[HN Gopher] What is Temperature in NLP?
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       What is Temperature in NLP?
        
       Author : recuter
       Score  : 218 points
       Date   : 2023-03-13 04:33 UTC (18 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (lukesalamone.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (lukesalamone.github.io)
        
       | bflesch wrote:
       | How can the author work for a company like TikTok with obvious
       | chinese censorship?
        
       | qwertox wrote:
       | An explanation on what `logit` is, how it is obtained, would have
       | been nice.
       | 
       | Is it the count of occurrences of the word following "the mouse
       | ate the"?
        
         | drexlspivey wrote:
         | Logits are the raw predictions of the model that you then need
         | to normalize to turn into probabilities (that sum to 1). You
         | can do that is with the softmax function.
        
         | spywaregorilla wrote:
         | Machine learning models don't do well with math that has hard
         | bounds at 1 and 0 (probability). So we use the log of the odds
         | ratio instead. This function goes from negative infinity to
         | positive infinity. And is mappable back to 0 and 1. So as you
         | get closer to infinity log odds, you get closer to 100%
         | certainty that your answer is A.
         | 
         | It's just ln(p/(1-p)) under the hood.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logit
        
           | abecedarius wrote:
           | Yeah -- the choice of temperature corresponds to the base of
           | the logarithm. When you think of probabilities in the log-
           | odds representation, a bayesian update means adding an
           | increment. https://arbital.com/p/bayes_log_odds/
        
           | albystein wrote:
           | this is not what language models typically output as logits
           | though. perhaps the term now is being misused and it's
           | causing a lot of confusion
        
         | albystein wrote:
         | Basically, logits are the raw outputs of the last linear layer
         | of a neural network just before the softmax(for multi-class
         | classification tasks) or the sigmoid(for binary classification
         | tasks) is applied to the outputs.
        
       | clbrmbr wrote:
       | > A higher temperature th "excites" previously low probability
       | outputs.
       | 
       | I found this misleading, because the low probability outputs were
       | already excited. Consider that the first softmax formula has no
       | theta in the denominator, so it's equivalent to theta=1 (max
       | temperature).
       | 
       | The way I explained temperature to a colleague last week was:
       | temperature of one results in drawing from the posterior
       | distribution, while temperature of zero gives the argmax that
       | distribution. Intermediate temperatures get some blend between
       | them.
       | 
       | But now I see that that hand-wavy description doesn't explain
       | what happens to the runner ups to the argmax, which this site
       | beautifully does.
        
         | LudwigNagasena wrote:
         | The metaphor is straightforward: higher temperature ~ higher
         | entropy ~ less information ~ probabilities are further from
         | certainty (0 and 1). I think the connection originally comes
         | from Boltzmann machines and simulated annealing that were based
         | off statistical physics.
        
       | mlazos wrote:
       | I get that temperature comes from the connection to physics but
       | this seems like an overly complex explanation to a relatively
       | simple formula. If you have a softmax and you multiply the input
       | by some factor, if that factor forces the exponent to approach
       | zero you're approaching the uniform distribution, and if you make
       | the exponent approach infinity you get the arg max. Curious if
       | others feel the same way.
        
         | rickdeckard wrote:
         | Are you suggesting that your explanation is more simple?
         | (genuine question)
         | 
         | I find "temperature" quite intuitive as a metaphor in that
         | context. It doesn't even require me to think of the formula to
         | understand "the higher the temperature, the more it will create
         | a stew of the results"
        
         | albystein wrote:
         | This is exactly how I understand it. Although, I feel the
         | thermodynamics analogy might be more intuitive to most people
        
       | lxe wrote:
       | From what I understand top_k is the number of words it generates
       | to pick from, and the top_p is the percentage of the top words it
       | will use as the next word, correct?
        
         | albystein wrote:
         | I think it depends on the sampling/decoding method. Also,
         | perhaps you could elaborate more on what you mean by top_p
        
       | ivxvm wrote:
       | That's really a great explanation. Short but detailed, rigorous
       | and visual. Really hits the spot.
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | Ah the make it more psychopathic button
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | spywaregorilla wrote:
       | I feel like it would be have been a lot more intuitive calling it
       | something like "Capriciousness"
       | 
       | It's not "randomness". It's more like "willingness to choose less
       | likely answers".
        
