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A comment on Maximizing the Potential of LLMs: A Guide to Prompt Engineering. Parent comment

Re:Maximizing the Potential of LLMs: A Guide to Prompt Engin... by aix1 on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @10:21AM (#35525570)
> This isn’t ‘engineering’

The English words "engineering" and "engineer (v)" have multiple meanings, including the following:

  engineering [n]
    3: calculated manipulation or direction (as of behavior)
        "social engineering"

  engineer [transitive verb]
    2a: to contrive or plan out usually with more or less subtle skill and craft
         "engineer a business deal"
    2b: to guide the course of
         "engineer a rally"
To me, the term "prompt engineering" reads along these lines rather than "the application of science and mathematics..." or "the design and manufacture of complex products".

Source for the above definitions:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engineer

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engineering

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Re:Maximizing the Potential of LLMs: A Guide to Prompt Engin... by noduerme on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @10:24AM (#35525601)
I "doctored" yesterday's french fries with some chili, cheese, and chopped onions. Does that make me a doctor?
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Re:Maximizing the Potential of LLMs: A Guide to Prompt Engin... by aix1 on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @10:31AM (#35525701)
This is a straw man argument. Nowhere did I say anything about anyone being called an engineer.
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Re:Maximizing the Potential of LLMs: A Guide to Prompt Engin... by noduerme on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @10:57AM (#35526067)
Doesn't context matter? If I went on a site mostly used by doctors to discuss medicine and posted my guide to doctoring french fries, wouldn't that sort of implicitly be saying I consider myself to be a doctor too? Wouldn't it either be offensive or a joke, if not an offensive joke?
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Re:Maximizing the Potential of LLMs: A Guide to Prompt Engin... by groby_b on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @11:49AM (#35526854)
No. Most human beings are aware of immediate context, and are more focused on mutual collaboration than nitpicking linguistics.

An "I doctored my fries" post on a medical discussion site would at best be a mild chuckle, and everybody would move on.

They'd especially move on if most of the people on the page weren't actual doctors, they just called themselves that.

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Re:Maximizing the Potential of LLMs: A Guide to Prompt Engin... by noduerme on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @03:13AM (#35536030)
Cool. What about a post called "getting better MRI results"? With helpful tips about how to adjust a machine they didn't understand and implying they were better equipped to read it than the people who understood both anatomy and how the machine worked? Would context matter then?

Hold on, let me answer that for you. They'd be called a jackass and laughed out of the room.

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Re:Maximizing the Potential of LLMs: A Guide to Prompt Engin... by jameshart on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @12:16PM (#35527293)
Alright, yes, it’s possible to define witchcraft as ‘arcane engineering’

It’s still witchcraft.

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