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I bought an encyclopedia

optoutproject.net

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Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#111

Post by namaria »

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #70
tpoacher wrote: post #5

There's a very implicit assumption in this text that the encyclopedia you buy in 2024 does NOT contain all sorts of AI-generated stuff. Not sure I have that much faith in the world anymore to trust that to be true.

Encyclopedias that have built their reputation on being written by subject matter experts should hopefully be free of AI text.

This is funny to me because the value of buying physical books is enhanced by the fact that publishers and authors have strong incentives to fact check what they put out. GP thinks this means little protection against LLM slop. While another commenter claims they think physical publications are too slow to keep up with current rates of change.

Two opposite and equally nonsensical reasons to dismiss physical books. The more confused people get the higher the value of clarity of mind.

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#112

Post by bradknowles »

musicale wrote: post #83
aidenn0 wrote: post #67

> For one thing, my kids were increasingly being asked to "do research" for their school projects. As far as I could tell, this meant just Googling materials, copying and pasting what they found, stealing photos on the internet, and generally neither digesting nor evaluating anything that popped up in search results. The degree to which my children's teachers actively don't care about this is hard to overstate. I was…

> asked to "do research" for their school projects What is the educational goal of such an assignment? Certainly researchers and graduate students need to perform literature searches to understand the state of the art (as well as the research frontier) and also to uncover related work (so-called "novelty" being important for publication, etc.) But for most of K-12, isn't the subject matter fairly well established and…

When I was growing up, my family always had World Book Encyclopedias. My grandfather was a salesman for them (and later a regional sales manager), so he always made sure we had a relatively recent complete set.

I would spend hours and hours on some nights, just reading through the books. They fascinated me.

By the time I was in sixth grade, I was reading at college level. The teachers didn’t know what to do with me. One time that year, I took Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy as my subject for a book report. I couldn’t understand why the other kids and the teachers didn’t feel the same way about those books.

By the time I was in high school, the dedicated bookcase for them got moved into my bedroom. I was well above average for my academic performance in high school.

In college, I helped pay my way through school by working at the main library on campus, shelving books and various other tasks. I ended up working there for over five years, as I took a lighter class load to try to help keep my grades up. And I was on the Dean’s List, with a GPA above 3.5, etc….

Encyclopedias taught me how to read, and how to study, and how to organize my writing.

I think I probably owe much of who and what I am today, to those encyclopedias.

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#113

Post by susiecambria »

neontomo wrote: post #102
susiecambria wrote: post #74

Before my younger daughter headed off to college, I put her through a mini library studies class. It was designed to teach her how to identify authors with different positions on a topic, write summaries, and write brief analyses. It was very loosely based on a required prep school class I took in the early 1980s. She absolutely hated it. Not sure how much good it did her given her lack of interest in the lessons. To…

I'm curious, did you explain to your daughter why you were putting her through it, like you've described it here? If I don't sufficiently understand the "why", the task becomes a chore.

I did explain it. She didn't understand before but by the end, with some reinforcing chats with librarians, she understood.

The why: Knowing how to research and assess points of view, axes to grind, etc. is essential for the kinds of college work she was going to be doing. And, it would help her in life.

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#114

Post by musicale »

Jap2-0 wrote: post #84
musicale wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> asked to "do research" for their school projects What is the educational goal of such an assignment? Certainly researchers and graduate students need to perform literature searches to understand the state of the art (as well as the research frontier) and also to uncover related work (so-called "novelty" being important for publication, etc.) But for most of K-12, isn't the subject matter fairly well established and…

Sure, the subject matter is in the textbook, but that's not necessarily the only thing being taught—research skills (source evaluation, comparison, synthesis, etc.) also need to (or should) be taught at some point. And teaching material in multiple ways (and having student participation) is beneficial for learning and retention. Now some parts of the case mentioned above obviously aren't great, but there are absolute…

As you suggest with source evaluation, there is something to be said for trying to teach some methods of verifying whether something is true (for some definition of "true") including methods for assessing (to some extent) the accuracy of various sources of information, finding information that may have been omitted, identifying underlying assumptions and viewpoints, etc.