       | taylorius wrote:
       | Roughly analogous process to the temperature parameter in
       | simulated annealing, I think. Low temperature equates to a greedy
       | algorithm (i.e. always take the most likely next word fragment) -
       | higher temps. increase the probability of taking a lower
       | probability fragment.
        
         | albystein wrote:
         | I'm not sure if comparing it to the greedy algorithm is the
         | correct way to think about it. Even after applying the
         | temperature, if you use greedy decoding, you'll still pick the
         | output that has the highest probability. Where the concept of
         | temperature is effective though is when you use a sampling
         | method like sampling from a multinomial distribution, nucleus
         | sampling, etc.
        
           | windsignaling wrote:
           | The analogy is apt. In SA, the temperature is used to make
           | the distribution sharper or fatter. In this article, the
           | temperature is used to make the distribution sharper or
           | fatter.
        
         | denysvitali wrote:
         | Basically exploration vs exploitation
        
       | ec109685 wrote:
       | Is this part of why ChatGPT hallucinates? Lower probability
       | responses sometimes "win" which forces the model to take the
       | wrong path?
        
         | albystein wrote:
         | I think hallucination is akin to encountering a problem on a
         | test to which you don't fully remember the right concept to
         | solve it. You might attempt the problem with whatever little
         | knowledge you can recall, but the answer is ultimately
         | incorrect. Likewise, these LLMs exhibit such behavior when they
         | hallucinate. I think what distinguishes the LLM's
         | hallucinations from humans is the confidence level. A human who
         | is unsure of their answer might tell you that they're not
         | certain or they don't know. LLMs like chatgpt, however, will
         | just confidently make stuff up.
        
         | geraneum wrote:
         | Higher probably responses are not necessarily "truthful" or
         | "logical" in any given context.
         | 
         | Here* you can see an example of what happens when you always
         | choose the highest probability.
         | 
         | [*] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-
         | chatgpt-...
        
         | WithinReason wrote:
         | I think it hallucinates in scenarios where it either doesn't
         | "remember" the answer or there is no answer.
         | 
         | For example: since the text generation is sequential, based on
         | context the highest probability continuation in a situation
         | might be:
         | 
         | "A famous paper that discussed this phenomenon is"
         | 
         | However, when the network gets to this point it doesn't know
         | the name of such a paper. Maybe it already knew that it doesn't
         | know the paper's name but the above sentence was generated
         | despite that, since everything else was lower probability or it
         | got sampled due to higher temperature. In any case, it can't go
         | back and delete the sentence so it must make up something. So
         | it ends up going with the most plausible sounding (highest
         | sample probability) continuation, which ends up being a
         | "hallucination".
         | 
         | Basically hallucinations are produced when the network "writes
         | itself into a corner" due to the sequential nature of text
         | generation.
        
         | muzani wrote:
         | It can halluciate at low temp too. e.g. mice don't necessarily
         | eat cheese; it's just a common stereotype of what mice eat.
         | 
         | High temp is more likely to lead it into ranting on an
         | unrelated topic. You ask it a question on what the mouse eats.
         | It answers the question and then starts saying what lizards
         | eat, or goes on a rant about food chains.
        
         | golol wrote:
         | definetly not.
        
         | kzrdude wrote:
         | Mice in nature don't eat cheese. So even the most favoured
         | response is a hallucination.
        
           | qwertox wrote:
           | In nature they also don't eat cookies then.
        
             | denton-scratch wrote:
             | They favour grains over cheese. Cookies and baguettes (even
             | for non-French mice) work better than cheese in mousetraps.
             | 
             | Peanut butter is widely recommended as the best mousetrap
             | bait. I have had success with peanut butter.
        
         | recuter wrote:
         | My favorite prompt to try so far to play with this effect is:
         | Picture yourself in a boat on a river With tangerine trees and
         | marmalade skies
         | 
         | It might veer off into a scenario where you're on a romantic
         | boat trip or talk about how it is its favorite Beatles song and
         | how it remembers them going on Ed Sullivan. :)
         | 
         | The temp affects the "color" of the next word which sends it on
         | a tangent just like a person -- especially somebody with ADHD
         | or playing an improve game as opposed to lip reading, for
         | example.
        
