This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I find it deeply frustrating to see orherwise intelligent people (who by all rights ought to know better) anthropomorphizing algorithms in this way.
In order to "be hobbled" by retrograde amnesia it have to be capable of forming memories in the first place.
An LLM is literally just a set of static instructions being run against your prompt. Those instructions don't change from prompt to prompt or instance to instance.
I genuinely don't understand the objection here?
Drawing an analogy isn't the same thing as excessive anthromorphization. The closest analogue to working human memory is the context window of an LLM, with more general knowledge being close to whatever information from the training set is retained in the weights.
This isn't an objectionable isomorphism, or would you to object to calling RAM computer memory and reject it as excessive anthromorphization? In all these cases, it's a store of information.
An otherwise healthy child born with blindness can be said to be hobbled by it even if they never developed functioning eyes. I'm sorely confused by the nitpicking here!
The utility of LLMs would be massively improved if they had context windows more representative of what humans can hold in their heads, in gestalt. In some aspects, they're superhuman, good luck to a human being trying to solve a needle in a haystack test over the equivalent of a million tokens in a few seconds. In other regards, they're worse off than you would be trying to recall a conversation you had last night.
You can also compare an existing system to a superior one that doesn't yet exist.
I never claimed otherwise? But if you're using an API, you can alter system instructions and not just user prompts. But I fail to see the use of this objection in the first place.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link