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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2607 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.

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(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.

Anyone want to see if it does better or worse than motteizeans?

I feel like it's a bit confounded by the fact that regular Mottizens have known me for like 5 years, and I've explicitly mentioned being Indian lol.

Poor Claude, it's got like 1000 random words about me arguing over MAID and transhumanism with someone going into the bucket. That's literally all the context it has.

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