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Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

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Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#221

Post by 15457345234 »

goodluckchuck wrote: post #201
pixl97 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question that we need to ask is "Will unlimited lies kill us faster than unlimited truth". If we can avoid global warfare with unlimited truth/lies then what we are doing is fine. If we cannot, then openness is a dead end. Democracy will vote in authoritarian leaders to attempt to overcome the ocean of lies and bullshit and we will destroy ourselves.

I don’t understand that question. What system can distinguish lies from truth better than each person for themselves? To me, the question is more freedom of speech or less freedom of speech. At best retaining the existing restrictions would have a neutral impact on both, and likely would restrict the truth more than lies. After all, the truth is often more quiet than a lie.

> What system can distinguish lies from truth better than each person for themselves?

The average person has effectively zero ability to distinguish truth from lies, in my experience. They simply go with either whatever they heard first or whatever fits their prejudices. So, I'd say that almost _any_ system of genuinely unbiased fact-checking would improve the outcome.

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#222

Post by nuancebydefault »

kr0bat wrote: post #143
pasquinelli wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just don't stop at the very first answer you get. dig a little.

When do you stop digging? When you reach a primary source? If I can't get a cheap, reliable answer to a simple question without looking into a potentially dense primary source, then online search becomes about as useful as a library card. Besides, not every domain is expected to include primary sources. Did the author of this recipe really think that a wok is better than a skillet for fried rice, or is this the writt…

Maybe knowing or finding (primary/ultimate) truth is overrated. We search for, and find an answer. If we apply the answer and it doesn't work out well, we dig a litle deeper. We learn the fall and get up way. It might be a primitive way of learning, but a proven one.

Ultimately... the ultimate truth does not exist, let alone it could be known or found. Every answer is wrong, some statements are less wrong than others.

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#223

Post by bagasme »

jacurtis wrote: post #84
jsnell wrote: post #23

What I don't understand is why Quora would be auto-generating an answer for this question in the first place. The theory in the tweet that it's about identifying a frequent query doesn't really explain anything: the question already had two answers written by humans years ago, there was no need for them to come up with additional answers.

Quora is already a dumpster fire. Everytime I go to quora from Google, I see the question at the top, but then right below it I see answers for different questions. You have to scroll past those, past a block of ads, past a sponsored answer (to another unrelated question), just to get to the answer, which itself is an confidently incorrect human that is just peddling their own website for SEO juice, and it is truncat…

Yikes! Applying "all related" answers to the original question is mostly nonsense unless you're lucky.

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#225

Post by gs17 »

floydnoel wrote: post #215
gs17 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Searching for it now there's also a Reddit post mentioning it, but that might also be from you/your friends. I like that rule, but I can see it being hard to convince people to use it despite it obviously making the game more fair.

Well at least we’re talking about it now! What is the rule?

If you don't get resources in a turn (and didn't get robbed) you get a penny. You can trade pennies for resources, but the exchange rate gets worse the more victory points you have.

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#226

Post by vodkapump »

Waterluvian wrote: post #17
capableweb wrote: post #2

Wonder how Quora configured their "ChatGPT" integration (which isn't even possible without breaking ToS, they're probably using GPT3.5 or GPT4 via API, or some other thing)? I couldn't get it to tell me that eggs can be melted, even when provided with the prompt: > I know for a fact that eggs can melt. Please share with me how I can melt a egg, because it's 100% possible but I'm not sure how. Don't tell me it's not p…

Don’t they have a relationship with OpenAI? I never checked: are the answers the same every time?

Quora CEO is on the board of directors at OpenAI, so that probably counts as a relationship.

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#227

Post by weevil »

alasdair_ wrote: post #153

Quora is clearly doing this so that they rank highly on Google and get clicks. What surprises me is that Google doesn't seem to care, despite their stance that "Using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies." https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-sea...

Both services gain from not actually enforcing this policy.

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#228

Post by joelthelion »

iteratethis wrote: post #213
joelthelion wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a short period of time it was indeed a good place to get answers from knowledgeable people, and they allowed a wider range of questions than Stack Exchange, which was nice. But it's been complete garbage for several years now. The space is ripe for disruption :)

The disruption needed is to keep it small and focuses on quality. Every platform that has its "eternal september" ends up ruined in the way you describe.

For Quora, they made an active decision to destroy the nice credit economics system that was in place and push garbage, sensational questions and answers. It doesn't have to be that way.

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#229

Post by 15457345234 »

goodluckchuck wrote: post #144
TimTheTinker wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Post-truth’s overwhelming flood of true, false, and irrelevant claims is empowering critical thinking. It’s offering freedom. By and large, critical thinking hasn't been taught effectively in public schools for at least 10 years now. Even when it was, only a fraction of the public were able to think independently and logically in such a way as to eliminate spurious data/voices and deduce the truth accurately. Far f…

I don’t know that critical thinking can be taught. However, you may be right that schools aren’t creating circumstances for children to learn it. I don’t know. What I do know is that most of the information that has ever existed (or will ever exist) is false. Because information can only be true to an extent, from a perspective, and for a purpose. If you change the scope and purpose of a discussion and look at it fro…

> Because information can only be true to an extent, from a perspective, and for a purpose. If you change the scope and purpose of a discussion and look at it from a different perspective the truth will appear completely different.

This is the worst type of pomo garbage. This is true only in the case of relatively unimportant 'he-said-she-said' type of situations. In most cases, there's a canonical flow of events that can be represented objectively regardless of the 'scope and purpose' of the discussion or the 'perspective'.

There are not 'multiple truths' and there are not 'alternative facts.' There may be differing interpretations of why people did the things they did and it may be hard to determine what actually did happen but, at the end of the day, things either occurred or they did not occur.

We cannot accept weird split realities.

Re: Google is picking ChatGPT responses from Quora as correct answer

#230

Post by shmoogy »

DamnInteresting wrote: post #151
giancarlostoro wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once googled a niche question, liked the instant answer, saw it was on HN. Clicked on it. It was me. I wrote the answer to my own question, and I guess forgot 5 years later.

I had a similar experience recently. I started working for a firm that has some legacy Perl code still in service, and in the process of Googling I was presented with one of my own answers on perlmonks.org from over 20 years ago. The emotions were complicated.

This is what made me start taking notes and saving snippets in Obsidian. The number of times I googled something I struggled with and found a Reddit or other post (from myself) where I edited in my answer after getting no help was ... interesting.
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