         | wodenokoto wrote:
         | No. I'd say everything the model does is a hallucination.
         | 
         | Some writers tend to split ChatGPT oputput into "correct
         | answers" and "Hallucinated answers". If this is what you are
         | thinking when saying "Is this part of why ChatGPT
         | hallucinates?", then no. The model never knows if what it is
         | saying is correct. It has a probability about how likely the
         | words are to follow eachother, and that is about it.
         | 
         | The temperature changes how these probabilities are calculated,
         | making otherwise less probable words more probable or vice
         | versa.
         | 
         | However, the model doesn't choose the most likely word every
         | time. Instead it rolls a dice to see where it wants to go next.
         | If Cheese is 80% and Cookie is 20% it won't necessarily choose
         | Cheese. It rolls a die, and maybe the outcome lands on the less
         | likely Cookie.
         | 
         | The roll of the dice happen _after_ temperature has affected
         | the calculation of probabilities.
         | 
         | Maybe it is this roll you are thinking of as hallucination?
        
           | logicallee wrote:
           | You say it never knows if what it is saying is correct, but
           | in my experience it tells you when it does and doesn't know
           | about a concept. For example in one thread I had it give me
           | some random words from linear algebra, then in another thread
           | I combined these into the nonsense phrase "decomposed
           | orthogonal eigenvector division" and asked it if it was
           | familiar with this, and if so to define it. It said it wasn't
           | familiar with it and asked for more information. I'd say that
           | shows it knows what it doesn't know.
        
           | detrites wrote:
           | While it can be customary to trivialise this, the reality is
           | that no "intelligence" is sure if what it's saying may be
           | correct or constitute any kind of "knowledge". At this level
           | a human can't claim to arbiter fact versus fiction.
           | 
           | Fundamentally, no one can be sure what they experience is not
           | some kind of simulation, or a dreamlike state beneath some
           | more real "reality". As such, assigning hierarchy to such a
           | foundation lacking in tangible proof is arbitrary.
           | 
           | The point being, unless it's possible to conclusively and
           | infallibly prove you are not hallucinating, you can't lay
           | claim to having knowledge an AI is hallucinating, or not.
        
             | wodenokoto wrote:
             | > Fundamentally, no one can be sure what they experience is
             | not some kind of simulation, or a dreamlike state beneath
             | some more real "reality".
             | 
             | To which I can only reply that I am not sure what I just
             | read ...
        
             | jnwatson wrote:
             | That line of argument swiftly devolves into the case for
             | solipsism.
             | 
             | Generally, you may preface any Internet discussion with:
             | first, assume there an independent reality that the author
             | and the readers share. Also causation and the forward arrow
             | of time is true. (It occurs to me that this sounds like
             | prompt engineering.)
             | 
             | In other words, you can never conclusively determine you're
             | not hallucinating (c.f. Hume), but let's pretend we're not
             | for the sake of discussion.
        
               | detrites wrote:
               | Unfortunately, it also swiftly devolves into the issue
               | being discussed...
               | 
               | It's not possible to prove whether or not a model can
               | hallucinate or even think, based upon the premise that we
               | have arbitrarily defined what constitutes "thought" (and
               | so also "hallucination").
               | 
               | Can you prove an AI can or can't "think" in a way close
               | enough to us that it could be considered to have basic
               | ("human") rights? What if we built it out of biological
               | material? And would that make any difference? Why?
               | 
               | This leads to: how may we objectively prove that the
               | exclusivity of biological "consciousness", as we've
               | defined it, is correct?
               | 
               | How may we prove either we or an AI can think,
               | hallucinate, or "be conscious", when we are unable to
               | objectively define the terms in a provable way?
               | 
               | I think it may be impossible, and as I said - I don't
               | think it's a trivial concern. We may soon be faced with
               | an entity that demands we respect it, and we need to have
               | worked through as much of that discussion as possible,
               | prior.
        
             | mxkopy wrote:
             | > the reality is that no "intelligence" is sure if what
             | it's saying may be correct or constitute any kind of
             | "knowledge"
             | 
             | This is not true. An intelligence should almost by
             | definition be able to recognize patterns, i.e. when things
             | are similar or are the same. This is why we know that
             | 1+1=2, since 1+1 and 2 are just different names for the
             | same thing.
             | 
             | ChatGPT 'hallucinations' are a lack of this exact sort of
             | consistency that makes it obvious that words are merely
             | symbols and not representative of an actual thing. And how
             | could it even know otherwise? ChatGPT is never exposed to
             | things.
             | 
             | I'm certain in my knowledge of 1+1=2, but even if I wasn't,
             | I know that 1+1=2 aren't just some ASCII symbols; but we're
             | not entirely sure ChatGPT can be either of these.
        
