4 ms·

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 doe

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.
- nosianu 1y ago
  > So any and all human communication is divination in your book? Words from an AI are just words. Words in a human brain have more or less (depending on the individual's experiences) "stuff" attached to them: From direct sensory inputs to complex networks of experiences and though. Human thought is mainly not based on words. Language is an add-on. (People without language - never learned, or sometimes temporarily disabled due to drugs, or permanently due to injury, transient or permanent aphasia - are still consciously thinking people.) Words in a human brain are an expression of deeper structure in the brain. Words from an AI have nothing behind them but word statistics, devoid of any real world, just words based on words. Random example sentence: "The company needs to expand into a new country's market." When an AI writes this, there is no real world meaning behind it whatsoever. When a fresh out of college person writes this it's based on some shallow real world experience, and lots of hearsay. When an experienced person actually having done such expansion in the past says it a huge network of their experience with people and impressions is behind it, a feeling for where the difficulties lie and what to expect IRL with a lot of real-world-experience based detail. When such a person expands on the original statement chances are highest that any follow-up statements will also represent real life quite well, because they are drawn not from text analysis, but from those deeper structures created by and during the process of the person actually performing and experiencing the task. But the words can be exactly the same. Words from a human can be of the same (low) quality as that of an AI, if they just parrot something they read or heard somewhere, although even then the words will have more depth than the "zero" on AI words, because even the stupidest person has some degree of actual real life forming their neural network, and not solely analysis of other's texts.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    > People without language - never learned, or sometimes temporarily disabled due to drugs, or permanently due to injury, transient or permanent aphasia - are still consciously thinking people. There are 40 definitions of the word "consciousness". For the definitions pertaining to inner world, nobody can tell if anyone besides themselves (regardless of if they speak or move) is conscious, and none of us can prove to anyone else the validity of our own claims to posess it. When I dream, am I conscious in that moment, or do I create a memory that my consciousness replays when I wake? > Words from an AI have nothing behind them but word statistics, devoid of any real world, just words based on words. > […] > When a fresh out of college person writes this it's based on some shallow real world experience, and lots of hearsay. My required reading at school included "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen. The horrors of being gassed during trench warfare were alien to us in the peaceful south coast of the UK in 1999/2000. AI are limited, but what you're describing here is the "book learning" vs. "street smart" dichotomoy rather than their actual weaknesses.
krisoft 1y ago
> some people stepped up to the Oracle and asked how to conquer Persia. Others probably asked where they left their sandals. And if the place would be any good at the second kind of queries you would call it Lost&Found and not the Oracle. > illusion (or a projection) of latent knowledge being revealed It is not an illusion. Knowledge is being revealed. The right knowledge for my question. > That interpretive dance between human and oracle is the core of divination, no matter how mundane the interaction. Ok, so if I went to a library, used a card index to find a book about bird feather anatomy, then read said book to find that the answer to my question is “barb” would you also call that “divination”? If i would have paid a software developer to turn my imprecise description of a database table into precise and thight code which can be executed would you also call that “divination”?
- anon-3988 1y ago
  The difference is between saying '"I want a hammer" and it magically pops in your hand' versus '"I want a hammer" and I have to chop some wood, gather some metals, heat it up...'. Both gets you a hammer, but I don't think anyone would call the latter magical/divine? I think its only "magical" simply because its incomprehensible...how does a hammer pops into reality? Of course, once we know EXACTLY how that works, then it ceases to be magical. Even if we take God, if we fully understand how He works, He would no longer be magical/divine. "Oh he created another universe? This is how that works..." The divinity comes from the fact that it is incomprehensible.
  - BlueTemplar 1y ago
    This sounds like Clarke's fallacy ? https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/clarkes-fallacy.html https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/clarkes-fallacy...
tough 1y ago
I always like to compare tongue in cheek, llm's with I-ching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  Why?
  - tough 1y ago
    i copy pasted my comment and your question to chatgpt, so this isnt my answer but the AI's: make your own conclusions Because both LLMs and the I Ching function as mirrors for human interpretation, where: • The I Ching offers cryptic symbols and phrases—users project meaning onto them. • LLMs generate probabilistic text—users extract significance based on context. The parallel is: You don’t get answers, you get patterns—and the meaning emerges from your interaction with the system. In both cases, the output is: • Context-sensitive • Open-ended • Interpreted more than dictated It’s a cheeky way of highlighting that users bring the meaning, not the machine (or oracle).
narrator 1y ago
You're describing what narrative archetype it is most similar to from ancient history, not what it actually is.
zzbzq 1y ago
The LLMs do have "latent knowledge," indisputably, the latent knowledge is beyond reproach. Because what we do know about the "black box" is that inside it, is a database of not just facts, but understanding, and we know the model "understands" nearly every topic better than any human. Where the doubt-worthy part happens is the generative step, since it is tasked with producing a new "understanding" that didn't already exist, the mathematical domain of the generative function exceeds the domain of reality. And, second of all, because the reasoning faculties are far less proven than the understanding faculties, and many queries require reasoning about existing understandings to derive a good, new one.
- datadrivenangel 1y ago
  LLMs have latent knowledge insofar as it can be distilled out of the internet...
  - whilenot-dev 1y ago
    *or any digitized proprietary works, just as long as they can be parsed correctly. don't worry, the means of how to optain these works doesn't seem to matter[0] [0]: https://www.arl.org/blog/training-generative-ai-models-on-copyrighted-works-is-fair-use/ https://www.arl.org/blog/training-generative-ai-models-on-co...
falcor84 1y ago
> Others probably asked where they left their sandals. This to me is massive. The Oracle of Delphi would have no idea where you left your sandals, but present day AIs increasingly do. This (emergent?) capability of combining information retrieval with flexible language is amazing, and its utility to me cannot be overstated, when I ask a vague question, and then I check the place where the AI led me to, and the sandals are indeed there. P.S. Thank you for introducing me to the word "querent"
- sdenton4 1y ago
  The particularly amazing part is that both the Oracle and the LLM said 'Right where you left them,' but only the LLM was correct.
725686 1y ago
"how to conquer Persia" and "what is the name of the small fibers which form a bird’s feather" are very different kinds of questions. There is no one right answer for the first. That is divination. The second is just information retrieval.
- diffeomorphism 1y ago
  Which the LLM then does not do and instead makes up likely text. As prominent examples look at the news stories about lawyers citing nonexistent cases or publications. People think that LLMs do information retrieval, but they don't. That is what makes them harmful in education contexts.

