250 - Words Can Be Used
Words can be used to communicate, manipulate, or any mixture of the two. They can be heavy or hollow, a passionate plea, or AI-generated “bullshit”. Most importantly perhaps, they can be wasted, and often are.
When people operate on false assumptions, and others diligently debunk those assumptions for a protracted period of time, they make a choice, to learn, or to invalidate any claims of intelligence they could otherwise make for themselves.
The poem “The Hollow Men” comes to mind for those who chose to become hollow, and unintelligent. They consume and regurgitate the excrement of LLMs and the disinformation of those who peddle them. They can no longer be called "intelligent”, and as they are not pets then trying to talk with such people could be considered a sign of insanity.
When you begin to recognize these people, know that your words could only be wasted on them, and walk away. What is left once this process has taken shape is the most valuable thing in the world, as well as the thing people often have no idea what to do with, time.
They will continue to try claiming obviously false things, like describing LLMs with words like “reasoning”, “understanding”, “world models”, “guardrails”, and “aligned”, and that will persist with or without any amount of corrective input from those holding competence.
Reality doesn’t offer a narrative that they have any taste for, nor does reality engage in “messaging” to tailor that narrative. It simply is. Perhaps that is why so few people seem to choose it, as every malicious form of un-reality is adversarially optimized, saturating every newsfeed, search engine, and chatbot.
Reality is often bitter, but it doesn’t care and doesn’t change based on what you want to believe. Although we never observe reality directly, many observations and periodic reanalysis from many angles can paint a picture with increasing clarity. It is only when we have that most precious commodity, time, that this numbers among our options. The wise are rarely busy, and the busy are rarely wise.
The Greek temple at Delphi holds the inscription “Γνῶθι σαυτόν” (Know Thyself), offering a reminder that this is not a new problem. Reality is often bitter, but it can at least become both healthy and bitter-sweet to those who consistently prefer it.
