[TJSomething]

That's one of the things. Even in human-written fiction, the depths of any character you read about is pure smoke and mirrors. People regularly perceive fictional characters as if they are real people (and it's fun to do so), but it would be impossible for an author to simulate a complete human being in their head.

It seems that LLMs operate a lot like I would in improv. In a scene, I might add, "This is the fifth time you've driven your car into a ditch this year." I don't know what the earlier four times were like. No one there had any idea I was even going to say that. I just say it as a method of increasing stakes and creating the illusion of history in order to serve a narrative purpose. I'll often include real facts to serve the verisimilitude of a scene, but I don't have time to do real fact checking. I need to keep the momentum going and will gladly make up facts as a suits the narrative and my character.

[exe34]

> it would be impossible for an author to simulate a complete human being in their head.

unless it's a self-insert? or do you reckon even then it'll be a lofi simulation, because there real world input is absent and the physics/social aspect is still being simulated?

[jdietrich]

Humans just aren't very good at understanding their own motivations. Marketers know this implicitly. Almost nobody believes "I drink Coca-Cola because billions of dollars of advertising have conditioned me to associate Coke with positive feelings on a subconscious level", even if they would recognise that as a completely plausible explanation for why other people like Coca-Cola.

[Terr_]

> unless it's a self-insert?

In the case of LLMs, there is zero reason to believe the LLM is capable of doing that--and a bunch of reasons against it.

However the concept spreads because some humans are deliberately fostering the illusion.

[rcxdude]

>but it would be impossible for an author to simulate a complete human being in their head.

Perhaps not (depending on your exact definition of 'complete'), but I'd argue as social creatures, humans have brains that are fairly well optimised for simulating other humans (and many authors report that their characters become quite firmly formed in their head, to the point of being able to converse with them and know directly what they would do in any given circumstance, even if that's inconvenient for the plot). In fact, we frequently pretend non-humans are humans because it makes it easier for us to simulate their behaviour.

[Terr_]

> It seems that LLMs operate a lot like I would in improv. In a scene, I might add, "This is the fifth time you've driven your car into a ditch this year.

Right, and you also possess the ability to quickly search and plagiarize from a compressed cliff-notes version of all the documents other humans made, including other plays and stories where one person is talking about another person in a car crash.

So you don't even need to imagine concepts and then describe them in words, you can just *yoink* the exact joke another comedian said about a car crash without even fully reading it.