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[stub for offtopicness] [submitters: one reason for not editorializing titles is it makes the threads be about that!]

by dang 11mo ago

bowsamic 11mo ago
“Physical”? I don’t think that’s the right word to use
- Miraltar 11mo ago
  Agreed, the original title is better (and typo free) although a bit long. H-Neurons: On the Existence, Impact, and Origin of Hallucination-Associated Neurons in LLMs
- ZeroConcerns 11mo ago
  Yeah, actual title is "H-Neurons: On the Existence, Impact, and Origin of Hallucination-Associated Neurons in LLMs" But regardless of title this is all highly dubious...
airhangerf15 11mo ago
LLMs don't "hallucinate" or "lie." They have no intent. They're Weighted Random Word Generator Machines. They're train mathematically to create series of tokens. Whenever they get something "right," it's literally by accident. If you get that rate of accidental rightness up to 80%, and people suddenly thing the random word generator is some kind of oracle. It's not. It's a large model with an embedded space, tokens and a whole series of computationally expensive perceptron and attention blocks that generate output. The title/introduction is very baited, because it implies some "physical" connection to hallucinations in biological organism, but it's focused on trying to single out certain parts of the model. LLMs are absolutely nothing at all like a biological system, of which our brains are orders of magnitudes more complex than the machines we've built that we no longer fully understand. Believing in these LLMs as being some next stage in understanding intelligence is hubris.
- pektezol 11mo ago
  It’s been more than 3 years and people still can’t understand this.
  - bigfishrunning 11mo ago
    People don't want to understand this.
    - ohyes 11mo ago
      People have a strong financial incentive to not understand this. It’s subprime mortgages.
  - user34283 11mo ago
    Three top level comments so far, and as far as I can tell each is entirely pointless yapping about semantics around 'hallucination'. Who cares? I wonder if any of the commenters is qualified enough to understand the research at all. I am not.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Miraltar 11mo ago
    Yup, three years of fighting on "correct" use of words. Maybe someday people will accept that LLMs do "hallucinate" even tho it's not the same "hallucinate" as for humans.
- amelius 11mo ago
  You're reasoning at the wrong abstraction level. This will not get you very far.
- crazygringo 11mo ago
  > LLMs don't "hallucinate" or "lie." They have no intent. You're just arguing about semantics. It doesn't matter in any substantial way. Ultimately, we need a word to distinguish factual output from confidently asserted erroneous output. We use the word "hallucinate". If we used a different word, it wouldn't make any difference -- the observable difference remains the same. "Hallucinate" is the word that has emerged, and it is now by overwhelming consensus the correct word. > Whenever they get something "right," it's literally by accident. This is obviously false. A great deal of training goes into making sure they usually get things right. If an infinite number of monkeys on typewriters get something right, that's by accident. Not LLM's.
jrm4 11mo ago
There is no such thing as a "hallucination" that could be isolated from "not a hallucination" in a provable systematic way because all they do is hallucinate. I'm extremely comfortable calling this paper complete and utter bullshit (or, I suppose if I'm being charitable, extremely poorly titled) from the title alone.
- eurekin 11mo ago
  We are in the vibe science era, it seems
- 2026iknewit 11mo ago
  The Input of an LLM is real data. The n-dimensional space an LLM works in is a reflection of this. Statistical probably speaking there should be a way of knowing when an LLM is confident vs. when not. This type of research is absolut valid. An LLM is not just hallucinate.
- lambdaone 11mo ago
  Arguably, all we do is something similar to hallucination; it's just that hundreds of millions of years have selected against brains that generate internal states that lead to counter-survival behavior. I recently almost fell on a tram as it accelerated suddenly; my arm reached out for a stanchion that was out of my vision, so rapidly I wasn't aware of what I was doing before it had happened. All of this occurred using subconscious processes, based on a non-physical internal mental model of something I literally couldn't see at the moment it happened. Consciousness is over-rated; I believe Thomas Metzinger's work on consciousness (specifically, the illusion of consciousness) captures something really important about the nature of how our minds really work.
lambdaone 11mo ago
The title as posted is misleading and sensational: we should use the actual paper title, "H-Neurons: On the Existence, Impact, and Origin of Hallucination-Associated Neurons in LLMs", which is far less sensational.
dijksterhuis 11mo ago
> please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 11mo ago
  Yes, changed above now. (Submitted title was "Origin of Hallucination in LLMs, The physical source of hallucinations has found") Submitters: If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

