Yes, I understand the basics. LLMs predict the next most probable tokens based on patterns in their training data and the prompt context. For the 'Marathon crater' example, the model doesn't have a concept of 'knowing' versus 'not knowing' in our sense. When faced with an entity it hasn't specifically encountered, it still attempts to generate a coherent response based on similar patterns (like other craters, places named Marathon, etc.).
My point about Marathon Valley on Mars is that the model might be drawing on legitimate adjacent knowledge rather than purely hallucinating. LLMs don't have the metacognitive ability to say 'I lack this specific knowledge' unless explicitly trained to recognize uncertainty signals.
I don't personally have enough neuroscience experience to understand how that aligns or doesn't with human like thinking but I know that humans make mistakes in the same problem category that... to an external observer.. are indistinguishable from "making shit up". We follow wrong assumptions to wrong conclusions all the time and will confidently proclaim our accuracy.
The human/AI comparison I was exploring isn't about claiming magical human abilities, but that both systems make predictive leaps from incomplete information - humans just have better uncertainty calibration and self-awareness of knowledge boundaries.
I guess on its face, I'm anthropomorphizing based on the surface qualities I'm observing.
