co-coxeter group

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

chemists: don't think they know enough to be an authority in other fields

biologists: aren't even sure they know enough to be an authority in their own firld

this is emmett and cullen they are best friends

Dog: :) fine, thanks

yeah I don't think you need LLMs for that actually, you can just have a system that lets each party rank activities based on their level of enthusiasm/reluctance and then recommends activities of mutual interest, solving the Abilene problem (where nobody really wants to do something but they end up doing it because they thing somebody else does):

although it's vulnerable to the Tinder problem of saying yes to everything to reveal the other party's preferences / saying no to everything to avoid revealing your own preferences, so it requires a degree of trust and vulnerability.

where an LLM might become more useful is when you want to offload more agency for telling you to do the things you already want to do to a neutral third party, a dungeon master if you will, potentially to solve the opposite of the Abilene problem where everyone wants something that nobody is willing to take the lead on:

(not everything can be solved this way of course!)

this system would start out similar to the above, describing various activities in confidence to the LLM, not to discover the zone of agreement with someone else but for both of you to be directed by the LLM instead of each other, to achieve what you both want.

Moving on! The feasibility of LLM as virtual dom depends, in part, upon whether the sentience (let alone anthropomorphism) of someone giving orders contributes to what makes them feel like orders (e.g. social microconsequences of noncompliance, the appearance of intent/whim, etc.)

Alice: I know the SECRET VALUES of X and Y. I will sell you a SECRET VALUE for 1 gold coin.

Alice: But only one.

Alice: I will not tell you both secret values because my kink is being cagey.

Bob: I would like to learn one of these SECRET VALUES for sex related reasons. Here is my gold coin.

Alice: Okay Bob. Which SECRET VALUE would you like me to tell you?

Bob: Propriety prevents me from saying, because everyone knows I have a depraved X fetish or a depraved Y fetish, but not both.

Smutty the smut pixie: Hi Alice and Bob, here's some orange ink and some blue ink that I just invented!

Smutty the smut pixie: this ink is completely invisible unless you use the orange spell or blue spell, which I also just invented and nobody knows!

Smutty -> Alice: *gives ink*

Smutty -> Bob (50% of time): psst Bob, memorise this, it's the orange spell for revealing orange ink! *gives spell*

Smutty -> Bob (50% of time): psst Bob, memorise this, it's the blue spell for revealing blue ink! *gives spell*

Smutty the smut pixie: Okay I just gave Bob one of the two spells!

Smutty the smut pixie: *flies into a wall* ouch!

Bob: Hi Alice, I would like to buy the SECRET VALUE of X written in orange ink and the SECRET VALUE of Y written in blue ink.

Alice: ...but what if Smutty gives you the second spell later?

Bob: *pointing* Smutty is dead.