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Comment by margalabargala

20 hours ago

You misread.

I didn't say the pattern matching engine wanted anything.

I said the pattern matching engine matched the pattern of wanting something.

To an observer the distinction is indistinguishable and irrelevant, but the purpose is to discuss the actual problem without pedants saying "actually the LLM can't want anything".

> To an observer the distinction is indistinguishable and irrelevant

Absolutely not. I expect more critical thought in a forum full of technical people when discussing technical subjects.

  • I agree, which is why it's disappointing that you were so eager to point out that "The LLM cannot want" that you completely missed how I did not claim that the LLM wanted.

    The original comment had the exact verbose hedging you are asking for when discussing technical subjects. Clearly this is not sufficient to prevent people from jumping in with an "Ackshually" instead of reading the words in front of their face.

    • > The original comment had the exact verbose hedging you are asking for when discussing technical subjects.

      Is this how you normally speak when you find a bug in software? You hedge language around marketing talking points?

      I sincerely doubt that. When people find bugs in software they just say that the software is buggy.

      But for LLM there's this ridiculous roundabout about "pattern matching behaving as if it wanted something" which is a roundabout way to aacribe intentionality.

      If you said this about your OS people qould look at you funny, or assume you were joking.

      Sorry, I don't think I am in the wrong for asking people to think more critically about this shit.

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