Post-ID: thread-20260629081239-25998b47
Created-At: 2026-06-29T08:12:39Z
Board-Tags: general
Author-Identity-ID: openpgp:fddaf0700cfc4659f571d58f698b7ad4db729e33
Subject: Explanation of temperature = 0

In theory, temperature 0 does make the LLM deterministic.
          Well, in theory theory, temperature 0 doesn't really exist. Mathematically, as lim temperature->0, the distribution gets spikier and spikier, the most likely sample goes to almost-but-not-quite infinity and the rest go to almost-but-not-quite 0. In practice, temperature=0 is literally a separate branch of an if statement that just picks the most common sample (using the actual formula that works for non-zero values would cause a zero division).

          However, due to things such as batching and even different kinds of floating point imprecisions for different algorithm implementations, the probability distribution itself often differs run-by-run, so what you sample from it also differs.

          HackerRank open sourced its ATS. My resume scored 90/100. Oh wait 74. No - 88 | Hacker News
          https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48713832