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Comment by bubblyworld | Hacker News Reader

This is not a proof by contradiction - you have stated an assumption followed by a bunch of non-sequitors about what LLMs can and can't do, also known as begging the question. Under the conditions of your assumption (namely that LLMs are plenty powerful with the right context) why would you believe anything in your last paragraph? That's how a proof by contradiction works.

(not saying you are wrong, necessarily, but I don't think this argument holds water)

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> you have stated an assumption

I don't think I stated an assumption, this is an assertion, worded rhetorically. You are welcome to disagree with it and refute it, but its structural role is not that of an assumption.

"Can an LLM recognize the context deficit and frame the right questions to ask?"

> a bunch of non-sequitors

I'm guessing you're referring to the "canvas or not" bit? The sequitir there was that LLMs routinely fail to execute simple instructions for which they have all the context.

> not saying you are wrong

Happy to hear counterarguments of course, but I do not yet see an argument for why what I said was not structurally coherent as counterexamples, nor anything that weakens the specifics of what I said.

I agree it isn't really proof by contradiction. It is more like proof by demonstration of concrete failures in real life demonstrations, which is stronger.

It is like the author is saying 12 is a prime number and I am like but I divided it by 2 just the other day.

Nit pick, but proof by contradiction is necessarily stronger as it is deductive reasoning, and this kind of "proof" by anecdotal evidence doesn't rise above abductive reasoning. Still useful, very much not a proof.

We don't have a formal model of how/why any given LLM works, and incidentally we're also short on proofs for real-world software and organizations.

Empirical facts are the strongest thing we have in this domain.

You don't need a full model. You can build deductive arguments using empirical facts to support the premises.

True, but in this case these are hardly globally applicable facts about LLM-based systems (not nearly to the same degree as "12 divides 2" anyway). Different systems have different properties on all those fronts.

I don't think no argument is the right substitute for a bad one!

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