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Study mode

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Re: Study mode

#411

Post by Aeolun »

drc500free wrote: post #350
kenjackson wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The deeper I go, the less it seems to be useful. This happens quick for me. Also, god forbid you're researching a complex and possibly controversial subject and you want it to find reputable sources or particularly academic ones.” These things also apply to humans. A year or so ago I thought I’d finally learn more about the Israeli/Palestinians conflict. Turns out literally every source that was recommended to me by…

Israel / Palestine is a collision between two internally valid and mutually exclusive worldviews. It's kind of a given that there will be two camps who consider the other non-reputable. FWIW, the /r/AskHistorians booklist is pretty helpful. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/middleeast...

> It's kind of a given that there will be two camps who consider the other non-reputable.

You don’t need to look more than 2 years back to understand why either camp finds the other non-reputable.

Re: Study mode

#412

Post by romaniitedomum »

jacobedawson wrote: post #379

An underrated quality of LLMs as study partner is that you can ask "stupid" questions without fear of embarrassment. Adding in a mode that doesn't just dump an answer but works to take you through the material step-by-step is magical. A tireless, capable, well-versed assistant on call 24/7 is an autodidact's dream. I'm puzzled (but not surprised) by the standard HN resistance & skepticism. Learning something online 5…

> Learning something online 5 years ago often involved trawling incorrect, outdated or hostile content and attempting to piece together mental models without the chance to receive immediate feedback on intuition or ask follow up questions. This is leaps and bounds ahead of that experience.

But now, you're wondering if the answer the AI gave you is correct or something it hallucinated. Every time I find myself putting factual questions to AIs, it doesn't take long for it to give me a wrong answer. And inevitably, when one raises this, one is told that the newest, super-duper, just released model addresses this, for the low-low cost of $EYEWATERINGSUM per month.

But worse than this, if you push back on an AI, it will fold faster than a used tissue in a puddle. It won't defend an answer it gave. This isn't a quality that you want in a teacher.

So, while AIs are useful tools in guiding learning, they're not magical, and a healthy dose of scepticism is essential. Arguably, that applies to traditional learning methods too, but that's another story.

Re: Study mode

#413

Post by phailhaus »

jacobedawson wrote: post #379

An underrated quality of LLMs as study partner is that you can ask "stupid" questions without fear of embarrassment. Adding in a mode that doesn't just dump an answer but works to take you through the material step-by-step is magical. A tireless, capable, well-versed assistant on call 24/7 is an autodidact's dream. I'm puzzled (but not surprised) by the standard HN resistance & skepticism. Learning something online 5…

HN is resistant because at the end of the day, these are LLMs. They cannot and do not think. They generate plausible responses. Try this in your favorite LLM: "Suppose you're on a game show trying to win a car. There are three doors, one with a car and two with goats. You pick a door. The host then gives you the option to switch doors. What is the best strategy in this situation?" The LLM will recognize this as SIMILAR to the Monty Hall problem and tell you to always switch. I just reproduced this with ChatGPT.

But this is completely wrong! In the Monty Hall problem, the host has to reveal a door with a goat behind it for you to gain the benefit of switching. I have to point this out for the LLM to get it right. It did not reason about the problem I gave it, it spat out the most likely response given the "shape" of the problem.

This is why shrugging and saying "well humans get things wrong too" is off base. The problem is that the LLM is not thinking, period. So it cannot create a mental model of your understanding of a subject, it is taking your text and generating the next message in a conversation. This means that the more niche the topic (or your particular misunderstanding), the less useful it will get.

Re: Study mode

#414

Post by pyuser583 »

SLWW wrote: post #210
pyuser583 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ask it about the Crusades, often if forgets the sacking of St. Peter's in Rome around 846 AD, usually painting the Papacy as a needlessly hateful and violent people during that specific Crusade. Which was horrible, bloody as well as immensely destructive (I don't defend the Crusades), but paints the Islamic forces as victims, which they were eventually, but not at the beginning, at the beginning they were the aggre…

The crusades were predicated on historic tensions between Rome and the Arabs. Which is why I mention that, while the First Crusade proper was in 1096, it's core reasoning were situations like the Sacking of St. Peters which is considered by historians to be one of the most influential moments and often was used as a justification as there was a history of incompatibilities between Rome and the Muslims. Further leadin…

What you’re saying is not at all what I understand to be the history of crusading.

Its background is in the Islamic Christian conflicts of Spain. Crusading was adopted from the Muslim idea of Jihad, as we things like naming customs (Spanish are the only Christians who name their children “Jesus”, after the Muslim “Muhammad”).

The political tensions that lead to the first crusade were between Arab Muslims and Byzantine Christian’s. Specifically, the Battle of Mazikirt made Christian Europe seem more vulnerable than it was.

The Papacy wasn’t at the forefront of the struggle against Islam. It was more worried about the Normans, Germans, and Greeks.

When the papacy was interested in Crusading it was for domestic reasons: getting rid of king so-and-so by making him go on crusade.

The situation was different in Spain where Islam was a constant threat, but the Papacy regarded Spain as an exotic foreign land (although Sylvester II was educated there).

It’s extremely misleading to view the pope as the leader of an anti-Muslim coalition. There really was no leader per se, but the reasons why kings went on crusade had little to do with fighting Islam.

Just look at how many monarchs showed up in Jerusalem, then headed straight home and spent the rest of their lives bragging about crusaders.

I’m 80% certain no pope ever set foot in Outremere.