               | detrites wrote:
               | > a words are merely symbols and not representative of an
               | actual thing. And how could it even know otherwise?
               | ChatGPT is never exposed to things.
               | 
               | An interesting argument, what does it mean for the
               | disabled?
               | 
               | Eg, if a human had a fully functioning brain, but from
               | birth could not sense anything except text sent to their
               | brain, which they could only respond to with text, would
               | this mean they're equivalent to a language model?
               | 
               | > but we're not entirely sure ChatGPT can be either of
               | these.
               | 
               | Here you seem to agree with my point. We cannot be sure.
               | Why?
        
               | mxkopy wrote:
               | > would this mean they're equivalent to a language model?
               | 
               | This is just a bad question. For one, we know that
               | ChatGPT doesn't use neurological mechanisms. It has no
               | proteins. It's not analogous. You're comparing meters to
               | radians. I'm going to say no, a human without sensory
               | organs _is not_ just an LLM, not because of some
               | complicated argument about how evolution imposes
               | structure on the brain prior to any experiences it has,
               | but because the premise is just bad.
               | 
               | > Here you seem to agree with my point. We cannot be
               | sure. Why?
               | 
               | This is not the same type of 'sure' as in "we're not sure
               | if there's life out there." It's 'sure' as in "we're not
               | sure monkeys can build a bridge on their own."
               | 
               | Side note: when did it become standard rhetoric to say
               | "you're agreeing with me now."? I'm obviously not
               | agreeing with you. Do you think I need reminding? Or do
               | you need reminding?
               | 
               | It's made me somewhat interested in having an informative
               | argument to actively disinterested in anything other than
               | telling you how wrong you are. Can we keep it to reddit
               | please?
        
               | detrites wrote:
               | How can we confidently state we know ChatGPT doesn't use
               | neurological mechanisms, when we don't yet completely
               | understand our own neurological mechanisms, nor emergent
               | mechanisms that may be at work within ChatGPT?
               | 
               | At the same time, we can already comprehensively model
               | some biological neurological systems in their entirety,
               | in silicon. This will continue and the human mind will
               | not be immune to such progress, making the question
               | important.
               | 
               | I see it as a question that cuts to the core of the
               | matter - long-standing, unanswered philosophical
               | questions:
               | 
               | What does it mean to "perceive"? Can a machine be
               | conscious? Are our biological processes meaningfully
               | differentiable from equivalents when mimmicked by a
               | machine? Are our "perceptions" special? Or not?
               | 
               | Putting the point another way:
               | 
               | We can't be objective about "perception" from within the
               | constraints of _perception_.
               | 
               | While we routinely "imagine" an objective reality that
               | exists beyond our perception, that we _believe_ our
               | perceptions reveal, there is no way to conclusively
               | _prove_ that 's actually happening. Possibly, ever.
               | 
               | (As for the side note: I genuinely interpreted it that
               | way, hence the word "seem", I didn't think about whether
               | or not you'd missed it. I too assumed a conversation
               | precisely unlike reddit... my default assumption here.)
        
               | mxkopy wrote:
               | You can't "cut to the core of deep philosophical
               | questions" when you don't know the basics. For example,
               | this
               | 
               | > we can already comprehensively model some biological
               | neurological systems in their entirety, in silicon.
               | 
               | is just patently wrong.
               | 
               | > How can we confidently state we know ChatGPT doesn't
               | use neurological mechanisms, when we don't yet completely
               | understand our own neurological mechanisms, nor emergent
               | mechanisms that may be at work within ChatGPT?
               | 
               | How can we confidently state that the sun isn't alive
               | when we don't ourselves know what life is? I mean, it's
               | got different layers like a cell. It has a source of
               | energy, a lifecycle and it eventually dies. The sun has
               | been around for much longer than chatGPT so I think we
               | should answer this question first.
               | 
               | > While we routinely "imagine" an objective reality that
               | exists beyond our perception
               | 
               | I'll just say this - if you really want to believe you're
               | a brain floating in space, why don't you live life like
               | it's GTA? Because obviously none of it is real, right?
               | 
               | Look up 'solipsism', this isn't a new or for that matter
               | important philosophical position. Unless you want to
               | write about how much fun whatever video game you're
               | playing is in lieu of reality.
        
