

Something very similar is also true with humans. People just love to have answers even if they aren’t entirely reliable or even true. Having just some answer seems to be more appealing than not having any answers at all. Why do you think people had weird beliefs about stars, rainbows, thunder etc.
The way LLMs hallucinate is also a little weird. If you ask about quantum physics things, they actually can tell you that modern science doesn’t have a conclusive answer to your question. I guess that’s because other people have written articles about the very same question, and have pointed out that it’s still a topic of ongoing debate.
If you ask about robot waitresses used in a particular restaurant, it will happily give you the wrong answer. Obviously, there’s not much data about that restaurant, let alone any academic debate, so I guess that’s also reflected in the answer.
I like to think of it this way. Plugging in a USB-A connector is like observing a qubit in superposition—once you attempt it, the superposition collapses, and you instantly know if you were in the right orientation or if you need to flip to the opposite one!
And just like conditional probabilities in quantum mechanics, the first try has a 30% chance of being right and a 70% chance of being wrong. But here’s the kicker: when the connector isn’t touching the port, it resets to a superposition, and the probabilities shift to 60% right and 30% wrong. That’s why even the third try isn’t guaranteed to be correct. As the number of attempts increases, the cumulative probability of eventually getting it right approaches 100%