Unfortunately, as dang has noted, fact checkers tend to find facts that support their position and to ignore or discredit those that do not. It's even a problem for scientists and researchers.

I still like the idea of a curated collection of sources.

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#115

Post by keiferski »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #108
keiferski wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publishing an encyclopedia is a considerably more lengthy process than publishing papers in journals. I also don't think you actually read the articles you linked to. The first one says that the publisher is planning on using AI, it doesn't say that they have already. As I said in the initial comment: > I wouldn’t expect a publisher of encyclopedias to implement AI tools for years. Meaning, an encyclopedia bought tod…

I'll contextualize it better for you as I don't think you understood the unifying theme of two Wiley-related articles: May 16th: Wiley shuts down journals over AI use: https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/wiley_journals_ai/ June 13th: Wiley book series is going to be using AI: https://qz.com/for-dummies-books-publisher-john-wiley-sons-a... My interest in Wiley is that my late uncle helped them to "go digital" decad…

Again, because publishing to an online-only journal is not the same as publishing a paper encyclopedia. The former has far, far less resources required and processes required in order to publish it. The journals shut down were not particularly well-regarded ones and they were known as paper mills prior to them using AI. The Dummies series is hardly a paragon of excellence either.

As I said, I wouldn't be surprised if these companies start using LLMs in the near future, but as I said in another comment, I think the average tech person vastly overestimates how much the average person keeps up-to-date on the latest LLM developments. They also tend to overhype how much society will be transformed by tech, largely because getting VC dollars depends on that hype.

These things are still in their infancy and I'd expect them to be used soon, but the people running encyclopedias are not so up-to-date on the latest LLM developments to have already incorporated them into publications planned years ago.

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#116

Post by cratermoon »

bawolff wrote: post #52
jiehong wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the last paragraphs say it clearly: Our information literacy project must start somewhere, preferably far enough from the meandering blather of generative systems that when we encounter them, we have the tools under our belt to evaluate their results. And that, ultimately, is why I bought an Encyclopedia.

But at the start of the article he claims his kids are getting information from wikipedia and youtube videos. Neither of which are generative AI (well i guess it depends which youtube video). So he bought an encyclopedia to prevent his kids from using generative AI even though they weren't using it in the first place? It makes no sense.

If you read the companion story linked to at the top: https://www.publicbooks.org/the-encyclopedia-project-or-how-...

You'll see that the impetus for his purchase was a tangle with an AI-generated youtube video about kung fu.

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#117

Post by cratermoon »

namaria wrote: post #110
hobobaggins wrote: post #72

I've become such a Luddite. This looks like a great idea, and I especially like the looks of the pictured encyclopedia.

You've become a labor activist radicalized by systematic curtailing of your organization rights?

The luddites were motivated by the loss of work because of industrial mechanization. What goes around comes around.

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#118

Post by nottorp »

namaria wrote: post #107
nottorp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is one of the major positive use cases for the internet*. As long as they can keep up with curation, that is. Paper encyclopedias may be fun, but let's point out that he bought one for the kids to play a 20 year old game in an emulator. So they only need information from 20 years ago. * along with cat photos, obviously.

I fully expect in a 50 years social media will be a bad memory and Wikipedia will be stronger than ever.

So will be icanhazcheezburger.

Re: I bought an encyclopedia

#119

Post by athom »

AstroJetson wrote: post #106
Rediscover wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really enjoyed John Muir pubs like How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step by Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot. They are available for a handful of vehicles (the Subaru one is a favorite of mine). Available at a used bookshop or new. Great drawings, useful for non-motor-heads. The Sub version has info like resuscitating a drowned lizard :) Avoid if You hate R. Crumb style drawings and hippies. Try…

I had this book (and many many many VW's) it was a great help, I did my first valve adjustment with this book in hand.

Pretty sure my dad still has his. I still have memories of his working on our microbus at the time, back in the early '70s. Don't think I was even five, yet, but I remember lying underneath the thing with him, watching while he worked on the brakes(?). And another time, he and Mom working a couple of jacks to pull out the engine.

Yeah, that copy earned its keep. Think it still has some of the grime...

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