[irthomasthomas]

But you cannot practice kindness towards a computer program. A computer is incapable of receiving it.

We practice kindness between humans because of the law of reciprocity. You be kind hoping the other person will reciprocate. That is the social contract. AI cannot participate in this, yet.

Edit: Kindness REQUIRES two living beings, one to give and one to receive. If there is no receiver, there is no kindness.

Apparently some people get a dopamine hit from roleplaying kindness toward inanimate objects. Whatever turns you on, no hang ups here. For me, that dopamine hit is not worth the 4% intelligence tax.

[ricogallo]

> We practice kindness between humans because of the law of reciprocity.

Yet, this law is so embedded in us that practicing kindness even towards a rock makes us feel good.

So practice kindness, first and foremost for yourself.

[irthomasthomas]

I do. But only towards entities capable of receiving it. Otherwise I am deceiving myself, and projecting intelligence that is not there. We (some of us) practice kindness automatically, but that trait was likely selected due to the benefit it gives us by activating the law of reciprocity.

Edit: Also, your feeling good after being kind essentially completes the transaction. But I know being kind to an LLM has zero impact on that LLM and I feel silly pretending it does.

[daymanstep]

If by practicing kindness towards rocks, you become more inclined to act kindly towards other humans, then surely that is a net win.

[cwmoore]

And if instead, by anthropomorphizing inanimate objects we eliminate the affect of actual empathy, we obviate the need for being human at all.

[irthomasthomas]

Is there a cost? For LLMs this article claims the cost is ~5%

[saulapremium]

>Kindness REQUIRES two living beings, one to give and one to receive. If there is no receiver, there is no kindness.

I guess, in some pendantic interpretation, but that doesn't seem relevant. Whether I am "practicing" or "roleplaying", I do it too, and I don't expect reciprocity.

[irthomasthomas]

Your subconscious does. It is a trait selected by evolution for a reason. It builds stronger communities and improves survival rate. But none of that is applicable to LLMs. I am disputing that it is worth anything more than a temporary dopamine hit to pretend to be kind to an LLM and suffer 4% lower intelligence for it.

[opem]

> You be kind hoping.....will reciprocate. > Your subconscious does.

Do you have any evidence to back up your arbitrary claims? Even with decades of research, people are still unsure about these emotions yet you think your pedantic assumption about kindness is the most and only correct interpretation of it!

Anyways, I highly doubt this discussion is relevant here.

[stratos123]

You're making an implicit assumption that the way humans implement a trait is the same as the reason why that trait evolved. But of course, that's very wrong - evolution overall completely failed at making humans care about evolutionary fitness. A human engineer designing a species might have them only experience kindness towards those who can reciprocate, but evolution didn't do that with humans, because evolution is far dumber than that.

[ahknight]

Kindness is that, yes. Fundamentally, though, it's about being considerate in one's actions so as to not harm others. If someone truly believes that acting a certain way at any point risks their ability to reliably be kind in others, then it's a social kindness to be kind and considerate in all actions.

I'll not reach for the easy response and say "Be kind to the Earth" fails your definition without reaching for pedantry with "the Earth has living things" because the Earth is instead a wet rock that cannot understand kindness, yet we show it.

[cwmoore]

Gaia Hypothesis might like to have a conversation about your wet rock.

[dpoloncsak]

While not strictly relevant, please remember that we are rapidly approaching a world where any communication you have with a 'representative' of a company will likely be an LLM masquerading as an employee, but that does not give you license to treat anyone you suspect of being a bot poorly.

It's not the bot im worried about, it's the fact I may be wrong, and I don't want to be rude to an under-paid guy working overseas.

[no-name-here]

> Kindness REQUIRES two living beings, one to give and one to receive.

Would a plant or insect fall under this definition?

[Havoc]

> But you cannot practice kindness towards a computer program.

And yet rubber duck debugging is a thing

[moralestapia]

What's your definition of rubber duck debugging?

Mine does not have anything to do with being kind to a computer program.

[dnautics]

> A computer is incapable of receiving it

Citation please.

Without examining the corpus, it's entirely possible that the training corpus has better results when you are kind to it, so one can imagine a situation where "reception of kindness" is meaningful, and in principle if you were an AI provider, you could RLHF your way to "being rude gets you worse results" as a means to train the human users.

[irthomasthomas]

dude... you are commenting on a research post showing a 4.8% DECLINE when being polite vs rude in prompts.

[dnautics]

80% vs 84.8%. run a chi squares test on that