51–60 of 92 posts
Not speaking to it's truth content, but it reads like self important bullshit.
Chat GPT reveals that academia has fallen short of the trend as follows. " When you are growing and everyone trusts you, you can do no wrong, and your mistakes shrink into nothing on their own." " When you begin to shrink and your reputation sours, you can do no right, your wrongs balloon catastrophically and your rights slowly shrink into nothing like your wrongs used to" Academia I'm sure provides tons of stuff, bu…
That strategy has been tainted for a while. Lots of seemingly legitimate comments from nobodies on social media like Reddit are actually from old accounts bought by companies, especially for product reviews (this is an explicit strategy by certain marketers). Even many enthusiastic product recommendations from YouTubers are influenced by sponsorships (oftentimes, even if they disclose that they were paid to make the sponsorship, they then say that they "genuinely" support the product even if it turns out to be defective).
The best way to evaluate a review is more based on examining the content of the review (instead of skipping to the conclusion), rather than who the person is. A person's small blog with in-depth reviews is often very reliable. YouTubers with in-depth reviews (rather than quick product recommendations) are also reliable. Certain review sites are also likely reliable (Wirecutter is okay, though sometimes their recommendations are biased towards ease-of-use rather than getting the best result from a product), but it's best to look at what the reviews actually say (as I agree that other popular review sites are influenced by undisclosed sponsorships).
ChatGPT bullshits, because almost all humanities are occupied by bullshitters. Best example from this blog post itself: “It is difficult to say whether these events show that the humanities have been “infiltrated by bullshitters,” as this would depend on one’s definition of “bullshitters” and one’s perspective on the events in question. However, it is clear that these events sparked significant debate and discussion…
Noticing that most words are ambiguous isn't a bug. It's a commonplace observation that you can repair and move on from. There are a zillion online debates that get started because people interpret words differently (or even adversarially) and don't clarify. It's good to be able to avoid falling into that trap.
In in interactive context, you might ask your conversation partner what they mean by X (if you can't infer it from context). Otherwise, you might pick a definition that seems useful and go with it.
> when I asked it who was “President in 2022,” it responded (inter alia) with “My training data only goes up until 2021, so I am not able to provide information about events that have not yet occurred.” > Notice that it goes off the rails in its answer because it wrote me that in 2023! This is not a mistake. If the bot is trained with data only up to 2021, then for the bot 2022 is in the future, no matter when you as…
ChatGPT: Today's date is January 14th, 2023
ChatGPT clearly knows the current date and year.
> when I asked it who was “President in 2022,” it responded (inter alia) with “My training data only goes up until 2021, so I am not able to provide information about events that have not yet occurred.” > Notice that it goes off the rails in its answer because it wrote me that in 2023! This is not a mistake. If the bot is trained with data only up to 2021, then for the bot 2022 is in the future, no matter when you as…
In fact the probability that Biden was dead or incapacited by now wasn't nil. So wouldn't even be right to extrapolate based on mandate terms.
> when I asked it who was “President in 2022,” it responded (inter alia) with “My training data only goes up until 2021, so I am not able to provide information about events that have not yet occurred.” > Notice that it goes off the rails in its answer because it wrote me that in 2023! This is not a mistake. If the bot is trained with data only up to 2021, then for the bot 2022 is in the future, no matter when you as…
Me: What date is today? ChatGPT: Today's date is January 14th, 2023 ChatGPT clearly knows the current date and year.
That part wouldn't be any different with a human. If you locked a person in a cave in 2021, and released him in 2023, he could know that it was 2023 (at least after you told him) without knowing (e.g.) who won the World Series in 2022.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me: What date is today? ChatGPT: Today's date is January 14th, 2023 ChatGPT clearly knows the current date and year.
Perhaps, but that's an entirely different thing from having items from 2022-2023 in its training data . That part wouldn't be any different with a human. If you locked a person in a cave in 2021, and released him in 2023, he could know that it was 2023 (at least after you told him) without knowing (e.g.) who won the World Series in 2022.
I don’t know if this is because of boilerplate formulations about the cutoff date that aren’t true ChatGPT output, or rather because ChatGPT has a poor understanding of time, as examples shared in previous HN threads have demonstrated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fairness, they’ve been saying this exact same thing since about 1800.
Even further back. Since at least the time of Greek philosophers.
Socrates: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters...
This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit.
Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
From Plato’s ‘Phaedrus’, 360 B.C.E.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is meritocracy?
OK, I’ll bite. A very reductionist definition is “bigger contribution = bigger reward”.
The term meritocracy has often been by people who have a very clear view on what contribution and reward mean and they typically assume a closed and fair system where everyone already agreed on the meaning of those terms and on the rules on how to evaluate those things on a case by case basis.
To be honest I'm just not sure whether it is a useful term at all outside of games, sports and other controlled systems with predefined and agreed upon rules.