3 ms·

Yeah, but humans are just as hallucinatory when speaking about pretty much anything other than their flat or kids. 99% of people learn by memorising facts, not

Yeah, but humans are just as hallucinatory when speaking about pretty much anything other than their flat or kids. 99% of people learn by memorising facts, not by testing reality.

angoragoats 1mo ago
> Yeah, but humans are just as hallucinatory when speaking about pretty much anything other than their flat or kids. Do you have a source for this? I vehemently disagree. > 99% of people learn by memorising facts, not by testing reality. I disagree with this too, but whether or not it’s true, LLMs don’t learn via either of these methods, so it’s not relevant to the discussion.
- aboardRat4 1mo ago
  Gees... it never occurred to me that such an obvious thing needs a proof. I used to think that it's enough to kinda... just go out of one's luxury office at Y-Combinator and try talking to a janitor or a taxi driver... https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/onud4u/anon_researches_iq/ https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/onud4u/anon_research... >I disagree with this too, but whether or not it’s true, LLMs don’t learn via either of these methods, so it’s not relevant to the discussion. Em... I think it is relevant. In my mental model, an LLM is basically a giant hash table, so memorizing is about 90% of what it does.
  - angoragoats 1mo ago
    > Gees... it never occurred to me that such an obvious thing needs a proof. I didn’t ask for a proof, I asked for a source, and it is not obvious to me. Your claim is that “humans are just as hallucinatory [as LLMs] when speaking about pretty much anything other than their flat or kids.” This is a quite an outlandish claim to make given that LLMs hallucinate literally every single thing they produce; as I said previously they have no concept of “truth,” or “fact.” > https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/onud4u/anon_research https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/onud4u/anon_research I’m not sure what you’re trying to show with this link but posting an image of an anonymous message board with people using ableist slurs is not a great look. I have spoken to janitors and taxi drivers and had great intellectual conversations with many of them. Are you trying to say that they aren’t as smart on average as a Y Combinator employee? Because I’ve met some pretty stupid YC employees. > Em... I think it is relevant. In my mental model, an LLM is basically a giant hash table, so memorizing is about 90% of what it does. You specifically said “memorizing facts,” which an LLM definitely does not do at all. But as I said, I also disagree with your assertion. Pretty much the entire first several years of a child’s life consists solely of learning through testing reality, and we continue to test reality in other ways as we grow. And to say that 99% of people learn by any single method seems obviously false; we all learn through several different methods, depending on our brains and the particular situation at hand, and a portion of the learning that every person does is via testing reality.
    - aboardRat4 1mo ago
      Come on, just come on.
      - angoragoats 1mo ago
        That isn't responsive to anything I said. I'll summarize my position in case you're confused: * You said that humans are just as hallucinatory as LLMs when speaking about anything other than their flat or kids, and I think this is incorrect, because LLMs don't model "facts" at all. * So even if a human you're conversing with is purely reciting memorized facts back to you and not actually creatively thinking or "testing reality" at all (which, I repeat, is a wild claim), that person would not in any way be hallucinating in the same way an LLM does. * You then claimed that 99% of people learn by memorizing facts, not by testing reality. I think this is false on its face for multiple reasons, the most obvious one being that humans learn in varied, complex ways, and so it's nonsensical to treat a person as only being able to learn via a single method. Where did I go wrong? I'm happy to be set straight with facts/sources if I'm incorrect.
        kazinator 1mo ago
        Mainstream LLMs are trained on tests that contain vast amounts of falsehood, so even if they did work by memorizing facts, they would be memorizing counter-facts. Pick any topic in which misinformation is spread by crackpots. (Especially a topic that is not "policed" by the system prompt). Ask questions using terminology, phrases and ideas that the crackpots use, and you will tend to get crackpot answers; the AI will confirm crackpot theories, backd by links to crackpot forum posts. What we have is a technology that can reproduce sentences that are grammatical with a very high probability, paragraphs that are coherent with a high probability and true with a lower probability if all the input training data is true. Then, true with an even lower probability when the input data contains vast numbers of untrue sentences, as is the case for all the mainstream, cloud-hosted AI public offerings.
        aboardRat4 25d ago