Re: Study mode

#415

Post by BubbleRings »

everyone wrote: post #395
jacobedawson wrote: post #379

An underrated quality of LLMs as study partner is that you can ask "stupid" questions without fear of embarrassment. Adding in a mode that doesn't just dump an answer but works to take you through the material step-by-step is magical. A tireless, capable, well-versed assistant on call 24/7 is an autodidact's dream. I'm puzzled (but not surprised) by the standard HN resistance & skepticism. Learning something online 5…

Yeah, I've been a game-dev forever and had never built a web-app in my life (even in college) I recently completed my 1st web-app contract, and gpt was my teacher. I have no problem asking stupid questions, tbh asking stupid questions is a sign of intelligence imo. But where is there to even ask these days? Stack Overflow may as well not exist.

Right on. A sign of intelligence but more importantly of bravery, and generosity. A person that asks good questions in a class improves the class drastically, and usually learns more effectively than other students in the class.

Re: Study mode

#416

Post by QuantumGood »

romaniitedomum wrote: post #412
jacobedawson wrote: post #379

An underrated quality of LLMs as study partner is that you can ask "stupid" questions without fear of embarrassment. Adding in a mode that doesn't just dump an answer but works to take you through the material step-by-step is magical. A tireless, capable, well-versed assistant on call 24/7 is an autodidact's dream. I'm puzzled (but not surprised) by the standard HN resistance & skepticism. Learning something online 5…

> Learning something online 5 years ago often involved trawling incorrect, outdated or hostile content and attempting to piece together mental models without the chance to receive immediate feedback on intuition or ask follow up questions. This is leaps and bounds ahead of that experience. But now, you're wondering if the answer the AI gave you is correct or something it hallucinated. Every time I find myself putting…

I often ask first, "discuss what it is you think I am asking" after formulating my query. Very helpful for getting greater clarity and leads to fewer hallucinations.

Re: Study mode

#417

Post by QuantumGood »

phailhaus wrote: post #413
jacobedawson wrote: post #379

An underrated quality of LLMs as study partner is that you can ask "stupid" questions without fear of embarrassment. Adding in a mode that doesn't just dump an answer but works to take you through the material step-by-step is magical. A tireless, capable, well-versed assistant on call 24/7 is an autodidact's dream. I'm puzzled (but not surprised) by the standard HN resistance & skepticism. Learning something online 5…

HN is resistant because at the end of the day, these are LLMs. They cannot and do not think. They generate plausible responses. Try this in your favorite LLM: "Suppose you're on a game show trying to win a car. There are three doors, one with a car and two with goats. You pick a door. The host then gives you the option to switch doors. What is the best strategy in this situation?" The LLM will recognize this as SIMIL…

I use the Monty Hall problem to test people in two steps. The second step is, after we discuss it and come up with a framing that they can understand, can they then explain it to a third person. The third person rarely understands, and the process of the explanation reveals how shallow the understanding of the second person is. The shallowest understanding of any similar process that I've usually experienced is an LLM.

Re: Study mode

#418

Post by danny_codes »

jacobedawson wrote: post #379

An underrated quality of LLMs as study partner is that you can ask "stupid" questions without fear of embarrassment. Adding in a mode that doesn't just dump an answer but works to take you through the material step-by-step is magical. A tireless, capable, well-versed assistant on call 24/7 is an autodidact's dream. I'm puzzled (but not surprised) by the standard HN resistance & skepticism. Learning something online 5…

Consider the adoption of conventional technology in the classroom. The US has spent billions on new hardware and software for education, and yet there has been no improvement in learning outcomes.

This is where the skepticism arises. Before we spend another $100 billion on something that ended up being worthless, we should first prove that it’s actually useful. So far, that hasn’t conclusively been demonstrated.

Re: Study mode

#419

Post by brendoelfrendo »

scarmig wrote: post #115
SLWW wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My core problem with LLMs is as you say; it's good for some simpler concepts, tasks, etc. but when you need to dive into more complex topics it will oversimplify, give you what you didn't ask for, or straight up lie by omission. History is a great example, if you ask an LLM about a vaguely difficult period in history it will just give you one side and act like the other doesn't exist, or if there is another side, it…

A few weeks ago I was asking an LLM to offer anti-heliocentric arguments, from the perspective of an intelligent scientist. Although it initially started with what was almost a parody of writing from that period, with some prompting I got it to generate a strong rendition of anti-heliocentric arguments. (On the other hand, it's very hard to get them to do it for topics that are currently politically charged. Less so…

What were its arguments? Do you have enough of an understanding of astronomy to know whether it actually made good arguments that are grounded in scientific understanding, or did it just write persuasively in a way that looks convincing to a layman?

> I've had success getting it to offer the Carthaginian perspective in the Punic Wars.

This is not surprising to me. Historians have long studied Carthage, and there are books you can get on the Punic Wars that talk about the state of Carthage leading up to and during the wars (shout out to Richard Miles's "Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization"). I would expect an LLM to piggyback off of that existing literature.

Re: Study mode

#420

Post by gronglo »

romaniitedomum wrote: post #412
jacobedawson wrote: post #379

An underrated quality of LLMs as study partner is that you can ask "stupid" questions without fear of embarrassment. Adding in a mode that doesn't just dump an answer but works to take you through the material step-by-step is magical. A tireless, capable, well-versed assistant on call 24/7 is an autodidact's dream. I'm puzzled (but not surprised) by the standard HN resistance & skepticism. Learning something online 5…

> Learning something online 5 years ago often involved trawling incorrect, outdated or hostile content and attempting to piece together mental models without the chance to receive immediate feedback on intuition or ask follow up questions. This is leaps and bounds ahead of that experience. But now, you're wondering if the answer the AI gave you is correct or something it hallucinated. Every time I find myself putting…

> But now, you're wondering if the answer the AI gave you is correct or something it hallucinated. Every time I find myself putting factual questions to AIs, it doesn't take long for it to give me a wrong answer.

I know you'll probably think I'm being facetious, but have you tried Claude 4 Opus? It really is a game changer.

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