site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2784 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 15, 2025

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.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I have similar experiences, but the LLMs will correct their correct answer to be incorrect. I now just view the whole project as useful for creative idea generation, but any claims on the real world need to be fact checked. No lab seems to be able to get these things to stop confabulating, and I'm astonished people trust them as much as they seem to.

Just to round out the space of anecdotes a little more: when I've called out LLMs in the past I've sometimes had them "correct" their incorrect answer to still be incorrect but in a different way.

(has anyone seen an LLM correct their correct answer to be correct but in a different way? that would fill the last cell of the 2x2 possibility space)

They're still very useful in cases where checking an answer for correctness is much easier than coming up with a possible answer to begin with. I love having a search engine where my queries can be vague descriptions and yet still come up with a high rate of reasonable results. You just can't skip the "checking an answer for correctness" step.

Yes this used to be commonplace in my experience. One should always at the very least triangulate results with other sources if the stakes are high.

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