Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

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hn_throwaway_99

While the answer landed on bats, ChatGPT kind of trips itself up in its explanations:

1. "Most winged creatures either have paws (like bats) or lay eggs (like birds and insects)" - but bats don't have paws.

2. "However, if we consider the term "wings" more broadly" - why do we need to consider the term "wings" more broadly? Nobody is arguing there is some definition of "wing" that would exclude bats. Bat wings evolved from largely the same structures that bird wings did.

3. "there are some species of bats that give live birth" - all species of bats give live birth - stating it like this makes it sound like there are some species of bats that lay eggs or something.

4. "...provided we interpret "wings" in a broad sense and "paws" in a strict sense." Again, no "broad" or "strict" senses are needed. Bats have wings and no paws.

To be clear, I still think ChatGPT is amazing, but these kinds of things highlight some of the differences between LLMs and human cognition.

There's a sample-and-poll approach that I've used with factual question-and-answer based tools that can help with this kind of thing as well.

First, you'll notice the added "work it out step by step" to encourage what is called chain-of-thought in the literature. Second, generate say, five responses from the LLM, then take all five responses and uses them in another prompt where you ask the LLM to reflect on all of the five responses, a process being called reflection. Then you take all of that, including the original prompts, and in another separate prompt ask it to figure out the best response, a process known as resolving. You could end it with another prompt to remove the step-by-step work and just return a succinct answer.

Credit to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVzuvf9D9BU

Then, if that's not accurate, take that entire process and repeat that 5 times, looking for the most common answer.

And then make sure to train GPT to help you trade stocks, because you’ll need those millions to pay your OpenAI bill.

Too true… I can’t think of a time prior to this where I was spending $200/month researching the use of a new tool.

Don't not do that, but also, a 30B with 70-80% of the reasoning of the latest GPT can be run on a home PC.

Given that most people have computers and RAM is dirt cheap right now, I'm already maxing out all of my devices.

And 5 of those, and the best answer…

But it does seem like a single call to an LLM is not the correct approach.

I’ve gotten the best results from attempting to mirror how I would operate in response to a prompt. Much of this is colored by decades of philosophical readings, which in my case means a decent amount of analytical philosophy along with latter Wittgenstein and other post linguistic turn thinkers.

So when I break things down, either in some kind of approach inspired by Frege, Wittgenstein or unadorned self-reflection, I can see that the unconscious mind seems to be doing something recursive before my conscious mind is ready to start fumbling over the word.

It seems like an LLM is just part of a larger cognitive architecture that will use these metacognitive approaches.

It’s also very obvious that mammalian brains are much more efficient than GPUs.

I was sat here WTFing that some bat species laid eggs until I looked it up. This is why you can't trust the output.

> Bats have wings and no paws.

Can hind limbs of bats be classified as paws? English is not my native language, so I'm just being curious.

No, not really. Paws kind of implies something that's fairly fleshy and soft and which bats don't have. Claws would be appropriate description of what bats have.

I saw a huge bat in Ubud Bali who was definitely eating a peach with their paws. I guess they were closer to hands? But definitely not claws.

The real world is a squiggly place, with blurred lines...everything is on a spectrum.

> "there are some species of bats that give live birth" - all species of bats give live birth

ChatGPT is being more logical to be honest.

It’s true, some species of bats give live birth.

To assume all bats give live birth might be committing the fallacy of induction.

Wiki: "Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera" ... (funnily enough - chiro = hands, ptera = wings, hand-wings, makes sense)

Chiroptera fits under Mammalia in the phylogenenetric tree.

Just need to mention that Echidnas and Platypuses are also mammals and they lay eggs.

I should have said bats fit under "Placentalia" - placental mammals.

That's true -- some bats never have kids. They just have lots of hobbies and are very fulfilled.

there are some google results suggesting bats have front paws, some using "paws" colloquially and some suggesting their pads can qualify as paws. these results are given authority because they show up in the ostensibly fact-based q&a section, which, in conflict with actual taxonomical literature, may be enough to indicate to gpt that it's necessary to define terms

> but bats don't have paws.

Bat paw: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Bat_in_a...

ChatGPT was totally in tune with this concept. The appendage on the elbow of the wing can be a paw or not a paw but it certainly evolved from paws. The reasoning was spot on and amazingly nuanced.

What? No. You're rationalizing what is clearly an error. Truth still exists, and bats do not have paws, any more than humans do.

(Add a grain of salt because I searched for about 15 minutes here.)

Doing some digging, paws are "soft foot-like parts of a mammal, generally a quadruped, that has claws" (Wikipedia). Bats do appear to have claws, but not really with the same structure as a paw; they don't seem to be mounted above a soft, fleshy pad. Rather, they're at the top of the wing, sitting on bone. They're also very different in function, when I've had the fortune to see a bat they seemed to use the claw to climb in a similar way to how climbers use ice axes.

My impression is that bat's claws are the anatomical equivalent of a thumb, not a hand/paw, and that the entire paw or hand of bat's ancestors evolved into their wings (sort of like if your fingers became very long and webbed and then you were able to fly with them).

So, my conclusion is that no, the claws of a bat are not a paw.

ETA: I neglected to consider their hind claws, but I don't think those are padded either.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1e/8d/09/1e8d0923d5caf2dbab68...

That certainly has claws but I wouldn't describe that as being soft or as being similar to a paw. And they're pretty clearly made for hanging, climbing, and grasping prey/food, and not for walking.

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/paw

As long as it has claws according to vocabulary dot com it is a paw.

I think we're getting totally taken for a ride... byyyy can't actually be serious right...?

Anyway I'm enjoying imagining bats with little paws, it's an amusing image.

I'm serious.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paw

Look up the definition of a paw. I think you have a sort of mixed up definition of what it is. Possibly a different definition used among your "bat expert" friends.

And I quote (again):

   Paw: the foot of a quadruped (such as a lion or dog) that has claws
   broadly : the foot of an animal

Both the broad and technical definition of paw fits what the bat has. Bats have paws.

The thing you are referring to is likely are these soft pads that are often on the paws, sometimes called paw pads.

Also, I don't know if you noticed.

But this nuance in the definition of the word paw was addressed by chatGPT.

Well, if you're looking for my opinion, I don't think they're trolling. But I do think both of you were (intentionally or unintentionally) goading each other from a disagreement to an argument with your rhetoric (eg, where you said, "let's assume that's a reasonable source", or when they said "you obviously sourced this it just didn't match your point so you discarded it" - that brings up the temperature of the conversation).

It does bring up the temp, I apologize for including you in that. I appreciate your reply.

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