7 ms·
Isn’t exploration vs exploitation about the decision-making process, not about the actual reality in the world around you? It doesn’t matter if they are secretl
by jb1991 8d ago
Isn’t exploration vs exploitation about the decision-making process, not about the actual reality in the world around you? It doesn’t matter if they are secretly identical or not. The exploration/exploitation trade-off is in the person making those decisions.
- vintermann 8d agoI don't understand what you suggest that implies?
- ben_w 8d agoI think they're saying that while it doesn't matter, the agent and human "do not actutally know" that it does not matter. Philosophy sometimes says that knowledge is a "justified true belief"*; in this experiment, agents and humans have incorrectly justified a false belief that some applicants are better for certain roles. * other times, it says this isn't good enough
- antonvs 6d agoRe your asterisk, the justified true belief (JTB) criteria are considered necessary, but no longer considered sufficient as a definition of knowledge. Because of that, JTB is often treated as a useful first approximation. It's easy to see why the JTB criteria are necessary: Belief: if you don't believe it then you can't count it as knowledge. Truth: a belief is not (valid) knowledge if it's false. Justification: accidentally getting the right answer isn't normally knowledge. But the original claim for JTB was that it was a sufficient definition of knowledge. Later critiques like Gettier's showed that this is not generally true, i.e. there are edge cases for which it fails. In many scenarios, those edge cases don't matter much. So you end up with JTB being an imperfect but useful definition.
- beepbooptheory 7d agoSeems quite odd to cite all of philosophy as saying something, as if it were a single person with contradictory beliefs.. And then its like you are both saying the justification is incorrect and the belief is false, so its not really like the bare nuance of the concept is adding to the point. Why feel the need to appeal to an (imaginary) authority at all in this case? "Oh well if philosophy said it, I better be taking this seriously!"
- ben_w 7d agoI think you misunderstood my point, just as the other commentor misunderstood one level up. Perhaps a different approach to explain the problem here: "It ain't what they don't know, it's what they know for sure that just ain't so".
- beepbooptheory 7d agoHm ok, but how are you mapping this, like, epistemological concept to what you are responding to re exploration/exploitation? Has exploration happened or not if it amounts to false beliefs? The whole point tradeoff doesn't seem to make sense if the person in fact can't actually successfully explore! Or even if there the possibility of that. But it is also very likely I am misunderstanding!
- ben_w 7d agoA flat distribution is still a distribution, and correct exploration would have revealed that the distribution is flat. The agent appears to have gained the false belief that it has learned something and done some exploring, when in fact it has not. c.f. Sally-Anne test: Sally thinks she knows where her toy is, we know that she doesn't, and indeed couldn't. The LLM (and humans in similar conditions) think they know what the distribution is, we know that they don't.
- beepbooptheory 7d agoReally not trying to be reductive here, but it feels like all you are trying to articulate here is that the LLM was wrong in this instance about something. Is that right? Is there something more we need to understand?
- ben_w 7d ago> Is there something more we need to understand? Only if you're interested in the specific failure modes that LLMs have. That's all this story is.
- deleted 8d ago[deleted]