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ML promises to be profoundly weird

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Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#471

Post by tartoran »

mayama wrote: post #466
felipeerias wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People had been hunting whales for centuries, but industrialisation gave them the means and the motivation to do so until near extinction.

Most of humanity survived on agriculture and sometimes hunting-gathering for last 10k years. People that survived on hunting whales is minuscule. Comparing those two is nonsensical.

But you seem to be missing the point, parent is talking about the industrial scale of means to create a lot more destruction to the environment which the OP point hinges on. Parent does not say humanity survived on hunting whales, quite the opposite, when they had the means people nearly drove whales to extinction.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#472

Post by hackinthebochs »

drob518 wrote: post #395
simianwords wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They do not reason How do you disprove it?

We know that they do not reason because we know the algorithm behind the curtain. The model is generating the next token via model weights and some randomness. That’s all. It not reasoning. Sometimes it has an appearance of reasoning, but not if you know how it works. It doesn’t matter that the model manufacturer marketing department slaps a “Reasoning!” sticker on the side of the model. It’s not actually doing that.…

>We know that they do not reason because we know the algorithm behind the curtain.

In other words, we didn't put the "reasoning algorithm" in LLMs therefore they do not reason. But what is this reasoning algorithm that is a necessary condition for reasoning and how do you know LLMs parameters didn't converge on it in the process of pre-training?

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#474

Post by thinking_cactus »

Retric wrote: post #370
munificent wrote: post #150

There is a whole giant essay I probably need to write at some point, but I can't help but see parallels between today and the Industrial Revolution. Prior to the industrial revolution, the natural world was nearly infinitely abundant. We simply weren't efficient enough to fully exploit it. That meant that it was fine for things like property and the commons to be poorly defined. If all of us can go hunting in the woo…

> Prior to the industrial revolution, the natural world was nearly infinitely abundant. We simply weren't efficient enough to fully exploit it. This is just wildly incorrect. People started running out of trees during the early Iron Age. Woodlands have been a managed and often over exploited resource for a long time. Active agriculture vs passive woodlands vs animal grazing has been in constant tension for thousands…

I agree. Although in this specific point, I would say we always had depletion (since the most basic microorganisms, after all otherwise life would replicate until it faces depletion limits; all the way to our close primate relatives and throughout human history; food depletes locally which drives competition), but rarely faced degradation or permanent depletion.

I'd say degradation involves a lasting depletion or lasting damage (potentially permanent until restoration efforts happen) to the environment's output and ability to support life. Permanent depletion is what can happen to e.g. shallow mines and fossil fuel deposits.

I think I'd agree the legal system was created mostly for the former, depletion, and only recently had to contend with degradation and permanent depletion. I feel like we still struggle collectively to coming to gripes with permanent depletion.

Permanent depletion is also usually the result of shortsightedness or a competition gone awry. Famous case where nobody wants the ultimate results but people may selfishly march towards it (tragedy of the commons).

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#476

Post by Retric »

jychang wrote: post #465
ambicapter wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The general point is accurate, don’t take it so literally. GP is saying it is not, and you're just reiterating what OP said as fact.

It's sort of the exception that proves the rule. This is where STEM people are weak- a lack of knowledge on history. In another forum, someone would have chipped in that England's virgin forests were fully deforested by 1150. And someone else would have pointed out that this deforestation produced the economic demand for coal that drove the Industrial Revolution in the first place. Still, that kind of underscores OP'…

> powered solely by human muscle

Both animals and water power go way back. The early steam engine was measured in horsepower because that’s what it was replacing in mines. It couldn’t compete with nearby water power which was already being moved relatively long distances through mechanical means at the time.

Hand waving this as unimportant really misunderstands just how limited the Industrial Revolution was.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#477

Post by simianwords »

camgunz wrote: post #379
simianwords wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all use the tool search, no? Please correct me if I'm wrong. My criteria was using ChatGPT which explicitly allows it. https://arxiv.org/html/2511.13029v1 if you don't believe me. BTW this was your original point >Anyway, it's trivial to get pretty much any model to make things up. Don't we all know this? That's why I was surprised by your position; if we know anything about these things it's that they make thin…

I've got about 20 minutes in this; mostly I've been reading wallstreetbets at the Shake Shack bar in the Boston airport. I'm happy to post this over and over again until you engage w/ it: > I found over 500 examples that fit your criteria.

They don't use tools. Like the 4th time you ignored this on purpose. That was not part of the challenge.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#478

Post by Retric »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #469
Retric wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prior to the industrial revolution, the natural world was nearly infinitely abundant. We simply weren't efficient enough to fully exploit it. This is just wildly incorrect. People started running out of trees during the early Iron Age. Woodlands have been a managed and often over exploited resource for a long time. Active agriculture vs passive woodlands vs animal grazing has been in constant tension for thousands…

I believe running out of trees was always a local issue - there weren't enough trees where you were at because getting trees had to be gotten locally, you didn't go get trees from far away. So yes that was in constant tension, the thing is that the problem of having enough trees turned from a local problem to a global problem, with the side effects of not having enough trees globally that the world needed to maintain…

By local you mean over 5 thousand of miles? Because yes moving wood was always in competition with growing it locally. But pine forests in the far north were untouched because of the low quality of the lumber they produce not the distances involved. All of Africa Europe and Asia ran out of the most valuable natural lumber a fucking long time ago.

> I think the natural world was nearly infinitely abundant is a reasonable description

Very little of the world’s woodland was untouched at the time of the Industrial Revolution and forests in the Americas survived as long as they did largely due to disease drastically reducing native populations. But American forests were on the clock independent from industrial development. I’m not sure exactly your counter argument even is here.

We still can’t reasonably extract most resources from the ocean bottom. That’s ~70% of the world’s mineral wealth just off the table.

So sure we are very slightly better at extracting resources but on the absolute scale it really isn’t that significant pre vs post Industrial Revolution compared to the sum total of human history.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#479

Post by simianwords »

the_snooze wrote: post #377
simianwords wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! The challenge was ChatGPT but even then it looks like you used the weakest version of Gemini.

>I stress test commercially deployed LLMs like Gemini and Claude with trivial tasks I did exactly what I said I did. I'm using these systems the way they're designed and advertised. I'm following the happy path with tasks that are small, trivial, and easy to check. This is the charitable approach. Yet the system creaks under the lightest load. If Google wants to put on a better show with stronger models, then they sh…

Yeah its not too interesting to complain about mistakes from the cheapest model.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#480

Post by intended »

mayama wrote: post #466
felipeerias wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People had been hunting whales for centuries, but industrialisation gave them the means and the motivation to do so until near extinction.

Most of humanity survived on agriculture and sometimes hunting-gathering for last 10k years. People that survived on hunting whales is minuscule. Comparing those two is nonsensical.

Forest for the trees?

I doubt that anyone reading this can’t get the point of the analogy.

The value is in showing where the analogy fails, and either disproves the point, or deepens the point.

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