[tsimionescu]

> People do use textbooks like that all the time in the experimental setup tested (essentially an open book quiz).

What open book quizzes allow you to leave all answers blank with no penalty? An open book quiz is very different from the experimental setup tested here.

[pegasus]

That difference is not essential to the question at hand. An open book test based on an erroneous book would give the same results as this test, even if it wouldn't penalize blank answers.

[what]

An open book test would only be given where the book is the reference material and would be considered correct? It’s more like saying you can google the answers and you blindly trust the SEO slop in the first result.

[Dylan16807]

> An open book test would only be given where the book is the reference material and would be considered correct?

If you're saying they wouldn't suggest a book with considered-wrong answers in a real test, then they wouldn't suggest an LLM they know gives lots of wrong answers either.

[vineyardmike]

Many tests penalize incorrect answers worse than blank answers.

As a famous example, you were incentivized to leave questions blank on the American SATs (until somewhat recently).