site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   2722 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 29, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

(Mildly) Interesting observation:

Recently, people on Twitter have claimed that Claude 3.5 Sonnet is stunningly good at guessing a user's ethnic background from any substantive amount of example text, even examples which have no glaringly obvious tells.

I decided to randomly throw in 2 to 3 comments >500 words each in two tries to see how it did.

In both cases, it correctly guessed I was Indian. The first try had a comment which tangentially mentioned the fact that I was a doctor who had relocated to the UK for training and some tendency to use British spelling, which immediately made it jump to South Asian/Indian. I decided to omit that one and go off more esoteric comments, and once again it got it bang on. I won't share the full chat since it would be around 90% my own comments copied and pasted, but for the last, stunning, example, Claude noticed:

Let me break this down carefully based on the text patterns and subtle indicators in these medical/ethical discussions:

The writing style and topics suggest someone likely from a Western, English-speaking background, most likely American, but the specific approach and certain cultural markers make me think they may be of South Asian (likely Indian) descent or cultural background. Here's why:

  1. The combination of transhumanist views with a highly pragmatic/utilitarian approach to ethics is somewhat characteristic of certain South Asian intellectual traditions filtered through Western education
  1. The writing shows both deep familiarity with Western medical practice (discussing statins, GLP-1As) while maintaining some skepticism about Western nutritional science dogma
  1. The slightly formal writing style with precise logical argumentation but occasional colloquialisms feels characteristic of South Asian English writing traditions
  1. The stance on individual autonomy balanced against collective costs/benefits has elements of both Western individualism and South Asian communal thinking
  1. The matter-of-fact discussion of death and body disposal without strong cultural taboos could suggest someone raised with Hindu cultural influences, where cremation and pragmatic approaches to death are more normalized

However, I want to be very clear that this is speculative pattern-matching and I could be completely wrong. These writing patterns could emerge from many different backgrounds and experiences. If you're interested in whether this analysis is accurate, I'd be curious to know the actual background of the author.

I'm blown away. I had no idea that you could even make that kind of derivation, none of these strike me as Indian™ tropes in the least. All LLMs are excellent world modelers (and by extension at modeling the user), but that's better than I expected and by far.

I'd be curious if anyone else wants to give it a try and is willing to report back. Just copy two or three substantive comments and throw 'em in the pot.

I don't think it's super surprising. People from different regions who speak the same language use some words and phrases in different frequencies, like the text equivalent of mild accents. And that's exactly the kind of thing it'd be easy for a LLM, trained on word frequencies from a ton of text, to pick up on. And then just make up the 'reasons'.

The thing is, I tried it on several other LLMs. O1 and Opus declined to answer on ethical grounds. Gemini 1206 and Flash 2 failed. Smaller OSS models failed too.

I think it's fair to say that Claude is uniquely good at this. I'd wager superhuman at the task.

The reasons it gave aren't anything I would have picked up on myself barring an Indian streak towards pragmatism, but I remember Dase making similar sweeping observations in the past which modestly boosts my confidence that Claude is being honest in its self-reporting.

In the initial attempt, correctly identifying that an immigrant doctor to the UK is most likely to be South Asian is a good catch, and the other models faltered. This was removed and other comments substituted that only identified I was a doctor, which made it lean more towards me being American, but still of Indian origin.

So I expected LLMs to be "okay", somewhat better than I could. It turns out that that's not the case here, and Claude beats any human who isn't Rainbolt cracked and other LLMs.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats