Consensus always pulls towards mush.

· Bits and Bobs 3/10/25
  • Consensus always pulls towards mush.
    • The centroid, the average.
    • Notably, that centroid might not itself be a viable point.
    • LLMs are inherently a kind of planetary-scale consensus mechanism.
      • They can give outputs that sometimes are at the centroid of a phenomena but not themselves part of the distribution.
    • For example, if you ask LLMs for "chicken paillard" recipes, they will do a good job.
      • The average of all chicken paillard recipes is a coherent centroid.
    • If you ask it to give you a "chili recipe" it is much more likely to give you a disgusting slop, asymptotically approaching vomit in appearance and taste.
    • Recipes that are published in cookbooks or even shared on TikTok had a real human in the loop asserting, "I tried this and it was good."
    • The LLM can't try the recipe itself, so it can serve you up something gross without realizing it.

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