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LLMs are more persuasive than incentivized human persuaders

arxiv.org

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Re: LLMs are more persuasive than incentivized human persuaders

#51

Post by hammock »

metalcrow wrote: post #3

My guess for the reason behind this is that LLMs have more facts memorized, and thus can make more reasonable and well-researched sounding answers. If you ask an LLM vs a Human "Is a stack in computer science a) a data structure that is first in first out or b) a data structure that is first in last out" the LLM can say stuff resembling "Based on Dijkstra's algorithm proof given in 1943 and the nature of Turing compl…

Reminds me of the horrific state of student debate competitions today where the winning strategy is to incomprehensibly rattle off as many arguments as quickly as possible with strange breathy sounds in between

Re: LLMs are more persuasive than incentivized human persuaders

#52

Post by literalAardvark »

abtinf wrote: post #47
koakuma-chan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked an LLM and it said "A stack is a data structure that follows the Last In, First Out (LIFO) principle. This means that the last element added to the stack is the first element to be removed."

It’s subtle but I would regard this as an incorrect answer. The structure of the LLM answer is: A is B; B exhibits property C. The correct answer is: A exhibits property C; B is the class of things with property C; therefore A is B. There is a crucial difference between these two.

This doesn't apply to all prompts, and the prompt was not provided. Natural language is a fickle thing.

Re: LLMs are more persuasive than incentivized human persuaders

#53

Post by azemetre »

hammock wrote: post #51
metalcrow wrote: post #3

My guess for the reason behind this is that LLMs have more facts memorized, and thus can make more reasonable and well-researched sounding answers. If you ask an LLM vs a Human "Is a stack in computer science a) a data structure that is first in first out or b) a data structure that is first in last out" the LLM can say stuff resembling "Based on Dijkstra's algorithm proof given in 1943 and the nature of Turing compl…

Reminds me of the horrific state of student debate competitions today where the winning strategy is to incomprehensibly rattle off as many arguments as quickly as possible with strange breathy sounds in between

Do you have a YouTube video demonstrating this? My only experience with debate is from the TV show Community.

Re: LLMs are more persuasive than incentivized human persuaders

#54

Post by aspenmayer »

thethirdone wrote: post #19

Based on the data in table 3, I would attribute most of the difference to length of advice. LLMs average word count (29.4) is more than double human word count (13.25). Most other measures do not have a significant ratio. "Difficult word count" would be the only other with a ratio higher than 2, but that is inherited from total word count. I think it would be difficult to truly convince me to answer differently in a…

> I would be very interested to see the test rerun while limiting LLM response length or encouraging long responses from humans.

I don’t know if that would have the effect you want. And if you’re more likely have hallucinations at lower word counts, that matters for those who are scrupulous, but many people trying to convince you of something believe the ends justify the means, and that honesty or correspondence to reality are not necessary, just nice to have.

Asking chatbots for short answers can increase hallucinations, study finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43950684 - May 2025 (1 comment)

which is reporting on this post:

Good answers not necessarily factual answers: analysis of hallucination in LLMs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43950678 - May 2025 (1 comment)

Re: LLMs are more persuasive than incentivized human persuaders

#55

Post by moffkalast »

abtinf wrote: post #47
koakuma-chan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked an LLM and it said "A stack is a data structure that follows the Last In, First Out (LIFO) principle. This means that the last element added to the stack is the first element to be removed."

It’s subtle but I would regard this as an incorrect answer. The structure of the LLM answer is: A is B; B exhibits property C. The correct answer is: A exhibits property C; B is the class of things with property C; therefore A is B. There is a crucial difference between these two.

This kind of pointless hair splitting is why people would rather talk to an LLM.

Re: LLMs are more persuasive than incentivized human persuaders

#57

Post by justonceokay »

azemetre wrote: post #53
hammock wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the horrific state of student debate competitions today where the winning strategy is to incomprehensibly rattle off as many arguments as quickly as possible with strange breathy sounds in between

Do you have a YouTube video demonstrating this? My only experience with debate is from the TV show Community.

This one is very short but conveys the idea well. Not all debate is like this but it is definitely a real phenomenon

https://youtu.be/LMO27PAHjrY

Re: LLMs are more persuasive than incentivized human persuaders

#58

Post by sidibe »

tuatoru wrote: post #46
sidibe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes when the knowledge jobs are all done best by AI the rest will follow shortly. we will need to adapt to being "useless" as far as work goes and find other sources of worth. There's still a lot of people who want to compare it to Bitcoin hype around here, IMO the next few years everything is going to change way faster than than it ever has. For the record I always thought Kurzweil and that crowd was clowns, now I t…

A challenge for people who think this way: be first in line to have a robot change your six-month-old daughter's nappy.

Now that'd be crazy, like letting a Tesla drive you around in the back seat.

Give it a decade though and people won't think twice about it, though I do hope we'd still do that kind of thing ourselves

Re: LLMs are more persuasive than incentivized human persuaders

#59

Post by idonotknowwhy »

danielbln wrote: post #41
lovasoa wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it is not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFO_%28computing_and_electron...

But a stack is commonly LIFO, not FIFO?!

This reads like a line from a QwQ or Qwen3 CoT chain :)

Re: LLMs are more persuasive than incentivized human persuaders

#60

Post by cwmoore »

justonceokay wrote: post #57
azemetre wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a YouTube video demonstrating this? My only experience with debate is from the TV show Community.

This one is very short but conveys the idea well. Not all debate is like this but it is definitely a real phenomenon https://youtu.be/LMO27PAHjrY

A small step for a man, a giantleapfrogmankind.
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