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.
nosianu 1y ago
> So any and all human communication is divination in your book? Words from an AI are just words. Words in a human brain have more or less (depending on the individual's experiences) "stuff" attached to them: From direct sensory inputs to complex networks of experiences and though. Human thought is mainly not based on words. Language is an add-on. (People without language - never learned, or sometimes temporarily disabled due to drugs, or permanently due to injury, transient or permanent aphasia - are still consciously thinking people.) Words in a human brain are an expression of deeper structure in the brain. Words from an AI have nothing behind them but word statistics, devoid of any real world, just words based on words. Random example sentence: "The company needs to expand into a new country's market." When an AI writes this, there is no real world meaning behind it whatsoever. When a fresh out of college person writes this it's based on some shallow real world experience, and lots of hearsay. When an experienced person actually having done such expansion in the past says it a huge network of their experience with people and impressions is behind it, a feeling for where the difficulties lie and what to expect IRL with a lot of real-world-experience based detail. When such a person expands on the original statement chances are highest that any follow-up statements will also represent real life quite well, because they are drawn not from text analysis, but from those deeper structures created by and during the process of the person actually performing and experiencing the task. But the words can be exactly the same. Words from a human can be of the same (low) quality as that of an AI, if they just parrot something they read or heard somewhere, although even then the words will have more depth than the "zero" on AI words, because even the stupidest person has some degree of actual real life forming their neural network, and not solely analysis of other's texts.
- ben_w 1y ago
  > People without language - never learned, or sometimes temporarily disabled due to drugs, or permanently due to injury, transient or permanent aphasia - are still consciously thinking people. There are 40 definitions of the word "consciousness". For the definitions pertaining to inner world, nobody can tell if anyone besides themselves (regardless of if they speak or move) is conscious, and none of us can prove to anyone else the validity of our own claims to posess it. When I dream, am I conscious in that moment, or do I create a memory that my consciousness replays when I wake? > Words from an AI have nothing behind them but word statistics, devoid of any real world, just words based on words. > […] > When a fresh out of college person writes this it's based on some shallow real world experience, and lots of hearsay. My required reading at school included "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen. The horrors of being gassed during trench warfare were alien to us in the peaceful south coast of the UK in 1999/2000. AI are limited, but what you're describing here is the "book learning" vs. "street smart" dichotomoy rather than their actual weaknesses.

