[FRIAM] affinity for chatbots
steve smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Sun Sep 15 17:37:27 EDT 2024
Are LLMs nothing if not the epitome of "gestalting" (aka "other ways of
knowing")?
for better and/or worse?
On 9/15/24 2:08 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> How do we hold LLM (companies) accountable for their tool’s
> suggestions other showing their chain of reasoning and showing the
> evidence for the axioms they adopt? That is, by adopting the
> scientific methods. Can we expect LLMs to have “other ways of
> knowing”? If not, why not?
>
> *From:*Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Prof David West
> *Sent:* Sunday, September 15, 2024 8:40 AM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] affinity for chatbots
>
> Roger,
>
> 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.
>
> i can only hope to meet an unbiased LLM. Maybe as entertaining and
> enlightening as my conversations with fellow acid heads.
>
> davew
>
> On Sun, Sep 15, 2024, at 8:06 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> -- rec --
>
> On Sat, Sep 14, 2024 at 11:51 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> 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:
> https://youtu.be/f8DQSM-b2cc?si=xyqpS2FJjH4imOy4
>
> 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.
>
> On 9/13/24 11:34, steve smith wrote:
>
> > Glen -
>
> >
>
> > 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.
>
> >
>
> > 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.
>
> >
>
> >> 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:
>
> >
>
> > 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.
>
> >
>
> > 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.
>
> >
>
> >> 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).
>
> >>
>
> >> (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).
>
> >
>
> > 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.
>
> >
>
> > 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
>
> > what might be the contexts where my ideas *are* viable...
>
> >
>
> >>
>
> >> 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.
>
> > 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.
>
> >
>
> --
>
> glen
>
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