Comment

Comment by distalx

A transmission error has a strictly contained, predictable blast radius. If a packet drops, the system knows exactly how to handle it: it throws a timeout, drops a connection, or asks for a retry. The worst-case scenario is known.

A reasoning error has an infinite, unpredictable blast radius. When an LLM hallucinates, it doesn't fail safely but it writes perfectly compiling code that does the wrong thing. That "wrong thing" might just render a button incorrectly, or it might silently delete your production database, or open a security backdoor.

You can build reliable abstractions over failures that are predictable and contained. You cannot abstract away unpredictable destruction.

parent distalx 6 months ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton