[root_axis]

> People aren't much different

Yes they are. There is absolutely zero evidence that friendlier humans are more prone to mistakes or conspiracy theories.

However, even if that were true, LLMs are not humans, anthropomorphizing them is not a helpful way to think about them.

[cjbgkagh]

Would be better to think of it as ‘agreeableness’ and agreeable people are more likely to shift their views to agree with those they are talking to.

[js8]

I would call it obedience, and it's not the same as friendliness.

The difference, in a repeated prisoner dilemma: Friendliness is cooperating on the first move, and then conditionally. Obedience is always cooperating.

[cjbgkagh]

Agreeableness is a Big Five personality trait so a lot of the formal research into personalities uses it as one of the dimensions.

[js8]

Yeah but I would argue it's different from both friendliness and obedience.

[cjbgkagh]

Do you have a standard and a body of work you can point to in an effort to aid with communication these thoughts to others? At the very least there should be a reversible projection to the Big 5 standard.

[js8]

I don't think Big5 applies to LLMs. They don't share people's morality or common sense, and the traits are predicated on that.

BTW: https://claude.ai/share/78a13035-0787-42a5-8643-398b26887e42

[thaumasiotes]

> and agreeable people are more likely to shift their views to agree with those they are talking to

Agreeable people are more likely to shift their expressed views to agree with those they are talking to.

If they're more likely to shift their views, we call them "gullible", not "agreeable".

But this is a distinction you can't apply to language models, which don't have views.

[cjbgkagh]

Agreeable people are also the most suggestible in that they are the most likely to actually change their views. These traits share the same axis.

[root_axis]

My point is that LLMs are not humans, so projecting intuitions from human psychology onto LLMs is not helpful.

[cjbgkagh]

Your point was that humans did not display such behavior even though it has been extensively studied and they do. There is plenty of evidence that highly agreeable people will agree with you on incorrect ideas and conspiracy theories. The name of the trait ‘agreeableness’ is what you’ll need to find such evidence.

[danielmarkbruce]

The claim isn't friendly are more prone, it's that they don't push back. Thus idiots with conspiracy theories think people agree with them, validating their ideas.