Riley S. FaelanMar 11

The notion of a broken clock being sometimes right is based on a gross misunderstanding of what information is.

A clock that always shows the same time is never right, even in the moments of the day when the time happens to be what it shows, because you don't gain any information about what time it is by looking at the clock.

This reasoning also applies to chatbots. If you can't tell whether what you have been given is useful information unless you alreay know the information, then you haven't been given useful information.

Show threadRiley S. Faelan
This confusion is also what cold reading is based on, btw. Falling for a chatbot is literally the same type of mistake as falling for a psychic telling you that somebody you used to know who had a vowel in their name died.
Mar 11 at 8:38amWeb
Show threadGeorge BMar 11

@riley

@baldur 's LLMentalist article is something I have shared repeatedly since it first came out:

https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/

The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models rep…

The new era of tech seems to be built on superstitious behaviour

Out of the Software Crisis
Show threadRiley S. FaelanMar 11

@gbargoud Thanks! I didn't know of this article.

@baldur

Show threadChrisMar 11
@riley cold callers like this have always struggled in the Polish community
Show threadRiley S. FaelanMar 12

@ASprinkleofSage That doesn't sound right. Are you telling me that Polish people don't have vowels remaining in their names by the time they die?

Now, if you were talking about Serbian people, maybe ...

Show threadChrisMar 12
@riley what i do know is y and z score very low in Polish scrabble...