Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Check your fucking sources, people

brodzinski.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 88 posts

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#11

Post by justin66 »

6stringmerc wrote: post #3

Also relevant: the derision and mockery directed at JD Vance as a “couch fucker” even used by John Oliver. I read “Hillbilly Elegy” and wondered why it wasn’t in there. Snopes cleared it up in a matter of minutes. Why he hasn’t sued people into oblivion is his prerogative, but it’s a fascinating case study that we are, indeed, living in a Post-Truth environment.

Did anyone actually believe that was anything more than a joke? It was a disgusting and weird thing to suggest about a disgusting and weird guy, and highly immature, but it's only libel if it's presented as being true.

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#12

Post by [deleted] »

6stringmerc wrote: post #3

Also relevant: the derision and mockery directed at JD Vance as a “couch fucker” even used by John Oliver. I read “Hillbilly Elegy” and wondered why it wasn’t in there. Snopes cleared it up in a matter of minutes. Why he hasn’t sued people into oblivion is his prerogative, but it’s a fascinating case study that we are, indeed, living in a Post-Truth environment.

[deleted]

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#13

Post by louiereederson »

Late last year I tried asking ChatGPT to summarize a collection of 10 researchers' views/findings on a topic and provide representative quotes. It initially looked plausible but when I checked the links, the quotes were from clearly AI generated summaries of actual interviews. The paraphrasing was also plausible but subtly and profoundly incorrect.

I haven't tested this again on the latest models though, so not sure if there's been an improvement.

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#14

Post by kittoes »

6stringmerc wrote: post #3

Also relevant: the derision and mockery directed at JD Vance as a “couch fucker” even used by John Oliver. I read “Hillbilly Elegy” and wondered why it wasn’t in there. Snopes cleared it up in a matter of minutes. Why he hasn’t sued people into oblivion is his prerogative, but it’s a fascinating case study that we are, indeed, living in a Post-Truth environment.

Interesting that you focus on John Oliver's bit considering that it came up in the context of JD Vance doubling down on the whole "they're eating the cats and dogs thing".

https://youtu.be/NtRPLCso0Sw?t=14m09s

Makes me believe that you're really not commenting in good faith here.

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#15

Post by throw310822 »

> Ops, the link doesn’t lead to the study, but to another article. But that article, in turn, has a link of its own. Which leads to yet another article that doesn’t even mention the study anymore.

This is a common, infuriating practice: provides a veneer of authoritativeness and credibility to newspaper articles, and who is ever going to click on the links that support those very cogent claims? Nobody of course, so they just link to another article with more vague claims, and at any further level deep your willingness to verify that information evaporates at the same rate as the information itself.

But hey, in the meanwhile the author has managed to sneak in that "scientists have found" and that if you don't believe it you must be anti-science.

Incidentally, highlighting this abuse (together with a bunch of other quality and fact-checking) would be a great use of AI on online news publication.

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#16

Post by RajT88 »

Facebook, ever the wasteland of bullshit and scams, has gotten even more bullshit and scammy in the AI era.

I have found the single best way to avoid being pissed off by this shit is to just avoid Facebook. It dramatically cuts down on the amount I am exposed to.

I also run with adblockers, and consume news via brutalist.report, which also helps. (I avoid the Fox News section at the bottom)

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#17

Post by ubertaco »

tinfoilhatter wrote: post #8

It's amazing that people think Snopes or other "fact-checkers" are reliable sources of information and represent ultimate truth, as if they're immune to bias and don't receive funding from people / organizations with their own agendas.

Snopes (like anywhere) is only as reliable as its track record of collecting firsthand sources and accurately reporting on their contents.

Which is to say: pretty good so far, in their case. For the future? Who knows. But they've done well up to now, at least.

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#18

Post by ourmandave »

6stringmerc wrote: post #3

Also relevant: the derision and mockery directed at JD Vance as a “couch fucker” even used by John Oliver. I read “Hillbilly Elegy” and wondered why it wasn’t in there. Snopes cleared it up in a matter of minutes. Why he hasn’t sued people into oblivion is his prerogative, but it’s a fascinating case study that we are, indeed, living in a Post-Truth environment.

Tucker Carlson set the precedent when he was sued for libel by Karen McDougal and won because Fox New lawyers successfully argued he wasn't a reporter and no reasonable person would believe he's stating facts.

Unless he's repeating Trump's lies, then 77M people apparently believe it.

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#19

Post by kakugawa »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #2

Ironically, 'source checking' is something AI is quite good at.

Have we forgotten how bad LLMs were at citing sources when they first came out? So, we had to build a lot of structure (harness engineering) and frontier labs had to do specific training to try to compensate for this.

So, LLMs are inherently bad at citing sources. A lot of effort has been put in to improve this behavior, but it's compensating for an inherent flaw.

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#20

Post by titanomachy »

6stringmerc wrote: post #3

Also relevant: the derision and mockery directed at JD Vance as a “couch fucker” even used by John Oliver. I read “Hillbilly Elegy” and wondered why it wasn’t in there. Snopes cleared it up in a matter of minutes. Why he hasn’t sued people into oblivion is his prerogative, but it’s a fascinating case study that we are, indeed, living in a Post-Truth environment.

Oliver in that clip literally calls the couch-fucking thing "the fun kind of misinformation". He's not suggesting it's true.
Post reply on HN