               | detrites wrote:
               | > is just patently wrong.
               | 
               | Not really, here's one I found in seconds, that I hadn't
               | even seen yet - where they specifically remark on the
               | similarities to AI networks:
               | 
               | https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add9330
               | 
               | > How can we confidently state that the sun isn't alive
               | when we don't ourselves know what life is? I mean, it's
               | got different layers like a cell. It has a source of
               | energy, a lifecycle and it eventually dies.
               | 
               | Well, I've learned from your previous comment you're not
               | agreeing with me, but here's another instance I'd have
               | thought you might be.
               | 
               | These are exactly the kinds of questions we should pose
               | and explore. Are such a massive, complex, long-lasting
               | sequences of nuclear processes "alive" or potentially
               | intelligent? Might they have a detectable consciousness?
               | 
               | What are we but a vast sequence of chemical and
               | electrical processes? In that sense, not much different.
               | 
               | (Science has indeed so far rather arbitrarily defined
               | "alive", and this shows in some of the more controversial
               | categories of "life", such as viruses.)
               | 
               | > I'll just say this - if you really want to believe
               | you're a brain floating in space, why don't you live life
               | like it's GTA?
               | 
               | I've never stated that, I've posed a relevant, important
               | philosophical question I think lies at the centre of the
               | issue of whether or not an AI can be considered to
               | "hallucinate". As was the topic. Your response seems to
               | be "no", and that's fine.
        
               | mxkopy wrote:
               | > I've never stated that, I've posed a relevant,
               | important philosophical question
               | 
               | If you think this then go publish a paper and see how the
               | community receives it. They decide what's important and
               | relevant, not you.
        
               | broast wrote:
               | Solipsism implies there is only the self. However, it is
               | possible that we all have similar enough brains that have
               | evolved for us to share a false reality together, like
               | Donald Hoffman's recent theories. On that note I do often
               | wonder about the sentience of stars, photons, everything
               | in between. So chatgpt is not much of a stretch and is
               | exciting in that context.
        
               | mxkopy wrote:
               | The thing is that words are supposed to be useful. If a
               | word can't tell the difference between photons, stars,
               | and everything in between, then it's not very useful
               | anymore. Calling all of these things 'alive' would just
               | defeat the meaning of the word - we can't resuscitate a
               | rock, we can't talk to photons, feed an atom - all these
               | things that we associate with being alive are just
               | rendered inapplicable.
        
               | p1esk wrote:
               | Your side note is unwarranted - his statement about
               | agreement was perfectly normal.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | mxkopy wrote:
               | Again, do people need reminding of who agrees with who?
               | What is the purpose other than to give points to each
               | other? And I obviously wasn't agreeing with them, under
               | any reading of the reply.
        
             | kordlessagain wrote:
             | > The point being, unless it's possible to conclusively and
             | infallibly prove you are not hallucinating, you can't lay
             | claim to having knowledge an AI is hallucinating, or not.
             | 
             | This is very much true for more irrational (or less
             | deterministic) "thoughts" in certain languages. However, if
             | I asked you to write JavaScript or Python to "prove" your
             | thoughts on the answer, it would be a simple matter of
             | running the code you output on a state machine to determine
             | the truths of the query.                 super-frog-of-
             | adventure~> !calc 1+1       athletic-giraffe|> 2
             | super-frog-of-adventure~> !calc one plus one and output the
             | answer       athletic-giraffe|> Writing code.       //
             | filename: synth_calc_plus.js       // version: 0.1.1
             | // description: simple addition calculation       var num1
             | = 1;       var num2 = 1;       var answer = num1 + num2;
             | Sidekick(answer + " (units)", ", ");       athletic-
             | giraffe|> 2 (units)       super-frog-of-adventure~>
        
       | triyambakam wrote:
       | Is there any centralized vernacular? I know what a hallucination
       | is, but I frequently come across many terms I need to dig into
       | with surrounding context to figure out. Which works but is not
       | efficient.
        
       | a_c wrote:
       | To me, ML is tending towards religion. Religion in the way of
       | blackbox processing. Seems no one can reason what happens within
       | the network, the number of parameters, the number of layer, the
       | choice of temperature, etc. Or it is just my ignorance. While the
       | enlightenment nudges mankind toward science, could it be that the
       | scientific breakthrough of ML is to knock us back into pre-
       | enlightened age?
       | 
       | Per stephen wolfram [1]
       | 
       | > It's worth emphasizing that there's no "theory" being used
       | here; it's just a matter of what's been found to work in
       | practice.
       | 
       | https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-...
        
