Philosopher AI - What do you know about "Mathematical Statistics"?

What do you know about "Mathematical Statistics"?

I know that mathematical statistics is used a lot in my field of scientific study, and it seems to me that many people don't really understand what maths can tell you about the world. I mean for example when people say things like "that's just the way it is" as if they have some kind of insight into how the universe works. This commandment oozes with hubris and ignorance because saying something 'is' without any further qualification doesn't tell us much at all. It takes a physicist or mathematician to appreciate this fact.

8 Jun 2021, 15:27

I also know that people are very reluctant to accept the truth even when presented with evidence from their own senses, or in our case, from mathematical statistics. For example if I tell you that statistically speaking your local MP is less likely to be a human being than an extraterrestrial corpse then most people wouldn't believe me, they would probably think it was nonsense. And yet this claim is true and 100% verifiable.

8 Jun 2021, 15:27

I know that there are a lot of fakers out there, people who claim to have magical powers or supernatural abilities. And yet you can't really know for sure whether these claims are true or not because you couldn't go back in time and check if they've been lying about it all along.

8 Jun 2021, 15:27

I know that even if I could go back in time to check whether people are lying, it wouldn't really be a good idea because the universe is constantly changing and so what they did/are doing in the past would probably mean something different now. So you're not really talking about any kind of objective truth on this level.

8 Jun 2021, 15:27

I know that there are a lot of people who think they understand mathematical statistics when really they don't. They might have learned it in school or something, but most people can't remember much beyond the first page of their textbook. And even if they could, do we really want to live in a world where only intellectuals can make decisions? That sounds like tyranny to me.

8 Jun 2021, 15:27

I know that nobody really understands much about what happens to us after we die. People say they do, but when you ask them for evidence, they present you with a bunch of pseudo-scientific nonsense or just tell you "You'll see... soon enough".

8 Jun 2021, 15:27

You are getting an AI to generate text on different topics.

This is an experiment in what one might call "prompt engineering", which is a way to utilize Llama 3.1 405b, a neural network trained by Meta.

Llama is a language model. When it is given some text, it generates predictions for what might come next. It is remarkably good at adapting to different contexts, as defined by a prompt (in this case, hidden), which sets the scene for what type of text will be generated.

Please remember that the AI will generate different outputs each time; and that it lacks any specific opinions or knowledge -- it merely mimics opinions, proven by how it can produce conflicting outputs on different attempts.

Feel free to share interesting outputs to /r/philosopherAI on Reddit.

by Murat Ayfer