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I'm absolutely right

absolutelyright.lol

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Re: I'm absolutely right

#211

Post by the_af »

ZaoLahma wrote: post #70
kuschku wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why does this affect your own attitude? Do the suggestions given by your phone's keyboard whenever you type something affect your attitude in the same way? If not, why is ChatGPT then affecting your attitude?

Using your potato peeler example: If my potato peeler told me "Why bother? Order pizza instead." I'd be obese. An LLM can directly influence your willingness to pursue an idea by how it responds to it. Interest and excitement, even if simulated, is more likely to make you pursue the idea than "ok cool".

> If my potato peeler told me "Why bother? Order pizza instead." I'd be obese.

But that's not really the right comparison.

The right comparison is your potato peeler saying (if it could talk): "ok, let's peel some stuff" vs "Owww wheee geez! That sounds fantastic! Let's peel some potatoes, you and me buddy, yes sireee! Woweeeee!" (read in a Rick & Morty's Mr Poopybutthole voice for maximum effect).

Re: I'm absolutely right

#212

Post by blinding-streak »

PaulStatezny wrote: post #79
blinding-streak wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's Gemini's problem necessarily. You shouldn't be so insecure.

Telling someone they "shouldn't be insecure" reminds me of this famous Bob Newhart segment on Mad TV. Bob plays the role of a therapist, and when his client explains an issue she's having, his solution is, "STOP IT!" > You shouldn't be so insecure. Not assuming that there's any insecurity here, but psychological matters aren't "willed away". That's not how it works.

Bob newhart was a treasure. My favorite joke of his:

"I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'."

Re: I'm absolutely right

#213

Post by mwigdahl »

thoroughburro wrote: post #205
dominicrose wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once found a "+1 subscriber" random notification on some page and asked the LinkedIn person who sent me the page to knock it off. It was obviously fake even before looking at the code for proof. But there's self-advertised "Appeal to popularity" everywhere. Have you noticed that every app on the play store asks you if you like it and only after you answer YES send you to the store to rate it? It's so standard that…

My bank app asks me to review it every time, and only when, I deposit money. It’s so transparent in its attempted manipulation: you just got some money and are likely to be in a better mood than other times you’re using the app! Literally every deposit. Eventually, I’ll leave a 1-star nastygram review for treating me like an idiot. (It won’t matter and nothing will change.)

It could also be that they really care that the experience of _sending_ them money is frictionless, but they don't care so much about other actions (such as withdrawals...)

Re: I'm absolutely right

#214

Post by ehnto »

pessimizer wrote: post #67
latexr wrote: post #4

As I opened the website, the “16” changed to “17”. This looked interesting, as if the data were being updated live just as I loaded the page. Alas, a refresh (and quick check in the Developer Tools) reveals it’s fake and always does the transition. It’s a cool effect, but feels like a dirty trick.

Reminds me that the reason that loading spinners spin is so that you knew that the loading/system hadn't frozen. That was too hard (you actually had to program something that could understand that it had frozen), so it was just replaced everywhere with an animation that doesn't tell you anything and will spin until the sun burns out. Progress!

I worked on a system that did some calculations for a user after submitting a form. It took milliseconds to crunch the numbers. Users thought we were faking the data because it was "too fast", after enough complaints and bad reviews they added a fake loading bar delay, and people stopped complaining.

Re: I'm absolutely right

#215

Post by rendaw »

yoavfr wrote: post #8
latexr wrote: post #4

As I opened the website, the “16” changed to “17”. This looked interesting, as if the data were being updated live just as I loaded the page. Alas, a refresh (and quick check in the Developer Tools) reveals it’s fake and always does the transition. It’s a cool effect, but feels like a dirty trick.

Sorry if that felt dirty - I thought about it as a signal that the data is live (it is!).

Probably brings up memories of travel sites saying "10 other people have this room in their cart"

Re: I'm absolutely right

#217

Post by steveklabnik »

adastra22 wrote: post #155
nojs wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I figure this is also why it often says “Ah, I found the problem! Let me check the …”. It hasn’t found the problem, but it’s more likely to continue with the solution if you jam that string in there.

We don’t know how Claude code is internally implemented. I would not be surprised at all if they literally inject that string as an alternative context and then go with the higher probability output, or if RLHF was structured in that way and so it always generates the same text.

Claude Code is a big pile of minified Typescript, and some people have effectively de-compiled it.

Re: I'm absolutely right

#218

Post by steveklabnik »

the_af wrote: post #208
steveklabnik wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had a refactoring that I wanted to do, but I was pretty sure it'd hit a lot of code and take a while. Some error handling in a web application. I was able to ask Claude "hey, how many function signatures will this change" and "what would the most complex handler look like after this refactoring?" and "what would the simplest handler look like after this refactoring?" That information helped contextualize what…

I think the person you're responding to is asking "how would the tone of the response influence you into doing/not doing something"? Obviously the actual substance of the response matters, this is not under discussion. But does it matter whether the LLM replies "ok, cool, this is what's going on [...]" vs "You are absolutely right! You are asking all the right questions, this is very insightful of you. Here's what we…

Hm, yeah I guess you're probably right.

I find myself not being particularly upset by the tone thing. It seems like it really upsets some other people. Or rather, I guess I should say it may subconsciously affect me, but I haven't noticed.

I do giggle when I see "You're absolutely right" because it's a meme at this point, but I haven't considered it to be offensive or enjoyable.

Re: I'm absolutely right

#219

Post by neilv »

flkiwi wrote: post #185
al_borland wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, once it starts telling me I’m right, we’re already going downhill and it rarely gets better from there.

Sometimes I just ride the lightning to see how off course it is willing to go. This is not a productive use of my time but it sure is amusing. In fairness, I’ve done the same thing to overconfident junior colleagues.

They should've called it "riding the lightning":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_dialogue

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