[stub for offtopicness] [submitters: one reason for not editorializing titles is it makes the threads be about that!]

by dang 11mo ago

[stub for offtopicness] [submitters: one reason for not editorializing titles is it makes the threads be about that!]

bowsamic 11mo ago

“Physical”? I don’t think that’s the right word to use

Miraltar 11mo ago
Agreed, the original title is better (and typo free) although a bit long. H-Neurons: On the Existence, Impact, and Origin of Hallucination-Associated Neurons in LLMs
ZeroConcerns 11mo ago
Yeah, actual title is "H-Neurons: On the Existence, Impact, and Origin of Hallucination-Associated Neurons in LLMs" But regardless of title this is all highly dubious...

airhangerf15 11mo ago

LLMs don't "hallucinate" or "lie." They have no intent. They're Weighted Random Word Generator Machines. They're train mathematically to create series of tokens. Whenever they get something "right," it's literally by accident. If you get that rate of accidental rightness up to 80%, and people suddenly thing the random word generator is some kind of oracle. It's not. It's a large model with an embedded space, tokens and a whole series of computationally expensive perceptron and attention blocks that generate output. The title/introduction is very baited, because it implies some "physical" connection to hallucinations in biological organism, but it's focused on trying to single out certain parts of the model. LLMs are absolutely nothing at all like a biological system, of which our brains are orders of magnitudes more complex than the machines we've built that we no longer fully understand. Believing in these LLMs as being some next stage in understanding intelligence is hubris.

pektezol 11mo ago
It’s been more than 3 years and people still can’t understand this.
- bigfishrunning 11mo ago
  People don't want to understand this.
  - ohyes 11mo ago
    People have a strong financial incentive to not understand this. It’s subprime mortgages.
- user34283 11mo ago
  Three top level comments so far, and as far as I can tell each is entirely pointless yapping about semantics around 'hallucination'. Who cares? I wonder if any of the commenters is qualified enough to understand the research at all. I am not.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- Miraltar 11mo ago
  Yup, three years of fighting on "correct" use of words. Maybe someday people will accept that LLMs do "hallucinate" even tho it's not the same "hallucinate" as for humans.
amelius 11mo ago
You're reasoning at the wrong abstraction level. This will not get you very far.
crazygringo 11mo ago
> LLMs don't "hallucinate" or "lie." They have no intent. You're just arguing about semantics. It doesn't matter in any substantial way. Ultimately, we need a word to distinguish factual output from confidently asserted erroneous output. We use the word "hallucinate". If we used a different word, it wouldn't make any difference -- the observable difference remains the same. "Hallucinate" is the word that has emerged, and it is now by overwhelming consensus the correct word. > Whenever they get something "right," it's literally by accident. This is obviously false. A great deal of training goes into making sure they usually get things right. If an infinite number of monkeys on typewriters get something right, that's by accident. Not LLM's.

jrm4 11mo ago

There is no such thing as a "hallucination" that could be isolated from "not a hallucination" in a provable systematic way because all they do is hallucinate. I'm extremely comfortable calling this paper complete and utter bullshit (or, I suppose if I'm being charitable, extremely poorly titled) from the title alone.

eurekin 11mo ago
We are in the vibe science era, it seems
2026iknewit 11mo ago
The Input of an LLM is real data. The n-dimensional space an LLM works in is a reflection of this. Statistical probably speaking there should be a way of knowing when an LLM is confident vs. when not. This type of research is absolut valid. An LLM is not just hallucinate.
lambdaone 11mo ago
Arguably, all we do is something similar to hallucination; it's just that hundreds of millions of years have selected against brains that generate internal states that lead to counter-survival behavior. I recently almost fell on a tram as it accelerated suddenly; my arm reached out for a stanchion that was out of my vision, so rapidly I wasn't aware of what I was doing before it had happened. All of this occurred using subconscious processes, based on a non-physical internal mental model of something I literally couldn't see at the moment it happened. Consciousness is over-rated; I believe Thomas Metzinger's work on consciousness (specifically, the illusion of consciousness) captures something really important about the nature of how our minds really work.

lambdaone 11mo ago

The title as posted is misleading and sensational: we should use the actual paper title, "H-Neurons: On the Existence, Impact, and Origin of Hallucination-Associated Neurons in LLMs", which is far less sensational.

dijksterhuis 11mo ago

> please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dang 11mo ago
Yes, changed above now. (Submitted title was "Origin of Hallucination in LLMs, The physical source of hallucinations has found") Submitters: If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...