[aschwtzr]

I thought of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Exactitude_in_Science and its relation to language, which is discussed by Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. Large Language Models are the efforts of mapmakers to encapsulate reality in a way that is ultimately futile.

[staunton]

> Large Language Models are the efforts of mapmakers to encapsulate reality in a way that is ultimately futile.

What's futile?

Nobody is trying to "encapsulate all of reality". Trying to do that would be futile but succeeding would also be useless.

[aschwtzr]

That was poorly worded, what I meant is that some people in general seem to think of LLMs as proxies for reality or truth., and Musk himself says he wants to build "truthGPT" https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/17/23687440/elon-musk-truthg...

That's the part I think is futile, because reality and truth are vast and moving targets there's no way to build a functional map.