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"Turtles all the way down" is a phrase of, I think, unknown origin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles

"Turtles all the way down" is a phrase of, I think, unknown origin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down) about infinite regress or trying to patch up some bad theory by appealing to itself. Someone claims that what holds the Earth in place is that it sits atop a giant turtle, and a skeptic asks what holds the turtle up, and the response is that it's turtles all the way down. Personally I think this is a bad characterization of using LLMs to fix up LLMs because while you can never guarantee results this way (as the quoted line claims here, which is worthy of criticism), it is, in practice, useful to use LLMs on top of LLMs. And there's no infinite regress. Auto-mode in Claude Code, for example, seems to me like it's been successful at making the system more safe than --dangerously-bypass-permissions without prompting the user for permissions constantly.

dozerly 1mo ago
There are certainly uses where it’s good enough, but you can never be 100% certain of correctness in the way that people claim you can by stacking N layers of these models. What triggered my response was the “just review the output with another LLM and it’s perfectly correct”
TooSmugToFail 1mo ago
I would have bet it’s a Terry Pratchett quote, and it kinda is: “"The turtle moves," said Didactylos. "The turtle is a giant reptile that swims through space. It doesn't have to stand on anything. Swimming is what turtles do. The idea that it has to stand on another turtle, and that turtle has to stand on another turtle, is just silly. It's turtles all the way down, and that's a logical absurdity." Small Gods, 1992
- furyofantares 1mo ago
  He's using it but if you CTRL+F the linked wikipedia page for 1967 you get someone using that exact phrase, or for 1882 above you get a pretty close version.

dozerly 1mo ago

There are certainly uses where it’s good enough, but you can never be 100% certain of correctness in the way that people claim you can by stacking N layers of these models. What triggered my response was the “just review the output with another LLM and it’s perfectly correct”

TooSmugToFail 1mo ago

I would have bet it’s a Terry Pratchett quote, and it kinda is: “"The turtle moves," said Didactylos. "The turtle is a giant reptile that swims through space. It doesn't have to stand on anything. Swimming is what turtles do. The idea that it has to stand on another turtle, and that turtle has to stand on another turtle, is just silly. It's turtles all the way down, and that's a logical absurdity." Small Gods, 1992

furyofantares 1mo ago
He's using it but if you CTRL+F the linked wikipedia page for 1967 you get someone using that exact phrase, or for 1882 above you get a pretty close version.