School-Cotton

Joined 13 years ago

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Jul 5
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Comment · 3 months ago
> to predict the next token you first need to model the universe

Exactly. The "most likely next" series of tokens, for example, when given the first half of a correct mathematical proof, is the correct rest of the proof. I have never seen anyone define "most likely next token" in such a way that this isn't true.

Comment · 3 months ago
What does "predicting the next token" mean? I ask this every time people say "LLMs are just predicting the next token" and it's maddening that nobody can give a straight answer. Predicting it according to what probability distribution? Every process that produces a sequence of actions (including e.g. a human writing) can be modeled by some probability distribution and therefore their actions are indistinguishable from "predicting the next token" emitted by that distribution.
Comment · 3 months ago
What makes you think the people who own the machines will share their resources with you?
Comment · 3 months ago
This is an annoying style of argument from Wayland fans.

Wayland fan: You need to switch to Wayland. X is deprecated and has been for years! Wayland is the future.

User: Okay, I tried, and it's broken/worse.

Wayland fan: No, you don't understand, Wayland is just a protocol. It's your implementation of Wayland that is at fault, not Wayland itself! Wayland is still great!

User: But X was working fine...

Comment · 3 months ago
It's really not like Emacs/vim. I use X because it works on my setup and always has, whereas Wayland has not, despite Wayland advocates claiming it's ready and X is deprecated for 10+ years.
Comment · 3 months ago
Well yeah, if people are unable to write, then I don't want to read their writing. That sounds harsh but it's the unfortunate reality. I also don't want to look at paintings made by people who can't paint, or listen to music made by people who are tone-deaf.
Comment · 3 months ago
> It enables people to write and publish work that otherwise wouldn't exist.

Why is that a good thing? If you aren't going to bother to write something, other people shouldn't have to bother to read it, so please don't put it in the world at all.

Gatekeeping based on skill and motivation is good!

Comment · 4 months ago
But pi is also "constructed", in the sense that you can write down a constructive definition for it, for example \sqrt{6 \times \sum_{k=1}^\infty \frac{1}{k^2}}.

So I suppose maybe OP meant we haven't proven any number to be normal (or not) that is not designed to be normal (or not) ?

Comment · 4 months ago
What do you mean by "non-constructed" here?
Comment · 4 months ago
Please define what "predicting the next token" means. The next token according to what probability distribution? Couldn't every process that produces text (including humans writing) be modeled as predicting the next token according to some distribution?
Comment · 4 months ago
Why does it have to be a website? Why merely "CLI-inspired" and not actually CLIs?
Comment · 4 months ago
> Should there by attribution for Google or Stack Overflow copy/paste?

Obviously, and I'm a bit taken aback that anyone thinks otherwise.

Comment · 5 months ago
You are absolutely 100% wrong about this. It is entirely possible in the US to enter into contracts that limit your rights, including freedom of speech. People do this routinely, and it is enforceable.

The reason you can't give away your kidney in an employment contract is because there is a specific law banning that: the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, which bans transferring a human organ in exchange for valuable consideration.

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