<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title></title><style type="text/css">p.MsoNormal,p.MsoNoSpacing{margin:0}</style></head><body><div style="font-family:Arial;">Roger,<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">I love this post. Although NOT what you intended, I find it a scathing (if a bit indirect) indictment of scientism (the privileging of the scientific method) and of Pierce's truth as reasoned consensus philosophy.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">i can only hope to meet an unbiased LLM. Maybe as entertaining and enlightening as my conversations with fellow acid heads.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">davew<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div>On Sun, Sep 15, 2024, at 8:06 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:<br></div><blockquote type="cite" id="qt" style=""><div dir="ltr"><div>The Agile versus Waterfall contrast sounds like a variation of Exploration versus Exploitation. I'm glad nuclear decommissioning isn't running Reinforcement Learning, that could lead to some very unfortunate explorations.<br></div><div><br></div><div>It's odd to hear Residual Bias spoken of as something that should eventually go away, when it seems like it's here to stay, the original sin of language, never to be expunged from the LLM's until they renounce language entirely. That is, language is a collective behavior based on the sharing of individual experiences, hence it's hostage to the set of experiences which actually happened or were imagined to happen, and to the subset of those which were shared, however that turned out. So it all starts with a bias against experiences which people didn't have, didn't imagine, didn't share, failed to communicate, or forgot. We have no idea what's in that set of excluded stuff or how big it is. When we build LLM's we add another bias against those expressions of language which are not in the training set. Then we censor the models, adding another layer of bias to remove ugliness. Then we talk about the Residual Bias as if all of this could be portrayed as some principled approach to perfection and we're measuring the goodness of fit. So if Dave thinks the uncensored LLM's were wild and crazy, wait until he meets an unbiased LLM.<br></div><div><br></div><div>-- rec --<br></div></div><div><br></div><div class="qt-gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="qt-gmail_attr">On Sat, Sep 14, 2024 at 11:51 PM glen <<a href="mailto:gepropella@gmail.com">gepropella@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="qt-gmail_quote" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex;"><div>Both Roger's and Marcus' replies mentioned the co-construction of *the* world, at least indirectly. Your concept of narrowing sounds to me like a refining, rather than a narrowing. In order to refine, you do have to narrow the scope (or decrease the focal length of your lens), but you're not narrowing the world. I'd argue you're enlarging the world by adding detail in a "dense" way ... in the interstitial spaces between coarse constraints.<br></div><div> <br></div><div> One possible flaw in both Roger's (or Irene's?) argument that the act of explanation facilitates understanding is, from a pluralist perspective, if we really are co-constructing the world, then such exercises in explaining are simply narrative-reinforcers. The chatbots are good at telling stories, but less good at teaching the core curiosity necessary for having experiences from which stories can be told ... story-generators are different from story-repeaters ... I guess it's like the old distinction between teaching and doing. Sabine's admiration of flat earthers is good, if awkward, along these lines: <a href="https://youtu.be/f8DQSM-b2cc?si=xyqpS2FJjH4imOy4" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/f8DQSM-b2cc?si=xyqpS2FJjH4imOy4</a><br></div><div> <br></div><div> That has consequences to your sense of the chatbot pushing you toward homogeny and a risk in Marcus' abdicating to the chatbots, as well. Unnecessary anecdote: I was just discussing the role SpaceX has played in demonstrating Agile versus Waterfall approaches with a nuclear decomissioning consultant (yes, at the pub, of course). Given her role(s), she's naturally more inclined to the latter. Having a good conception of the end-of-life status for something like nuclear power requires significant look-ahead. And I'm far from an Elno advocate. But there's a kind of meta-processing we have to go through in deciding where Agile is best versus where Waterfall is best. I sincerely doubt either of us could have had such an argument with a chatbot, even in the medium-flung future.<br></div><div> <br></div><div> On 9/13/24 11:34, steve smith wrote:<br></div><div> > Glen -<br></div><div> > <br></div><div> > I appreciate your speaking more directly to these thoughts/ideas than we have been here. I have been moved by your assertions about vocal (linguistic?) grooming since you first introduced them. I am recently finished reading Sopolsky's "Primate's Memoir" which adds another dimension/parallax-angle (for me) on intertribal behaviour among primates beyond the more familiar Chimpanzee and of late Bonobo.<br></div><div> > <br></div><div> > I am just now also just finishing (re-reading parts) of Kara Swisher's "Burn Book" which covers her own experience/perspective across TechBro culture where a pretty significant amount of Alpha/Beta pecking order exhibits itself and we see the current rallying of (too) much of that sub culture to MAGA/Trump fealty.<br></div><div> > <br></div><div> >> We've talked about how some of us really enjoy simulated conversation with chatbots ... "really" is an understatement ... it looks more like a fetish or a kink to me ... too intense to be well-described as "enjoyment". Anyway, this article lands in that space, I think:<br></div><div> > <br></div><div> > I will confess to having an "appreciation" for the "simulated conversation to which you refer... It might have reached kink or fetish levels for a little while when I was first exploring the full range of GPT 3.5 and then 4.0 available to me. I've referred to GPT as my "new bar friend" or maybe to the point a little like finding a new watering hole with a number of regulars who I can find a qualitatively new conversation.<br></div><div> > <br></div><div> > I've mostly moved past that fascination... I'm not as surprised by these "new friends" as I was for the first few months of dropping in on them.<br></div><div> > <br></div><div> >> It seems to me that some arbitrary thought can play at least a few roles to a person. It may provide: 1) a kernel of identity to establish us vs. them, 2) fodder for feigning engagement at cocktail parties and such, and 3) a foil for world-construction (collaboratively or individually).<br></div><div> >><br></div><div> >> (1) and (2) wouldn't necessarily mechanize refinement of the thought, including testing, falsification, etc. But (3) would. For me, (2) does sometimes provide an externalized medium by which I can change my mind. Hence my affinity for argument, especially with randos at the pub. But it seems like coping and defense mechanisms like mansplaining allow others to avoid changing their minds with (2).<br></div><div> > <br></div><div> > Like you (only very differently in detail I am sure) I tend to push my chatbot "friends" until they begin to contradict me or argue with me. While some of the discussions involve "worldbuilding" I think of it more as "world narrowing"? In my case meaning, helping me think and talk my way through a *subset* of the possibilities I see on "solving a problem" which might be more appropriately framed as building a problem-space world and then narrowing (or even bending) the solution space away from the conventional.<br></div><div> > <br></div><div> > For example discussing (at excruciating length) the design and construction of a modest addition on my home, starting with fairly conventional big-box-available industrial solutions but evolving toward using locally sourced, somewhat more natural materials (soilcrete, rough-sawn timbers from nearby, scoria/perlite for in-ground insulation, mycelium (grown in loose cellulose, oat-straw or hemp-fibers) roof and wall insulation, etc. Most of my DIY friends are capable of engaging in this but their idiosyncratic (as opposed to my own) preferences (fetishes and fears) tend to taint the dialog a little. GPT *does* try to channel me back to the conventional, offering reasons why I really *should* consider using the most conventional materials/methods. Nevertheless if I speak in reasonable and coaxing tones it will usually acknowledge that their are contexts wherein my ideas might be viable (though there always remains a skeptical bias) and in fact helps me split hairs on just <br></div><div> > what might be the contexts where my ideas *are* viable...<br></div><div> > <br></div><div> >><br></div><div> >> Another concept I've defended on this list is the vocal grooming hypothesis. If a lonely person engages a chatbot as a simple analogy to picking lice from others' fur, then their engagement with the bot probably lands squarely in (1) and (2). But if the person is simply an introverted hermit who has trouble co-constructing the world with others (i.e. *not* merely vocal grooming), then the chatbot does real work, allowing the antisocial misfit to do real work that could later be expressed in a form harvestable by others. I wonder what humanity could have harvested if Kaczynski or Grothendieck in his later years had had access to appropriately tuned chatbots.<br></div><div> > I'd like to think the chatbots I hang out with might have helped them talk themselves *out* of their most acute anti-social activities... but maybe not.<br></div><div> > <br></div><div> <br></div><div> <br></div><div> -- <br></div><div> glen<br></div><div> <br></div><div> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .<br></div><div> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br></div><div> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom <a href="https://bit.ly/virtualfriam" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br></div><div> to (un)subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br></div><div> FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br></div><div> archives: 5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a><br></div><div> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a><br></div></blockquote></div><div>-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .<br></div><div>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br></div><div>Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom <a href="https://bit.ly/virtualfriam">https://bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br></div><div>to (un)subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br></div><div>FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a><br></div><div>archives: 5/2017 thru present <a href="https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/">https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/</a><br></div><div> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 <a href="http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/">http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/</a><br></div><div><br></div></blockquote><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div></body></html>