Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Potential I’ll grant you, but how are significant and delves weasel words?


If you're reading a paper you're already delving. It's clearly filler.


What does "significant" mean? It means whatever I say it means, it's fairly useless as anything to convey a fact without a definition.

If I needed to program a light sensor to signal when it detects "significant" change in lighting, what does that mean? If I don't define it, it means nothing.

--

"Delve" is a style word, another category highlighted in the article as a signature of generated text.


I read it as "statistically significant", i.e. above noise/error level. Sounds pretty well defined to me, at least in a scientific paper.


The reason it is a weasel word is exactly this -- it is a word with an implied meaning, not an implicit one.

We aren't talking about "statistically significant" -- that carries meaning only if the statistic is explained, though.


Significant has a very specific meaning in statistics, which is going to come up in any biomedical research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance


Do you think an LLM takes this into account when it uses the word?


Is the context statistical? If so, then yes.


We clearly disagree, in that case - have you used LLMs?

The person I was replying to linked to a Wiki article on "statistical significance" which is not the word being used or discussed in this convo; did you note that before you replied?

You expect an AI to follow context, but the context switched here and none of the humans are seemingly pointing it out. I'd expect LESS of an LLM, not more.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: