Comment by nozzlegear
13 days ago
> and it got excited and decided to WhatsApp me about it.
I find the anthropomorphism here kind of odious.
13 days ago
> and it got excited and decided to WhatsApp me about it.
I find the anthropomorphism here kind of odious.
Why is it odious to say “it got excited” about a process that will literally use words in the vein of “I got excited so I did X”?
This is “talks like a duck” territory. Saying the not-duck “quacked” when it produced the same sound… If that’s odious to you then your dislike of not-ducks, or for the people who claim they’ll lay endless golden eggs, is getting in the way of more important things when the folks who hear the not-duck talk and then say “it quacked”.
> Saying the not-duck “quacked” when it produced the same sound
How does a program get excited? It's a program, it doesn't have emotions. It's not producing a faux-emotion in the way a "not-duck quacks", it lacks them entirely. Any emotion you read from an LLM is anthropomorphism, and that's what I find odious.
We say that a shell script "is trying to open this file". We say that a flaky integration "doesn't feel like working today". And these are all way less emotive-presenting interactions than a message that literally expresses excitement.
Yes, I know it's not conscious in the same way as a living biological thing is. Yes, we all know you know that too. Nobody is being fooled.
2 replies →
OP did't like anthropomorphizing an LLM.
And you tried to explain the whole thing to him from the perspective of a duck.
I know, seems a bit silly right? But go with me for a moment. First, I'm assuming you get the duck reference? If not, it's probably a cultural difference, but in US English, "If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck..." is basically saying "well, treat it like a duck". or "it's a duck". Usage varies, metaphors are fluid, so it goes. I figured even if this idiom wasn't shared, the meaning still wouldn't be lost.
That aside, why? Because the normal rhetorical sticks don't really work in conversation, and definitely not short bits like comments here on HN, when it comes to asking a person to consider a different point of view. So, I try to go in a little sideways, slightly different approach in terms of comparisons or metaphors-- okay, lots of time more than slightly different-- and lots of times? more meaningful conversation and exchanges come from it than the standard form because, to respond at all, its difficult to respond in quite the same pat formulaic dismissal that is the common reflex-- mine included-- I'm not claiming perfection, only attempts at doing better.
Results vary, but I've had more good discussions come of it than bad, and heard much better and more eye-opening-- for me-- explanations of peoples' points of view when engaging in a way that is both genuine and novel. And on the more analytical end of things, this general approach, when teaching logic & analysis? It's not my full time profession, and I haven't taught in a while, but I've forced a few hundred college students to sit through my style of speechifying and rhetoricalizing, and they seem to learn better and give better answers if I don't get too mechanical and use the same form and syntax, words and phrases and idioms they've always heard.
these verbs seem appropriate when you accept neutral (MLP) activation as excitement and DL/RL as decision processes (MDPs...)