Kay Ohtie

I figured and I know it’s shorthand, it’s my own frustration that said shorthand has partly enabled the anthropomorphism that it’s enjoyed.

Leave the anthropomorphism to pets, plants, and furries, basically. And cars. It’s okay to call cars like that. They know what they did.

I’ve cried at my psychologist place multiple times but each time was not because of her. It was welling up of deep, un-addressed feelings, or a sense of relief of some kind, or sometimes pure catharsis.

Sessions were often exhausting but because of being emotionally engaging and being about things that were deeply emotional to me. I apologized several times for becoming overwhelmed, feeling weird as a chubby grown man breaking down, but she always reassured in a way that made me feel safe, un-judged.

Her goal was always to help me work through last traumas and keep improving living on my own. And she helped tremendously.

There’s definitely some crap therapists out there, and some who are great at some things but terrible with others. Then there’s some who have studied thoroughly and keep up-to-date to help people, because even if it’s taxing for them, their passion is in helping people.

Don’t dismiss horror stories or the fear; dismissal isn’t helpful. Guiding instead with positives, with some good to help ease the fears, is far more helpful.

whether it’s telling the truth

“whether the output is correct or a mishmash”

“Truth” implies understanding that these don’t have, and because of the underlying method the models use to generate plausible-looking responses based on training data, there is no “truth” or “lying” because they don’t actually “know” any of it.

I know this comes off probably as super pedantic, and it definitely is at least a little pedantic, but the anthropomorphism shown towards these things is half the reason they’re trusted.

That and how much ChatGPT flatters people.

Python is compiled at “runtime” to a similar OS+arch byte-code minus ELF headers that Linux binaries typically have from gcc.

My point was it’s a stupid distinction and worthless when the other points about poor implementations of common language frameworks are plenty on their own is all, and it’s needlessly snobbish.

As far as class variable reference however I wish more languages self-referenced. In my eyes it makes it far clearer at a given line of code glance as to where the hell a value came from as opposed to just by name. I feel a keyword like self::variableName, or maybe more aptly &self as a pointer to reference in C++ would be very clear, like Rust does, which is very much, by the original definition, a programming language instead of scripting. Even Java, which is definitely not a scripting language though is still run inside a virtual machine, uses this. I don’t personally like the term versus self, but eh.

Though if you want a hammer in a screw-driven world look no further than Electron. I think it puts anyone else’s even purposeful attempts at such to shame.

C/C++ are just scripting languages that have to become OS+arch -specific byte-code before execution.

Wait there’s a “that”???

Same. Not married, but my partner always had to put in earplugs when I slept with them because I snored so loud, and they were always silent with their CPAP, which was oddly soothing of a sound. Finally got diagnosed after my doctor AND partner both pressured me to. I sleep fairly soundly most nights now. Even got a new mask type yesterday, a minimal contact full face, and I love it. Just gotta adjust my mustache maintenance routine which…to be fair it was already in dire need of, being bushy and rough and uncomfortable, and that upper edge pushing the hairs right back into my face made that all the more obvious. Oof.

I love the feeling of neurons rewiring to form a new pathway of understanding. Or whatever the hell it is. At 38, it’s a pleasure finding I can still learn and build new skills.

Playing Beat Saber and hitting a plateau only to find my focus starts to evaporate over the course of a hard track as I find that flow, that path to just being in it, each skill plateau merely being temporary, is great. Playing guitar and slowly starting to wire my brain for the pathway for barre chords and faster movement along the frets is a crazy feeling. That sense of finally finding the pathways for singing to operate even SLIGHTLY separately from the rhythm of the guitar, those glimpses of polyrhythm? Addicting.

If you’re able, I hope you can teach him to find that pleasure of not mastery, but evolving strengths. Maybe it’s like an RPG where skills can be leveled up over time the more you use them. I know all too well the frustration of imperfection to start, ADHD during the 90s and the whole “perfect student” pressure created a lot I had to undo and still am, but each time I can break free of that it’s rewarding.

It’s processing data alright, it processes the atomic and cellular structures of grass and fingers into spinach and flesh paste.

And likewise, neither it, nor any LLM, are making decisions at all.

Is a plinko disc making decisions as it tumbles from the top to the bottom through all those pegs? Is the board making the decision? Or is it neither and simply mathematics plus random chance being roped in for randomness? That is exactly what LLMs do.

Terms like “decision” and “lie” and “know” are all things that just do not apply to an LLM, just like your phone keyboard doesn’t know what the fuck “what” and “the” are, it just has a lookup table that includes how “what” is often followed by “is” and “the”, and “the” is frequently followed by “fuck”. But it doesn’t “know” that in any meaning of the word “know”.

This is what we mean when we say not to personify. A training set of data, even factual, just is converted into a series of matrices of vectors that include those patterns, but not the information itself. “Sky is blue” is not something you can grep from the resulting blob, nor the hex equivalent, or anything else. It simply contains indexed patterns that map those arrangements of letters, over and over.

So yes, they’re doing what they’re programmed to do precisely. It’s just that “what they’re programmed to do” is only “mimic patterns of word arrangements”, and not “know facts”. These things work at a far lower level than that concept.

By this logic, a lawnmower “thinks” my fingers are grass.

But that still requires intent, because “knowing” in the way that you or I “know” things is fundamentally different from it only having a pattern matching vector that includes truthful arrangements of words. It doesn’t know “sky is blue”. It simply contains indices that frequently arrange the words “sky is blue”.

Research papers that overlook this are still personifying a series of mathematical matrices as if it actually knows any concepts.

That’s what the person you’re replying to means. These machines don’t know goddamn anything.

More specifically I’d say is go over events and be consistent in recalling then repeatedly. Dreams at least are too shuffled for that unless you’re like, super lucid, and even then it seems to only maintain for so long.

Oh for sure. It’s still only in that like 5% range but what I meant was folks treat it like it’s new and like…nah.

I hate it. I haven’t run into anyone directly doubting my ADHD at all lately, but as a kid I definitely faced that stigma from some other kids saying it’s “fake”, and I think one of the teachers even said it.

I think the bigger difference is “I don’t believe but I also don’t think others are wrong” is a kind of mentality often. I think that and people are used to seeing self-proclaimed atheists being assholes loudly and go “well I’m not that”. Atheism got fucked over by people who just want to be dicks to religious folks.

It explains so much when it’s played up so heavily in talk shows, despite the reality always having been very minor. Honestly I didn’t realize me being gay was that much of a minority either. I kind of wish ADHD had been one in the list; if I remember the reality is like no more than 3-5% of the population but people assume it’s over diagnosed as hell and like…not really. Maybe when there was the initial “rush” of sorts for parents during the 90’s because of it seeming to help “unruly” kids, often just meaning imaginative or creative. In my case my parents didn’t even know until my kindergarten teacher told them I should get evaluated, and yep.

One of the Bioware devs posted that something like 92% of players were heavily to entirely Paragon despite them putting a lot of effort into Renegade content. People want to care about others, even virtual folks. You get invested.