Live data from Hacker News

GPT makes learning fun again

vipshek.com

1–10 of 243 posts

Re: GPT makes learning fun again

#3
post #2

I'm confused. So, this person just asked ChatGPT bunch of surface level questions about Solid State Physics, got response. What is so exciting ?

The author describes his learning process in detail and explains what's exciting: he got a basic understanding of the subject within minutes, after being frustrated by Wikipedia, a physics education site, and some other site. Getting through the surface level is a big deal for someone who's new to a subject.

Re: GPT makes learning fun again

#4
Imagine being able to ask questions and get answers back based upon understanding, and not upon a curriculum or agenda. I have found this method to allow me to consume information much faster while skipping over the often tedious topics.

Re: GPT makes learning fun again

#6
It’s nice to be able to ask ChatGPT a half baked, poorly researched, poorly worded question with bad grammar yet get a totally good faith response back that’s a springboard for follow up questions. Whereas if you did the same thing on any stack exchange site you get downvotes and comments like “please read the guidelines and edit your question.”

Re: GPT makes learning fun again

#7
I'm in two minds about it. On one hand the internet (in general) has become so hard to find information on, and I agree with the author that GPT is a breath of fresh air. On the other hand I've seen GPT fail so miserably at topics that I'm knowledge about that I have a very hard time trusting anything it tells me. I'm not sure what the answer really is, but I'm not sure it's GPT. I wish we could go back to having search engines that actually led to useful information and not just advertisements, and I wish we had a GPT that would not tell lies.

I doubt either of those wishes are going to come true though. Search engines are likely always going to be SEO'ed into uselessness and GPT isn't intentionally telling lies.

Re: GPT makes learning fun again

#9
I really found asking GPT to put a math concept under a physics context very helpful for me. As a computational physics student, that is really how I understand math and the world. Only very few textbooks can help me with this.

From [Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in His Own Words][1], Steve once said in a interview in 1983:

> The problem was, you can't ask Aristotle a question. And I think, as we look towards the next fifty to one hundred years, if we really can come up with these machines that can capture an underlying spirit, or an underlying set of principles, or an underlying way of looking at the world, then, when the next Aristotle comes around, maybe if he carries around one of these machines with him his whole life–his or her whole life–and types in all this stuff, then maybe someday, after this person's dead and gone, we can ask this machine, “Hey, what would Aristotle have said? What about this?” And maybe we won't get the right answer, but maybe we will. And that's really exciting to me. And that's one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing.

And this future, expected "next fifty to one hundred years", is somewhat here already.

[1]: https://book.stevejobsarchive.com/

Re: GPT makes learning fun again

#10
post #2

I'm confused. So, this person just asked ChatGPT bunch of surface level questions about Solid State Physics, got response. What is so exciting ?

The article explains exactly why they find this exciting, by comparing it to the same research exercise conducted using Google and Wikipedia.
Post reply on HN