“Post Hoc Rationalisation”

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/tippling/2013/11/14/post-hoc-r...

No. People have an inner monologue, partial results and ideas and they remember that.

If they've worked some minutes/hours/weeks on something and you ask them why did they do that, they will either answer honestly and truthfully, lie, or say "I missed that/didn't seem important so I just chose something at random".

None of these cases are similar to how AI works.

I see this observation frequently, and I dislike how it often has the unsound subtext of: "Therefore something is going well or at least not too badly."

If you build a robot where a pressurized hose leaks causing fluid to destroy part of the circuitry, we don't praise it as progress towards the human ideal of having brain aneurysms. A similar failure-path is not a reliable indicator of a similar success-path.

I kind of want my computer systems to be more reliable and predictable than paying an intern to manage something and asking why they messed up

AFAIK this really is true. I've seen some videos about patients who had the connecting part between the left and right halves of the brain cut as a (archaic) treatment for epilepsy.

While it did help the epilepsy, their brain was essentially two brains controlling two halves of the body. With one controlling speech. There were experiments where one eye was shown some instruction text, the corresponding hand performed that instruction, and when asked why they dix that action, the speaking half just made up some plausible, yet completely wrong reason, just like an LLM.

People don't make rational decisions that make rationalized decisions. Is there any thought to pulling your hand off a hot surface?

Every time I hear someone complain about hallucinations, I laugh at the total lack of self awareness about our species. Humans are just as bad (now, probably worse) at telling the truth, whether due to intention or poor memory.