Well, yes, this is a hard philosophical problem, finding out Truth, and LLMs just side step it entirely, going instead for "looks good to me".

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visarga 3 days ago | parent [-]

There is no Truth, only ideas that stood the test of time. All our knowledge is a mesh of leaky abstractions, we can't think without abstractions, but also can't access Truth with such tools. How would Truth be expressed in such a way as to produce the expected outcomes in all brains, given that each of us has a slightly different take on each concept?

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cozyman 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

"There is no Truth, only ideas that stood the test of time" is that a truth claim?

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ben_w 2 days ago | parent [-]

It's an idea that's stood the test of time, IMO.

Perhaps there is truth, and it only looks like we can't find it because only some of us are magic?

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scoofy 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I studied philosophy. Got multiple degrees. The conversations are so incredibly exhausting… not because they are sophomoric, but only because people rarely have a good faith discussion of them.

Is there Truth? Probably. Can we access it, maybe but we can never be sure. Does that mean Truth doesn’t exist? Sort of, but we can still build skyscrapers.

Truth is a concept. Practical knowledge is everywhere. Whether they correspond to each other is at the heart of philosophy: inductive empiricism vs deductive rationalism.

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ben_w 2 days ago | parent [-]

I can definitely sympathise with that. This whole forum — well, the whole internet, but also this forum — must be an Eternal September* for you.

Given the differences between US and UK education, my A-level in philosophy (and not even a very good grade) would be equivalent to fresher, not even sophomore, though looking up the word (we don't use it conventionally in the UK) I imagine you meant it in the other, worse, sense?

Hmm. While you're here, a question: As a software developer, when using LLMs I've observed that they're better than many humans (all students and most recent graduates) but still not good. How would you rate them for philosophy? Are they simultaneously quite mediocre and also miles above conversations like this?

* On the off-chance this is new to you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

	▲	scoofy 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It’s definitely not an eternal September situation. It’s just hard problems, unsolvable really, that people have tidy solutions for, rather than dealing with the fact that they are very hard, and we probably aren’t going to know. LLM’s at philosophy? I’ve never thought about it. I have to assume they’re terrible, but who knows. From an analytic perspective, it would have cognition backwards. Language is just pointing at things so the algos wouldn’t really have access to reality.

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cozyman 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

so something being believed for a long period of time makes it true?

	▲	ben_w 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You might as well treat it as such, but you can never be quite sure. Both for "being believed" in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Münchhausen_trilemma … and also for your own personal observations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

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svieira 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A shared grounding as a gift, perhaps?