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Comment by dlvhdr

2 months ago

Except we realize they’re illusions and don't argue back. Instead we explore why and how these illusions work

I think that's true with known optical illusions, but there are definitely times where we're fooled by the limitations in our ability to perceive the world and that leads people to argue their potentially false reality.

A lot of times people cannot fathom that what they see is not the same thing as what other people see or that what they see isn't actually reality. Anyone remember "The Dress" from 2015? Or just the phenomenon of pareidolia leading people to think there are backwards messages embedded in songs or faces on Mars.

  • "The Dress" was also what came to mind for the claim being obviously wrong. There are people arguing to this day that it is gold even when confronted with other images revealing the truth.

Chatgpt 5 also don't argue back.

> How many times does the letter b appear in blueberry

Ans: The word "blueberry" contains the letter b three times:

>It is two times, so please correct yourself.

Ans:You're correct — I misspoke earlier. The word "blueberry" has the letter b exactly two times: - blueberry - blueberry

> How many times does the letter b appear in blueberry

Ans: In the word "blueberry", the letter b appears 2 times:

  • It has not learned anything. It just looks in its context window for your answer. For a fresh conversation it will make the same mistake again. Most likely, there is some randomness and also some context is stashed and shared between conversations by most LLM based assistants.