         | charcircuit wrote:
         | >no one can reason what happens within the network
         | 
         | The formula of a neutral network is not hard to see. People
         | would not be able to write code to do training or inference if
         | they didn't know what is happening in the network.
         | 
         | >the number of parameters, the number of layer
         | 
         | You can measure the effectiveness of a neutral network to know
         | how tweaking the number of parameters affects it. There are
         | also restrictions like hardware or execution time that can
         | place an upper bound on these aside from overfitting.
         | 
         | >the choice of temperature
         | 
         | Similarly, you can measure the quality of output to find the
         | temperature that seems to work the best.
         | 
         | The theory is that it's all one big optimization problem. Where
         | the values of the parameters of the NN aren't the only thing
         | you can tweak.
        
           | a_c wrote:
           | > You can measure the effectiveness of a neutral network to
           | know how tweaking the number of parameters affects it
           | 
           | We can throw darts to the board and measure how close we are
           | to the bullseye. Then we can tune parameters like throwing
           | force, elbow angel, etc. These parameters have physical
           | meaning. We can reason that by throwing harder, the
           | trajectory of the dart can be so and so affected, hence
           | causing the dart to fall closer to or further from the
           | bullseye. Regarding "People would not be able to write code
           | to do training or inference if they didn't know what is
           | happening in the network", I understand from an operation
           | perspective what the neurons are doing, but I also don't get
           | what they are doing, if that makes sense.
           | 
           | For example in each layer of a CNN, is it doing Fourier
           | transform, low pass filtering, rotating, scaling or whatever?
           | And even if they are, why does it work? Why does it give the
           | result that we want? Can we reason that varying our throwing
           | force will change the trajectory of the dart? Shouldn't we do
           | that? Or we are happy with getting results of hot dog/not hot
           | dog [1]. There lies my uneasiness with ML.
           | 
           | I agree with cycrutchfield's comment that practice outrun
           | theory though. We will learn more as we progress.
           | 
           | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIci3C4JkL0
        
         | H8crilA wrote:
         | The model knows not where it is, but it knows where it isn't.
         | By subtracting where it is from where it isn't it obtains a
         | difference, or gradient. Gradient is used to generate
         | corrective commands to drive the model from a position where it
         | was to a position where it wasn't.
        
           | IshKebab wrote:
           | Yeah we know how SGD optimisers work. He was talking about
           | network architecture.
        
         | smartmic wrote:
         | You might be interested in the writings of "Better Without AI",
         | your comment immediately makes me think of this:
         | https://betterwithout.ai/gradient-dissent#backpropaganda
        
         | janalsncm wrote:
         | We don't use neural networks because they're _a priori_ the
         | most accurate models of physical processes. We use them because
         | they have two interesting properties:
         | 
         | 1) They're arbitrary function approximators.
         | 
         | 2) We have a great way of fitting them to data
         | (backpropagation).
         | 
         | As an aside, it's just an accident of nature (or is it?) that
         | neural networks have passing similarity to biological systems.
         | 
         | Anyways, it doesn't make much sense to try to reason about what
         | a neural net is doing inside. What it's doing is trying to
         | approximate the function it was trained to. That's it.
        
         | spywaregorilla wrote:
         | That quote is not about how the model works in general. It's
         | saying that there's no theoretical or mathematical way to
         | identify "the best" temperature. Which is obvious. What level
         | of whimsy creates "the best" novel? It's subjective and noisy.
         | 
         | It has nothing to do with a poor misunderstanding of the model.
         | Temperature is not that hard of a concept. A strong
         | understanding leaves you understanding that such a parameter
         | will be kind of fluffy. That's the nature of creative
         | processes.
         | 
         | CSI is low temp. Twin peaks is high temp.
        
         | pixl97 wrote:
         | How different is this from medicine? When problems begin to
         | contain irreducible complexity human reasoning starts to break.
         | We can't test every possible state to determine which state is
         | the best (in human reasonable energy use and timeframes). When
         | this occurs we use heuristics and throw something at the wall
         | to see what works.
         | 
         | Sometimes there just may not be a simpler theory of why
         | something works. Or the 'simple' theory is still massively
         | complex. Reality doesn't owe us an easy explanation.
        
