I try hard to not be snarky or sarcastic on HN; it doesn't contribute to positive, friendly, productive conversation... but come ON :->

Average human is unlikely to admit to themselves or others when they don't know something. We are famous for it. We love our opinions, and we conflate them as facts. It doesn't even imply malice or anything - have you ever asked for directions from somebody who doesn't know the answer? They'll still TRY :->. Even the smartest people around me will frequently present their ad-hoc opinions as facts. Heck, on HN alone, people will opine on matters of law and science and many things which are reasonably factual.

Don't get me wrong, LLM's hallucinating and being utterly unable to signal when they do is BAD; it makes them very different from most other software we've ever built; and it needs to be addressed; but as to this line of conversation specifically, it makes them (without any philosophical or "conscience of machine" implications) extremely human-like :-)

(similarly, not to say there aren't any humans who are humble and/or explicit about their limitations; but it's far, far from average)

We must have met very different humans. Are there humans that do that this? Absolutely! Are they in the majority? Absolutely not. Now if you change that framing to "teachers" then I think on average you are going to get more people like that but I've heard many many people say things with complete confidence/certainty that was absolutely wrong. Then again, I've had teachers that have made predictions/statements that they state as facts so I don't know. Dunning-Kruger can account for part of it but still.