alt Hacker NewsLike thinking LLMs aren’t magic* because you utter “it’s just predicting the next token!” I’d argue, only slightly tongue in cheek, that thinking of LLMs as magical leads to more effective use than the predicting-next-token explanation.
See also Frank Keil’s “illusion of explanatory depth.”
* magic not as “unreal,” but in the classical conception of a living magic world where mental intentions can manifest physical realities
To go a bit further, perhaps behaviors are less about the mechanism than they are about the belief. If one believed such a thing, then finding repeatable mechanisms could be perceived as an effort in fortifying belief in the mind as much or more than establishing physical conditions necessary for the behavior to occur again.