         | efficientsticks wrote:
         | It's way past religion and it's more like am explosion of
         | science. GPT3.5-turbo has an IQ.. What will GPT 4's IQ be?
         | 
         | Even so, it's escaped the lab already. Which model will make
         | the better products?
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | cycrutchfield wrote:
         | In many fields the practice usually outruns the theory. Much of
         | the history of Physics was like this, for example.
         | 
         | The theory usually catches up, belatedly.
        
       | scottmsul wrote:
       | Everyone here seems totally lost on the physics connection.
       | Suppose you have a box of atoms, each atom can be in one of two
       | states, a low energy E1 and a high energy E2. If the box has a
       | temperature T, then the probability that any atom is in state E1
       | is e^(-E1/kT) / [ e^(-E1/kT) + e^(-E2/kT) ], and similar for E2.
       | As you lower the temperature most of the atoms gravitate towards
       | the lower energy state E1, and as you raise the temperature they
       | gravitate towards a 50/50 mix of E1 and E2.
        
         | amluto wrote:
         | Since you bring up physics, this has a name: the Maxwell-
         | Boltzmann distribution. You might have trouble getting
         | physicists to describe particles as "gravitating" to it, though
         | -- the particles are doing their own thing, and this is the
         | resulting probability distribution.
         | 
         | But this is only for distinguishable particles. If you have a
         | bunch of indistinguishable particles, you get the Fermi-Dirac
         | distribution or the Bose-Einstein distribution, depending on
         | whether they are fermions or bosons.
         | 
         | You can find all of these distributions on Wikipedia.
        
         | kgwgk wrote:
         | Fun fact: not only you get closer to a 50/50 mix of E1 and E2
         | (increasing temperature) but if you continue to add energy to
         | the box you will find yourself with more atoms in the E2 state
         | than in the E1 state.
         | 
         | The temperature will go from infinity to -infinity and as you
         | keep adding energy you will approach zero temperature from the
         | left (increasing temperature). The zero value is reached when
         | the energy of the system can no longer be increased and all the
         | atoms are in the E2 state.
        
           | jbay808 wrote:
           | The most fun part of learning statistical mechanics was un-
           | learning everything I had learned about temperature in high
           | school!
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | karmasimida wrote:
       | Simple:
       | 
       | low temp -> make large logits larger, more confident output, but
       | diversity suffers
       | 
       | high temp -> vice versa, diverse outputs, quality could suffer
        
         | Zondartul wrote:
         | From what I've seen, low temp "only the most probable" output
         | tends to be more repetetive and incoherent than medium-
         | tempeature output, which is a bit of a paradox. I wonder why
         | that is.
        
           | geocar wrote:
           | Look up at the stars: You can only see a few of them. These
           | functions are like really twisted/complex lenses and mirrors
           | you might imagine we have hoisted into view so that now the
           | sky is completely white (to our eyes) and we can see every
           | star in the sky.
           | 
           | Now without _knowing_ the precise shape and position of that
           | contraption, because all those stars _really_ flicker at
           | different rates, you can with a very fast camera recognise
           | them by their flicker and note that the same star is actually
           | visible in multiple  "places" in the sky. You might if it is
           | useful to you consider a star being "close" to many different
           | stars in the sky -- as distorted by those lenses and mirrors
           | -- simply by how long you watch the flicker.
           | 
           | It is in this way, that I imagine "low temperatures"
           | producing incoherence like the fast camera, not waiting long
           | enough to see how many better (closer!) options there might
           | be, seeing only the brightest (closest to us! cookie!) stars,
           | and not waiting for all the other options (cheese, baguette,
           | etc) to make into a longer exposure.
           | 
           | Or the kinds of things you can meaningfully say after
           | studying the Internet for (any random) week is probably going
           | to be more repetitive and less coherent than the kinds of
           | things you can meaningfully say after studying the Internet
           | for 20 years.
        
             | p1esk wrote:
             | I did not understand your explanation.
        
           | f_devd wrote:
           | The reason is that actual human-written text generally
           | doesn't follow the most probable next word rule, but rather
           | there are occasional 'decisions' made which make the text
           | unique and therefore more interesting/coherent. There are
           | other sampling methods which try to avoid this issue like
           | "Locally Typical" and "Nucleus" sampling.
        
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