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This post would be more compelling if you multiplied those numbers out yourself to prove that a human can do it. I myself don't feel comfortable to multiply those numbers. I'd say your definition of reasoning excludes most humans, who would simply respond to such a prompt with "nope, can't do it".



> I myself don't feel comfortable to multiply those numbers.

Keep in mind that being super confident in a completely wrong answer is way worse than that is.


Sure, but also very human.

While all the rocket and space nerds I follow hold Musk in high regard for everything related to SpaceX, all of the civil engineering nerds I follow think TBC is a deadly disaster waiting to happen and that hyperloop is pointless, while all the neuroscience nerds I follow think Neuralink is kinda meh.


I believe there is a meaningful difference between an answer that's wrong and an answer that's nonsense.

If I were to multiply those numbers, it's likely that I'd get the wrong outcome because it's a long computation and at every step I have a nonzero chance of making a mistake. My solution, written out, would look like the correct algorithm, but with computational mistakes along the way. My result could be quite far off, but it would be in roughly the same order of magnitude. If I'd get an answer that's not roughly in the order of magnitude that I expect, I would spot it and -- if so motivated -- start over. If you'd look at my work, you would be able to conclude that I understand multiplication but made a computational error.

ChatGPT also diligently describes its work, and it's just nonsense. The final result is smaller than either of the factors. The algorithm it uses makes no sense. On smaller numbers, the algorithm also doesn't make sense, but it can ballpark the outcome. Therefore, it seems to be mostly using estimation rather than computation to get to the answer, and that estimation breaks down completely for very large numbers.




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