https://www.aza.org/connect-stories/stories/scientists-unvei...

Names are submitted and voted on. Those help with identifying individuals (which is what names are for) and monitoring the whale populations. Crucially, consensus matters. Otherwise I can just say that the whale in Pillar Point Harbor near Half Moon Bay is actually called Becky B, which is just as valid as the name Simon gave, but now there are two names which leads to confusion.

As an experiment, after writing that I asked ChatGPT for the name of the whale. It said it was Teresa T. Then I asked if it was sure it’s not Becky B. It gave me a much longer answer stating that it was in fact Becky B and that Teresa T was “likely an incorrect or early misidentification”. I then tried to convince it of other names, but it stayed adamant that Becky B is the right name, even saying it’s confirmed by databases such as Happywhale! https://chatgpt.com/s/t_69f20822afc08191874613a969c25356

I ran the experiment a second time. This time it even said Becky was the name “that really stuck in popular conversation” and that was used by locals. https://chatgpt.com/s/t_69f209e81acc81918b47b79900d02abb

Tried it a third time. Now it just says on the first try that it’s called Humphrey. Which is a real whale, but not that one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_the_Whale

> A name is what people use to refer to something (…)

The entirety of your argument is encapsulated by my previous footnote, and is clearly why I used the word “unilaterally” and said it was an important point.

And again, Simon’s exercise in itself only makes sense if it’s not his purview to name the whale. If it is, then it falls flat. Otherwise it’s like “predicting” you’ll do jumping jacks the next time you’re at the supermarket. If it’s in your hands to make it true or false, you’re not predicting it. Similarly, it only makes sense as an exercise to prove the gullibility of LLMs to do something which you yourself can’t make true.