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Comment by tonnydourado | Hacker News Reader

People really need to understand that your single/double digit dataset of interactions with an inherently non-deterministic process is less than irrelevant. It's saying that global warming isn't real because it was really cold this week.

I don't even know enough superlatives to express how irrelevant it is that "it seems to you" that an LLM behaves this way or that.

And even the "protocol" in question is weak. Self reported data is not that trustworthy even with humans, and arguably there's a much stronger base of evidence to support the assumption that we can self-reflect.

In conclusion: please, stop.

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>> I don't even know enough superlatives to express how irrelevant it is that "it seems to you" that an LLM behaves this way or that.

It is both irrelevant and the underlying foundation for the whole hype train.

Yes, I get it from a science point of view. But if it makes me happy that I have better results with this technique, and I want to share it with others, who are you to tell me to stop?

If you don't like it, don't use it.

I don't have a problem with you doing and even sharing whatever cargo culting prompting technique you want to share.

My problem starts when you make bold claims like "LLMs can self reflect" and your only evidence is "I asked one and it said yes".

I see no evidence that they can't self reflect. Certainly they can evaluate the confidence of the next predicted token, and that a form of reflection

> Certainly they can (...)

No, that's the problem. You don't have certainty, not in any remotely scientific definition of the word, because you don't have enough data, and the data you do have is crap.

Also:

> I see no evidence that they can't self reflect

I see no evidence that there isn't a magical invisible unicorn in the sky that grants wishes to those who wear unicorn themed underwear, so, it must exist.

> People really need to understand [...]

... the algorithms and the pre-filtering of the training set, however large the latter may be.

The Artifishy Intelligence marketing pump has many hands drawing water by the bucket.

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