> The brilliant thing about the parent’s comment about the “shape” of the answer is that it reveals how much humans have (uh, historically, now, I guess) relied on the shape of information to convey its trustworthiness.
This is the basis of Rumor. If you tell a story about someone that is entirely false but sounds like something they're already suspected of or known to do, people will generally believe it without verification since the "shape" of the story fits people's expectations of the subject.
To date I've decried the choice of "hallucination" instead of "lies" for false LLM output, but it now seems clear to me that LLMs are a literal rumor mill.
> The brilliant thing about the parent’s comment about the “shape” of the answer is that it reveals how much humans have (uh, historically, now, I guess) relied on the shape of information to convey its trustworthiness.
This is the basis of Rumor. If you tell a story about someone that is entirely false but sounds like something they're already suspected of or known to do, people will generally believe it without verification since the "shape" of the story fits people's expectations of the subject.
To date I've decried the choice of "hallucination" instead of "lies" for false LLM output, but it now seems clear to me that LLMs are a literal rumor mill.