Comment by latexr
3 hours ago
And your name is now Berningular Farshthruster III. I gave you that name.
Which is, of course, silly. It is a name for you, just like Teresa T is a name for the whale, but it’s not your/their name, just like the RRS Sir David Attenborough is not named Boaty McBoatface (to the chagrin of most). Simon does not have the authority to unilaterally¹ name the whale (which is why the exercise makes sense).
¹ Important point. If the name started being recognised and used by consensus of those with the purview to do so (much like the thagomizer²), then Simon would have named the whale, but it would only become its name at that point.
> Simon does not have the authority to unilaterally¹ name the whale
There's no such thing as authority to name a whale, and anyways I don't believe authority is strictly needed. A name is what people use to refer to something, full stop. It is only required that names become common-ish parlance; the more well known they are, the more they feel like the 'real' name. The inverse of Ohms is named Mhos (imo much more recognizable than the official name, "siemens"). The "#" symbol is named the hashtag, octothorp, pound sign, tic-tac-toe, number sign, and probably a million other things. Which one of these is the "real" primary name? I think intuitively we know that the real one is whatever people around us are most familiar with. You should take a guess, and I'll put the wikipedia-suggested-answer in the footnotes [1]. I bet your name for it is different than the 'official' wikipedia suggestion.
In the case of the whale, the _only_ name that is associated with that whale is Teresa T. I think this immediately makes it the most valid name of that whale.
[1] wikipedia says this is the number sign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign
> There's no such thing as authority to name a whale
https://www.aza.org/connect-stories/stories/scientists-unvei...
Names are submitted and voted on. Those help with identifying individuals (which is what names are for) and monitoring the whale populations. Crucially, consensus matters. Otherwise I can just say that the whale in Pillar Point Harbor near Half Moon Bay is actually called Becky B, which is just as valid as the name Simon gave, but now there are two names which leads to confusion.
> A name is what people use to refer to something (…)
The entirety of your argument is encapsulated by my footnote, and is clearly why I used the word “unilaterally” and said it was an important point.
And again, Simon’s exercise in itself only makes sense if it’s not his purview to name the whale. If it is, then it falls flat. Otherwise it’s like “predicting” you’ll do jumping jacks the next time you’re at the supermarket. If it’s in your hands to make it true or false, you’re not predicting it. Similarly, it only makes sense as an exercise to prove the gullibility of LLMs to do something which you yourself can’t make true.