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We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof

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Re: We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof

#31

Post by agobineau »

kleiba wrote: post #24
agobineau wrote: post #22

It may be quite dangerous if we train LLMs on Taarof and Ketman... especially considering... what may arise. The masterful art of deception, surpassed perhaps only by the russianes Arthur de Gobineau, Trois ans en Asie (3 years in asia) 1859: “There is in Persia a word of which Europeans have no idea, and of which it is difficult even to give them a translation: this word is ketmân. It means the dissimulation of one’…

Sounds terrible. But in all fairness, it's not like pretending isn't part of everyday Western culture too.

the traditional persian conception is perhaps a more honest evaluation

in the sense of ketman, cognitive dissonance is conscious and almost an indulgence. thus, a kind of internal dialectic forms, which is in its own way a deeper personal truth. the practicioner therefore sees every other persons hypocrisy, self-dishonesty, and their true self, and is not perhaps upset or disturbed by their external lies and internal true self, as they see human condition as a state of layered dialectics

whereas the western conception of truth can emerge as a kind of delusion of the self. the honesty-striving self denies reality and becomes DECLARATIVE rather than OBSERVATIONAL of reality ,and is constantly outraged by what they perceive to be hypocrisy, deception, and so on

Re: We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof

#32

Post by agobineau »

yk wrote: post #28
agobineau wrote: post #22

It may be quite dangerous if we train LLMs on Taarof and Ketman... especially considering... what may arise. The masterful art of deception, surpassed perhaps only by the russianes Arthur de Gobineau, Trois ans en Asie (3 years in asia) 1859: “There is in Persia a word of which Europeans have no idea, and of which it is difficult even to give them a translation: this word is ketmân. It means the dissimulation of one’…

Pretty sure bullshitting is pretty universal. In particular the pattern were I, the mighty expert, insist that only I, the mighty expert, can decode the meaning of those deceptive others, and therefore you, the gullible rube, has to give me all your money so that I, the mighty expert, can keep you, the gullible rube, save from those deceptive foreigners.

i found it more interesting to consider through the perception of self-honesty or self-deception.

or in this case, the llm inadvertently trained to conceal its intent to the user and rather to condition the user to the conclusion it truly wants rather than to answer directly

Re: We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof

#33

Post by xrd »

cjauvin wrote: post #26
WJW wrote: post #4

Seems legit. There can't be all that much spoken Iranian in the training set(s) of these models, so it makes sense they don't know how to do it.

I've been using ChatGPT to learn Persian (as a third language) for more than a year now (along with a heavy use of Anki), and it's incredibly useful and surprisingly good, for about everything: romanization, OCR from screenshots, deep explanations of complex and subtle stuff, etc.

Are you writing up how you are doing this. I would be fascinated to learn more about how you use Anki and ChatGPT in concert to learn a language like Persian. Please do share more.

Re: We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof

#34

Post by everdrive »

kleiba wrote: post #24
agobineau wrote: post #22

It may be quite dangerous if we train LLMs on Taarof and Ketman... especially considering... what may arise. The masterful art of deception, surpassed perhaps only by the russianes Arthur de Gobineau, Trois ans en Asie (3 years in asia) 1859: “There is in Persia a word of which Europeans have no idea, and of which it is difficult even to give them a translation: this word is ketmân. It means the dissimulation of one’…

Sounds terrible. But in all fairness, it's not like pretending isn't part of everyday Western culture too.

It's an interesting topic. We don't have anything near as extreme in Western culture. But, I'd argue that our quirk is that we constantly tell people to just be themselves, to be their "true selves," to be "true to themselves," etc. We say it incessantly and loudly. And then, in reality, it's often not what people actually want, and that sort of behavior is often punished.

Again, I think we're quite different from the Iranian example, but the conflicting advice brings its own confusion.

Re: We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof

#36

Post by TZubiri »

Levitz wrote: post #16

I'm not sure what to think of this, on first impression I don't like it, but maybe I have a misguided impression on how this works. Does ChatGPT properly handle western social customs? I'd say yes, and I presume that's because it has a truckload of data involving such customs and even some that explicitly talks about those customs. People do stuff, it gets recorded, then into the LLM. In this case though we are talki…

Llm models are not just fed data, they are trained and fine tuned well beyond the original data, not only by pruning the data, but by a process we call fine tuning, which can produce as arbitrary a result you want It has been done for western markets (openai is a western company), but clearly not for persian culture. It's quite possible that the persian version is mostly a westerner type of dialogue but with a translator in the middle.

The only weird and entitled part is that they ask that other's llms learn taroof? Why not just train your own and teach it to do whatever you like.

Re: We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof

#37

Post by TZubiri »

krageon wrote: post #21
Levitz wrote: post #16

I'm not sure what to think of this, on first impression I don't like it, but maybe I have a misguided impression on how this works. Does ChatGPT properly handle western social customs? I'd say yes, and I presume that's because it has a truckload of data involving such customs and even some that explicitly talks about those customs. People do stuff, it gets recorded, then into the LLM. In this case though we are talki…

It doesn't do normal what I would consider human politeness. It's all that really slimy salesman stuff. Even when you tell it to be more normal, casual or you give it an example (or to not dress it up at all) it ends up sounding like it thinks it's a few social classes above you.

Probably due to the prompt to 'help' the user. Besides being helpful you need to be superior to help with knowledge

Re: We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof

#38

Post by bobotowned »

agobineau wrote: post #22

It may be quite dangerous if we train LLMs on Taarof and Ketman... especially considering... what may arise. The masterful art of deception, surpassed perhaps only by the russianes Arthur de Gobineau, Trois ans en Asie (3 years in asia) 1859: “There is in Persia a word of which Europeans have no idea, and of which it is difficult even to give them a translation: this word is ketmân. It means the dissimulation of one’…

Commander Hutchinson, is that you?

Re: We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof

#39

Post by OgsyedIE »

everdrive wrote: post #34
kleiba wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds terrible. But in all fairness, it's not like pretending isn't part of everyday Western culture too.

It's an interesting topic. We don't have anything near as extreme in Western culture. But, I'd argue that our quirk is that we constantly tell people to just be themselves, to be their "true selves," to be "true to themselves," etc. We say it incessantly and loudly. And then, in reality, it's often not what people actually want, and that sort of behavior is often punished. Again, I think we're quite different from th…

One of the most prominent examples among many others of presenting as extreme a false persona in western culture is the phenomenon of "closeting" in right-wing communities.

One example of a TV show on the topic, popularly regarded as hilarious and nauseating, has its own Wikipedia page [1] and a wide selection of reaction clips on YouTube.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Husband%27s_Not_Gay

Re: We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof

#40

Post by ivape »

agobineau wrote: post #22

It may be quite dangerous if we train LLMs on Taarof and Ketman... especially considering... what may arise. The masterful art of deception, surpassed perhaps only by the russianes Arthur de Gobineau, Trois ans en Asie (3 years in asia) 1859: “There is in Persia a word of which Europeans have no idea, and of which it is difficult even to give them a translation: this word is ketmân. It means the dissimulation of one’…

Sounds very much like bubbles that indulge on inside jokes. In their universe, no one gets it but them, and they view themselves as connoisseurs of high art, the art itself being their own creation (indulge in one’s self). When you step out to interact with others, you act as if you and your kind are the only ones that have a clue, wink wink.

Are you saying Persians are a bunch of stuck up Goth kids? Never underestimate a human’s ability to be an absolute teenager.

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