Yeah, but humans are just as hallucinatory when speaking about pretty much anything other than their flat or kids. 99% of people learn by memorising facts, not by testing reality.

angoragoats 1mo ago

> Yeah, but humans are just as hallucinatory when speaking about pretty much anything other than their flat or kids. Do you have a source for this? I vehemently disagree. > 99% of people learn by memorising facts, not by testing reality. I disagree with this too, but whether or not it’s true, LLMs don’t learn via either of these methods, so it’s not relevant to the discussion.

aboardRat4 1mo ago
Gees... it never occurred to me that such an obvious thing needs a proof. I used to think that it's enough to kinda... just go out of one's luxury office at Y-Combinator and try talking to a janitor or a taxi driver... https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/onud4u/anon_researches_iq/ https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/onud4u/anon_research... >I disagree with this too, but whether or not it’s true, LLMs don’t learn via either of these methods, so it’s not relevant to the discussion. Em... I think it is relevant. In my mental model, an LLM is basically a giant hash table, so memorizing is about 90% of what it does.
- angoragoats 1mo ago
  > Gees... it never occurred to me that such an obvious thing needs a proof. I didn’t ask for a proof, I asked for a source, and it is not obvious to me. Your claim is that “humans are just as hallucinatory [as LLMs] when speaking about pretty much anything other than their flat or kids.” This is a quite an outlandish claim to make given that LLMs hallucinate literally every single thing they produce; as I said previously they have no concept of “truth,” or “fact.” > https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/onud4u/anon_research https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/onud4u/anon_research I’m not sure what you’re trying to show with this link but posting an image of an anonymous message board with people using ableist slurs is not a great look. I have spoken to janitors and taxi drivers and had great intellectual conversations with many of them. Are you trying to say that they aren’t as smart on average as a Y Combinator employee? Because I’ve met some pretty stupid YC employees. > Em... I think it is relevant. In my mental model, an LLM is basically a giant hash table, so memorizing is about 90% of what it does. You specifically said “memorizing facts,” which an LLM definitely does not do at all. But as I said, I also disagree with your assertion. Pretty much the entire first several years of a child’s life consists solely of learning through testing reality, and we continue to test reality in other ways as we grow. And to say that 99% of people learn by any single method seems obviously false; we all learn through several different methods, depending on our brains and the particular situation at hand, and a portion of the learning that every person does is via testing reality.
  - aboardRat4 1mo ago
    Come on, just come on.
    - angoragoats 1mo ago
      That isn't responsive to anything I said. I'll summarize my position in case you're confused: * You said that humans are just as hallucinatory as LLMs when speaking about anything other than their flat or kids, and I think this is incorrect, because LLMs don't model "facts" at all. * So even if a human you're conversing with is purely reciting memorized facts back to you and not actually creatively thinking or "testing reality" at all (which, I repeat, is a wild claim), that person would not in any way be hallucinating in the same way an LLM does. * You then claimed that 99% of people learn by memorizing facts, not by testing reality. I think this is false on its face for multiple reasons, the most obvious one being that humans learn in varied, complex ways, and so it's nonsensical to treat a person as only being able to learn via a single method. Where did I go wrong? I'm happy to be set straight with facts/sources if I'm incorrect.
      - kazinator 1mo ago
        Mainstream LLMs are trained on tests that contain vast amounts of falsehood, so even if they did work by memorizing facts, they would be memorizing counter-facts. Pick any topic in which misinformation is spread by crackpots. (Especially a topic that is not "policed" by the system prompt). Ask questions using terminology, phrases and ideas that the crackpots use, and you will tend to get crackpot answers; the AI will confirm crackpot theories, backd by links to crackpot forum posts. What we have is a technology that can reproduce sentences that are grammatical with a very high probability, paragraphs that are coherent with a high probability and true with a lower probability if all the input training data is true. Then, true with an even lower probability when the input data contains vast numbers of untrue sentences, as is the case for all the mainstream, cloud-hosted AI public offerings.
        aboardRat4 25d ago