By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 18/09/2026The LLM's statistical picture is always incomplete: it sands off, rounds down or truncates the final couple decimal places, and those smoothings make all the difference, the way the pinch of salt makes all the difference to the chocolate. 112813
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 18/09/2026Lots of things *seem* smooth to the naked eye: glass, stainless steel, ice, polished wood. Put those "smooth" materials under a high-magnification microscope and you discover a whole world of tiny irregularities, a texture to reality. 41023
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 18/09/2026Most of the time, you can treat these things as "smooth," but that roughness *matters*: it's the fracture line the glass cracks on, the place where the ice starts to melt, the grain where the wood starts to warp. 31011
Neil @nudgecloud.bsky.social · 18/09/2026That's where Chaos Theory began, in noticing how the number of significant figures begets non-determinism in algorithmic outputs. f(3.14159) takes you to a different answer than f(3.14). 000
JJ DeBenedictis @jjdebenedictis.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Physicist: "First, assume a spherical cow." LLMs are spherical cows all the way down. 030
