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Using words people understand is more important than this strange fixation on not anthropomorphizing things.
by Kiro 4mo ago
Using words people understand is more important than this strange fixation on not anthropomorphizing things.
- wasabi991011 4mo agoI think "honesty" is not a particularly good descriptor, independent of anthropomorphism. Previous commenters suggestion was much more understandable to me.
- giraffe_lady 4mo agoAnthropomorphizing is a shorthand for a powerful and poorly defined set of metaphors. There are tradeoffs going both ways but trying to dismiss it as merely "strange fixation" shows your own weakness.
- tadfisher 4mo agoTo be clear, this is about anthropomorphizing large language models, not the general category of "things". Also, we should be evaluating these constructs using well-defined and measurable criteria; evaluating "honesty" fails to achieve both goals.
- derac 4mo agoI think Honesty can be evaluated. Does the model push back when it knows the user is wrong? How often does the model hallucinate data vs. say it doesn't know? Provide a prompt with contradictions or other issues and see if the model corrects you. Here is an article by Anthropic that explains what they do and mean in more detail: https://alignment.anthropic.com/2025/honesty-elicitation/ https://alignment.anthropic.com/2025/honesty-elicitation/
- dugidugout 4mo agoBeing that can be understood is language. The previous commenter is making an particular argument for how we can improve this understanding. They didn't suggest we should use less familiar words, but different familiar words. Why is this strange?