[spiralcoaster]

Is this for real?

This is like someone with no background in physics or engineering wondering "can a LLM predict the trajectory of my golf ball". They then pontificate about how absolutely complex all of the interacting phenomenon must be! What if there was wind? I didn't tell it what elevation I was at! How could it know the air density!? What if the golf ball wasn't a perfect sphere!!? O M G

And then being amazed when it gets the generic shape of a ballistic curve subject to air resistance.

This speaks far more to the ignorance of the author than something mind boggling about the LLM.

[teaearlgraycold]

Most amazement focused at LLMs comes from technical ignorance. Someone getting 100 lines of html that roughly conforms to their prompt is astounding to a muggle. To a web developer it’s a mild convenience.

[shdudns]

To be fair, a golf ball's trajectory is hardly ballistic given its relatively large surface to volume ratio. Never-mind the dimples are there to cause a turbulent boundary layer to lower drag.