krisoft 1y ago

> some people stepped up to the Oracle and asked how to conquer Persia. Others probably asked where they left their sandals. And if the place would be any good at the second kind of queries you would call it Lost&Found and not the Oracle. > illusion (or a projection) of latent knowledge being revealed It is not an illusion. Knowledge is being revealed. The right knowledge for my question. > That interpretive dance between human and oracle is the core of divination, no matter how mundane the interaction. Ok, so if I went to a library, used a card index to find a book about bird feather anatomy, then read said book to find that the answer to my question is “barb” would you also call that “divination”? If i would have paid a software developer to turn my imprecise description of a database table into precise and thight code which can be executed would you also call that “divination”?

anon-3988 1y ago
The difference is between saying '"I want a hammer" and it magically pops in your hand' versus '"I want a hammer" and I have to chop some wood, gather some metals, heat it up...'. Both gets you a hammer, but I don't think anyone would call the latter magical/divine? I think its only "magical" simply because its incomprehensible...how does a hammer pops into reality? Of course, once we know EXACTLY how that works, then it ceases to be magical. Even if we take God, if we fully understand how He works, He would no longer be magical/divine. "Oh he created another universe? This is how that works..." The divinity comes from the fact that it is incomprehensible.
- BlueTemplar 1y ago
  This sounds like Clarke's fallacy ? https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/clarkes-fallacy.html https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/clarkes-fallacy...

tough 1y ago

I always like to compare tongue in cheek, llm's with I-ching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching

AlecSchueler 1y ago
Why?
- tough 1y ago
  i copy pasted my comment and your question to chatgpt, so this isnt my answer but the AI's: make your own conclusions Because both LLMs and the I Ching function as mirrors for human interpretation, where: • The I Ching offers cryptic symbols and phrases—users project meaning onto them. • LLMs generate probabilistic text—users extract significance based on context. The parallel is: You don’t get answers, you get patterns—and the meaning emerges from your interaction with the system. In both cases, the output is: • Context-sensitive • Open-ended • Interpreted more than dictated It’s a cheeky way of highlighting that users bring the meaning, not the machine (or oracle).

narrator 1y ago

You're describing what narrative archetype it is most similar to from ancient history, not what it actually is.

zzbzq 1y ago

The LLMs do have "latent knowledge," indisputably, the latent knowledge is beyond reproach. Because what we do know about the "black box" is that inside it, is a database of not just facts, but understanding, and we know the model "understands" nearly every topic better than any human. Where the doubt-worthy part happens is the generative step, since it is tasked with producing a new "understanding" that didn't already exist, the mathematical domain of the generative function exceeds the domain of reality. And, second of all, because the reasoning faculties are far less proven than the understanding faculties, and many queries require reasoning about existing understandings to derive a good, new one.

datadrivenangel 1y ago
LLMs have latent knowledge insofar as it can be distilled out of the internet...
- whilenot-dev 1y ago
  *or any digitized proprietary works, just as long as they can be parsed correctly. don't worry, the means of how to optain these works doesn't seem to matter[0] [0]: https://www.arl.org/blog/training-generative-ai-models-on-copyrighted-works-is-fair-use/ https://www.arl.org/blog/training-generative-ai-models-on-co...

falcor84 1y ago

> Others probably asked where they left their sandals. This to me is massive. The Oracle of Delphi would have no idea where you left your sandals, but present day AIs increasingly do. This (emergent?) capability of combining information retrieval with flexible language is amazing, and its utility to me cannot be overstated, when I ask a vague question, and then I check the place where the AI led me to, and the sandals are indeed there. P.S. Thank you for introducing me to the word "querent"

sdenton4 1y ago
The particularly amazing part is that both the Oracle and the LLM said 'Right where you left them,' but only the LLM was correct.

725686 1y ago

"how to conquer Persia" and "what is the name of the small fibers which form a bird’s feather" are very different kinds of questions. There is no one right answer for the first. That is divination. The second is just information retrieval.

diffeomorphism 1y ago
Which the LLM then does not do and instead makes up likely text. As prominent examples look at the news stories about lawyers citing nonexistent cases or publications. People think that LLMs do information retrieval, but they don't. That is what makes them harmful in education contexts.