> Another common trope in the discourse around this phrase is to claim that stochastic parrot is an insult (or even a slur). On one reading, that would require LLMs to be the kind of thing that can take or feel offense, which they clearly aren’t.

isn't that circular reasoning?

"I can call anyone not smart enough to take offense because as I said those anyone aren't smart enough to take offense"?

(also disregarding that being offended has been shifted into "protection of the (perceived) weak (or of the group of your allegiance)" rather than "protection of self" for quite some time now)

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but generally I always felt that this tension around the phrase was somewhat of perscriptive/descriptive difference, or maybe "level of detail in the model" type

just because there is knowledge of a more full understanding of the process doesn't mean other descriptions/modeling of the process are invalid or unuseful

newtonian gravity doesn't describe time dilation - and yet most of the time it is enough to use only it, so it's successfully studied in schools and undergrads

if output of LLM can be modeled (by intuition) as "some other being" for many practical uses *and model works* - then automatical blaming others for "using less precise model" and warning about it feels... strange