[threethirtytwo]

>This is an assertion that is impossible to prove or disprove.

This is a joke right? There are complex systems that exist today that are built exclusively via AI. Is that not obvious?

The existence of such complex systems IS proof. I don't understand how people walk around claiming there's no proof? Really?

[mmustapic]

The assertion was "if you really know how to prompt, give feedback, do small corrections and fix LLM errors, then everything works fine".

It is impossible to prove or disprove because if everything DOES NOT work fine you can always say that the prompts were bad, the agent was not configured correctly, the model was old, etc. And if it DOES work, then all of the previous was done correctly, but without any decent definition of what correct means.

[threethirtytwo]

>And if it DOES work, then all of the previous was done correctly, but without any decent definition of what correct means.

If a program works, it means it's correct. If we know it's correct, it means we have a definition of what correct means otherwise how can we classify anything as "correct" or "incorrect". Then we can look at the prompts and see what was done in those prompts and those would be a "correct" way of prompting the LLM.

[satisfice]

You don’t know it works. That you so glibly speak about products working is proof that your engineering judgment is impaired. You can’t infer the exact contents of a black box merely by looking at outside behavior.

The fundamental fallacy you are exhibiting here is similar to saying that rolling a six sided die and getting a “6” means that you will always get a 6 any time you roll it. And that if you get a 6 and wanted a 6, you must have therefore rolled those dice “correctly” and had you not gotten a 6 that would have meant you rolled them “wrong.”

You know that is not true.

[threethirtytwo]

>You don’t know it works. That you so glibly speak about products working is proof that your engineering judgment is impaired. You can’t infer the exact contents of a black box merely by looking at outside behavior.

I don't know the exact internals of a car. But I can infer my car works by driving it.

>The fundamental fallacy you are exhibiting here is similar to saying that rolling a six sided die and getting a “6” means that you will always get a 6 any time you roll it. And that if you get a 6 and wanted a 6, you must have therefore rolled those dice “correctly” and had you not gotten a 6 that would have meant you rolled them “wrong.”

Bro we rolled that dice MULTIPLE times. It's not a one time thing. And the "rolling" of the die is done with a CHAIN of MULTIPLE qureries strung together. This is not one roll. It's multitudes of data points. Yes results can be inconsistent from a technical standpoint, but the general result converges on a singular trend.

We know that much is true: a statistic and that is at most all we can say about reality as we know it as science formalized can only give a statistic as an answer.

[satisfice]

"I don't know the exact internals of a car. But I can infer my car works by driving it."

No, you can't infer that it "works." Only that it CAN work. The car may be poisoning you with carbon monoxide. Your rear brakes may have become disconnected (happened to me). The antilock braking system may have a faulty sensor that only fails at very low speed, leading to them engaging when making a normal stop, but also preventing the mechanic from seeing the problem, because he didn't listen to your bug report and instead tried to repro the effect with high speed panic stops (also happened to me).

If I use a product and have a good experience, I can conclude that SOMETHING must be going well, but not that EVERYTHING is going well.

This is reasoning about evidence 101.

[threethirtytwo]

>No, you can't infer that it "works." Only that it CAN work. The car may be poisoning you with carbon monoxide. Your rear brakes may have become disconnected (happened to me). The antilock braking system may have a faulty sensor that only fails at very low speed, leading to them engaging when making a normal stop, but also preventing the mechanic from seeing the problem, because he didn't listen to your bug report and instead tried to repro the effect with high speed panic stops (also happened to me).

This is called pedantitic reasoning. You look like a drowning person trying to stay afloat.