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Don't be fooled–LLMs don't reason

75 points · 159 comments · leopoldj

  1. dahart · · focus · HN ↗
    > while the chains of thought chatbots produce look like deliberation, research has demonstrated that the bots often concoct them after the fact, reaching an answer by one route but reporting another.

    Doesn’t research show humans often do this too? There’s a pretty famous paper from the 70s about that [1], and lots of subsequent evidence. We also have choice blindness [2], we confabulate reasons [3], and we even change our choices (sometimes negatively) after trying to introspect [4].

    [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;publication&#x2F;229060046_Telling_more_than_we_can_know_Verbal_reports_on_mental_processes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;publication&#x2F;229060046_Telling_m...

    [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;16210542&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;16210542&#x2F;

    [3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC5986841&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC5986841&#x2F;

    [4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;2016668&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;2016668&#x2F;

    1. tim333 · · focus · HN ↗
      A long noted observation. To quote Benjamin Franklin:

      “So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.”

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