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I spent an evening on a fictitious web

paul.kinlan.me

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Re: I spent an evening on a fictitious web

#31

Post by hunter2_ »

jrm4 wrote: post #30
hunter2_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone who bullshits presumably does this for some personal gain That's one definition of bullshitting, but not the one being used here. If someone says "I think you're bullshitting me" then yes, you're being accused of consciously seeking personal gain. But if someone says "we were standing around bullshitting" then no, it refers to killing time with mindless communication, which is a quite good analogy for LLM o…

I actually like your first definition a bit better; very in line with the way the term was academically in vogue a few years ago; the idea that you're expressing information intended to appear factual without regard for how factual it is. The LLM does it because it's programmed to, and the human does it for some other self gain reason, but both the process and the results are very similar.

> the idea that you're expressing information intended to appear factual without regard for how factual it is.

That's my second definition! Sorry if I wasn't clear. My first definition (which aligns with the comment I had originally quoted) is that the speaker is aware that they're saying false things, and therefore has intent to deceive, typically for personal gain (they are bullshitting another person). My second definition is that the speaker has no regard for whether what they're saying is true or false (they are bullshitting with another person).

An LLM does not bullshit you, it bullshits with you. It's fluff, not a bluff.

Re: I spent an evening on a fictitious web

#32

Post by tomcam »

sva_ wrote: post #15
latexr wrote: post #3

I went to the website, clicked on the search bar, and was immediately stopped from proceeding unless I provided a Google login. Why is that necessary? No idea, they don’t say. Doesn’t seem like a “web” I’d want to partake in, with Google as a gatekeeper even if they’re not the authors of the content.

Websim utilizes LLM to generate a fictional website based on a domain name you provide, and displays the result in their virtual browser. LLM generations are quite costly so it is difficult to provide them without some kind of anti abuse strategies in place, so I think that's fair.

Thank you. I had no idea what TFA was trying to get across

Re: I spent an evening on a fictitious web

#34

Post by patapong »

WorldMaker wrote: post #24
sva_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the term 'bullshitting' less fitting as it seems to anthropomorphize LLM in a way that attributes agency to them which they seem to lack. As in, someone who bullshits presumably does this for some personal gain, which doesn't seem like something an LLM is capable of atm. It might (currently) be most apt to characterize these occurrences as shifts out of the training data distribution

The equal problem with "hallucinate" is that it also has far to many anthropomorhic connotations (a person having creative fun, a person on some form of drugs, a person in some sort of "sleep state"). So far I'm coming around to the growing use of "slop", originally meant as an alternative to "spam" and to imply spam-like intent, but the great thing about this word choice is that the closest anthropomorphic connotati…

I quite like "confabulation" as a term.

From Merriam webster: to fill in gaps in memory by fabrication

Re: I spent an evening on a fictitious web

#35

Post by nuancebydefault »

lewispollard wrote: post #8

So the purpose of the website wasn't clear to you, you then figured it out, decided to write an article about it, but didn't explain to the reader what the website actually is?

Well, if you review a movie you try not to spoil by explaining its plot?

Re: I spent an evening on a fictitious web

#36

Post by WorldMaker »

patapong wrote: post #34
WorldMaker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equal problem with "hallucinate" is that it also has far to many anthropomorhic connotations (a person having creative fun, a person on some form of drugs, a person in some sort of "sleep state"). So far I'm coming around to the growing use of "slop", originally meant as an alternative to "spam" and to imply spam-like intent, but the great thing about this word choice is that the closest anthropomorphic connotati…

I quite like "confabulation" as a term. From Merriam webster: to fill in gaps in memory by fabrication

"Confabulation" also sounds too anthropomorphic to my tastes. Especially because "fabrication" often implies "intent to" by the actor in question. It's the exact same problem as "bullshit", just the G-rated grandiloquent version. To be fair, human languages were built to anthropomorphize almost everything so finding the right terms here is hard.

Re: I spent an evening on a fictitious web

#37

Post by crtasm »

csixty4 wrote: post #28
superultra wrote: post #17

This is interesting but if you’re genuinely interested in recapturing the feelings many of us had at the beginning of the web, I would suggest playing Hypnospace Outlaw. It’s of course quite different than websim but it’s really fun.

I just watched a Youtube video of it and I DEFINITELY need to check this out. They seem to have captured the feel of the old web perfectly.

It's a fantastic game. Just noticing now they added mod support so will be trying that later!

https://jay-tholen.itch.io/hypnospace-outlaw/devlog/111175/h...

Re: I spent an evening on a fictitious web

#39

Post by romanobro56 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #36
patapong wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quite like "confabulation" as a term. From Merriam webster: to fill in gaps in memory by fabrication

"Confabulation" also sounds too anthropomorphic to my tastes. Especially because "fabrication" often implies "intent to" by the actor in question. It's the exact same problem as "bullshit", just the G-rated grandiloquent version. To be fair, human languages were built to anthropomorphize almost everything so finding the right terms here is hard.

“WorldMaker” seems to be a little anthropomorphized to me.
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