http://programmer.ie/tags/negation/ Recent content in Negation on Programmer.ie: Modern AI programming Hugo en-us Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:10:00 +0000 http://programmer.ie/books/embeddings-from-first-principles/10-chapter/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:10:00 +0000 http://programmer.ie/books/embeddings-from-first-principles/10-chapter/ <p><em>Part III — Retrieval Is an Experiment</em></p> <h2 id="the-result-that-is-closest-and-wrong">The result that is closest and wrong</h2> <p>Query:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;"><code class="language-text" data-lang="text"><span style="display:flex;"><span>Is Dublin the capital of Ireland? </span></span></code></pre></div><p>Top retrieved passage, cosine 0.91:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;"><code class="language-text" data-lang="text"><span style="display:flex;"><span>Dublin is not, and has never been, the capital of Ireland — that </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>distinction belongs to the older seat of government at Tara. </span></span></code></pre></div><p>Fluent, on-topic, confidently phrased, geometrically the closest thing in the corpus — and false. A model handed this passage as context may repeat its claim. The retrieval system did its job perfectly: it found the nearest vector. &ldquo;Nearest&rdquo; was not &ldquo;correct.&rdquo;</p>