I think the author should be introduced to (or reminded of) the tale of the average from the US Air Force [1]. Social reality is high-dimensional and the "normal" thing is actually to be average in some dimensions, but strongly non-average in many others. So a "perfectly average" family would paradoxically be an outlier themselves.

I think this is important, because if his hypothesis is right, then LLMs behave differently here: They really are average in all dimensions. They are the pilots the Air Force thought they had before Daniels made the study.

So if he is right, we'd be changing from a mostly-non-average to a mostly-average society, which would really be a massive change - and probably not a good one IMO.

[1] https://noblestatman.com/uploads/6/6/7/3/66731677/cockpit.fl...

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hackncheese 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Wow incredibly interesting read, got me thinking about design principles and the "average user"

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codethief 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Interesting link! What was the solution? How did they end up redesigning the cockpit?

	▲	xg15 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		From what I understood, it was the beginning of user-adjustable design. Instead of mounting the seat in a fixed height with fixed distance to the pedals, etc, they designed the cockpit so the pilot could adjust everything himself. Basically, what is standard in every car today.

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9991 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In high dimensional spaces, almost all of the volume of a sphere is in a thin shell close to the surface.