zlacker

>>scared+(OP)
There is a certain amount of irony that people try really hard to say that hallucinations are not a big problem anymore and then a company that would benefit from that narrative gets directly hurt by it.

Which of course they are going to try to brush it all away. Better than admitting that this problem very much still exists and isn’t going away anytime soon.

>>nerdjo+A84
https://www.anthropic.com/research/tracing-thoughts-language...

The section about hallucinations is deeply relevant.

Namely, Claude sometimes provides a plausible but incorrect chain-of-thought reasoning when its “true” computational path isn’t available. The model genuinely believes it’s giving a correct reasoning chain, but the interpretability microscope reveals it is constructing symbolic arguments backward from a conclusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

This empirically confirms the “theory of bullshit” as a category distinct from lying. It suggests that “truth” emerges secondarily to symbolic coherence and plausibility.

This means knowledge itself is fundamentally symbolic-social, not merely correspondence to external fact.

Knowledge emerges from symbolic coherence, linguistic agreement, and social plausibility rather than purely from logical coherence or factual correctness.

>>lyngui+Y75
> Knowledge emerges from symbolic coherence, linguistic agreement, and social plausibility rather than purely from logical coherence or factual correctness.

This just seems like a redefinition of the word "knowledge" different from how it's commonly used. When most people say "knowledge" they mean beliefs that are also factually correct.

>>jimbok+RR5
I don’t think it’s so clear cut… Even the most adamant “facts are immutable” person can agree that we’ve had trouble “fact checking” social media objectively. Fluoride is healthy, meta analysis of the facts reveals fluoride may be unhealthy. The truth of the matter is by and large what’s socially cohesive for doctors’ and dentists’ narrative, that “fluoride is fine any argument to the contrary—even the published meta-analysis—is politically motivated nonsense”.

>>dcow+CZ5
You are just saying identifying "knowledge" vs "opinion" is difficult to achieve.

>>jimbok+s66
No, I’m saying I’ve seen reasonbly minded experts in a field disagree over things-generally-considered-facts. I’ve seen social impetus and context shape the understanding of where to draw the line between fact and opinion. I do not believe there is an objective answer. I fundamentally believe Anthropic’s explanation is rooted in real phenomena and not just a self serving statement to explain AI hallucination in a positive quasi-intellectual light.