer (unless you're reading the AI summaries - then it's a question of which one you trust more). Instead it provides links to https://www.scienceofbirds.com/blog/the-parts-of-a-feather-and-how-feathers-work https://www.birdsoutsidemywindow.org/2010/07/02/anatomy-parts-of-a-feather/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Feather-structure-a-feather-shaft-rachis-and-the-feather-vane-barbs-and-barbules_fig3_303095497 These then require an additional parsing of the text to see if it has what you are after. Arguably, one could read the Wiki article first and see if it has, but it's faster to ask ChatGPT and then verify - rather than search, scan, and parse.
ramchip 1y ago
It gives you more effective search keywords. "Fibers in feathers" isn't too bad, but when it's quite vague like "that movie from the 70s where the guy drank whiskey and then there was a firefight and..." getting the name from the LLM makes it much faster to google.

bandoti 1y ago

Funny I just entered “feather” into Merriam-Webster dictionary and there’s your word “barb”. Point being, people should use a dictionary/thesaurus before burning fuel on an AI. 1 a : any of the light, horny, epidermal outgrowths that form the external covering of the body of birds NOTE: Feathers include the smaller down feathers and the larger contour and flight feathers. Larger feathers consist of a shaft (rachis) bearing branches (barbs) which bear smaller branches (barbules). These smaller branches bear tiny hook-bearing processes (barbicels) which interlock with the barbules of an adjacent barb to link the barbs into a continuous stiff vane. Down feathers lack barbules, resulting in fluffy feathers which provide insulation below the contour feathers.

dingnuts 1y ago
This is a great example because the LLM answer was insufficiently complete but if you didn't look up the result you wouldn't know. I think I remain an AI skeptic because I keep looking up the results and this kind of omission is more common than not.

chipsrafferty 1y ago

> Then using straight forward google search i could verify I think the concern is that people are asking it things that are harder to verify AND they are not making any attemp to verify it because they assume it's correct 100%