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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

What do you think would happen if you did that with people who have no reason to talk, but are forced to give an answer each time? I'm sure at some point they'd just degrade to nonsense, but I don't think that says anything about intelligence. (Being stuck for a long time with a friend does occasionally degrade into nonsense and absurd injokes in my experience)

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Can you link this idle observation directly to the operation of LLMs or is this more anthropomorphizing boosterism?

I'm not sure where you saw anthropomorphizing. It's not in my message.

In a political discussion people are forced to give an answer each time and yet the discussion does not converge to utter nonsense, provided that both participants are intelligent. For the younger people here who have only watched recent political discussions, search on YouTube for discussions before 2000, preferably before 1980.

Same for a scientific discussion.

By the way, Bing Copilot absolutely aborts conversations it does not like. LLMs could also change the subject, like humans do if they detect repetition.

> In a political discussion

That's a completely different scenario than OP stated. In a political discussion you have an agenda, reasons to engage, plan for progress, constraints on topics/time, context and experience, and you know when to withdraw.

The scenario described is closer to "Do a political discussion." and being forced to continue forever.

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