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by derrak 97 days ago
All compilations do what I intended to do when I wrote the C code. But each compilation does the intended thing in a different way.

The point I’m making is that determinism isn’t the key difference between compilers and LLMs. The key difference is that LLMs do not give semantic guarantees. I don’t care if they give the same output on the same input, just as I don’t care very much which C compiler I use.
1 comments
kikkupico 97 days ago
> The point I’m making is that determinism isn’t the key difference between compilers and LLMs

I think you misunderstood. Determinism is the the difference between natural language and code. It's not about LLMs vs compilers.

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derrak 96 days ago
In my mind the most salient difference between code and natural language is that code has a formal semantics.

I’m still not entirely sure what people mean when they call a formal/natural language deterministic. As we’ve discussed, it can’t possibly mean that it has a single valid interpretation, since this is untrue of C code. If it means that code has a _precise set_ of interpretations, then I wouldn’t use the word deterministic for that.

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