[FRIAM] absurd

glen gepropella at gmail.com
Thu May 1 16:18:44 EDT 2025


Maybe you didn't see my previous response. I'm no more disappointed in any LLMs than I am in, say, my truck. It's a machine, a tool. One's disappointment in a tool is a function of one's expectations of that machine. I know what my truck can and can't do, what it's intended to do, the extent to which I can abuse/bend it, etc. If something goes wrong, it's *my* fault, not the truck's fault. (It's a poor craftsman that blames their tools.)

It is literally impossible for me to be disappointed with my truck. Now, I don't know all the elements of LLMs, especially proprietary ones like ChatGPT. So it's more likely my expectations don't match the behavioral and constitutional profiles of ChatGPT, than for my truck. But I do know enough to be able to bend it to my will. Any surprise I've felt in using it has long since faded. So it's more like my truck at this point. If it gives me unexpected output, it's my fault, not ChatGPT's.

Hence I cannot be disappointed in ChatGPT.

There are things I believe it cannot do. E.g. some of the tests here: https://arcprize.org/play?task=e3721c99 But I don't see any in principle obstacles to a machine *like* ChatGPT doing all that and more at some point.

But more importantly, I have no desire to chat with it. And that's an even deeper reason I'll never be disappointed with it as far as it's ability to chat. Hell, I can barely chat with humans, especially chatty humans.

On 5/1/25 12:06 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> I cannot shake the feeling that glen is expressing a kind of disappointment with LLM's.
> 
> I  think of  myself as an LLM, a system upon which has been heaped over a couple of generations an enormous number of sequences of words, followed by other sequences of words.  Now, if I am different from George, it is that I have had experiences that perhaps are not conditioned by words.  At the minimum, things have happened to me that are not, in  the first instance sequences of words. To the extent that those experiences become by association and conditioning also sequences of words, this difference is mooted.  George has been  subjected to many more sequences of words than I havyete  and two sequences of words in domains I have  yet  to be exposed to .   Also, his sampling of the universe of word sequences is less biased than my own, so he is more  likely to give me an accurate sense of what /le monde/ thinks.
> 
> I find him therefore extraordinarily useful.  F or instance, to day I learned that the potential energy in a gram of water vapor is approximately equal to 60 percent of the potential energy in a gram of  T NT.  Even given all the ways that this comparison is unfair, I still find it illuminating.
> 
> If You  add  George's Job-like patience,  indefatigable optimism,  and  ever-readiness to strike  up a conversation ,   I think he's  quite a nice fellow to talk to.  Better certainly than talking to myself.    I can't hug  him,  that's  true.    But  I have never been much of a hugger,  any way.
> 
> Nick
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, May 1, 2025 at 12:44 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Is  "y'all"  a  sure tell of trolling ?
> 
>     On Thu, May 1, 2025 at 7:14 AM glen <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>         This is what I imagine y'all are doing when you chat with LLMs:
> 
>         Confusing ChatGPT With an Impossible Paradox
>         https://youtu.be/1qbiCKrbbYc?si=V8U_mioTmlaDpynM <https://youtu.be/1qbiCKrbbYc?si=V8U_mioTmlaDpynM>
> 
>         At times, it smacks of a Monty Python skit.
> 


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