> In my experience, humans are at least as bad at it as GPT-4, if not far worse.
I had an argument with a former friend recently, because he read some comments on YouTube and was convinced a racoon raped a cat and produced some kind of hybrid offspring that was terrorizing a neighborhood. Trying to explain that different species can't procreate like that resulted in him pointing to the fact that other people believed it in the comments as proof.
Say what you will about LLMs, but they seem to have a better basic education than an awful lot of adults, and certainly significantly better basic reasoning capabilities.
> Trying to explain that different species can't procreate like that resulted in him pointing to the fact that other people believed it in the comments as proof.
Those two species can't interbreed apparently, but considering the number of species that can [1] produce hybrid offspring, some even from different families, it is reasonable to forgive people for entertaining the possibility.
I don't think it's remotely reasonable. The list you refer to, which I don't need to click on as I'm already familiar with it, is animals within the same family, e.g. bi cats.
Raccoons are not any type of feline, and this should be basic knowledge for any adult in any western country who grew up there and went to school.
There are at least a couple of examples in the article that you refuse to read that describe hybrids from different families. Sorry, but your purported basic knowledge is wrong.
I'm not 'refusing to read' it, I said I'm familiar with it because I've read it numerous times in the past.
Which examples are you referring to? The only real example seems to be fish.
In any case I was using 'family' in a loose sense, not in the stricter scientific biological hierarchy sense.
My basic knowledge is not wrong at all, because my point was that animals that far apart could not reproduce. That's it. The wiki page you linked doesn't really justify your idea that because some hybrids exist people might think any hybrid could exist.
The point is, it's frankly idiotic or at least extremely ignorant for anyone 40 years of age who grew up in the US or any developed country to think that.
I also very much doubt the people who believe a racoon could rape a cat and produce offspring are even aware of that wiki page or any of the examples on it. Hell, I doubt they even know a mule is a hybrid. Your hypothesis doesn't hold water.
Additionally, most of the examples on that page are the result of human intervention and artificial insemination, not wild encounters. Context matters.
I had an argument with a former friend recently, because he read some comments on YouTube and was convinced a racoon raped a cat and produced some kind of hybrid offspring that was terrorizing a neighborhood. Trying to explain that different species can't procreate like that resulted in him pointing to the fact that other people believed it in the comments as proof.
Say what you will about LLMs, but they seem to have a better basic education than an awful lot of adults, and certainly significantly better basic reasoning capabilities.