Study mode • Hacker News Board

Re: Study mode

#771

Post by littlestymaar » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 4:56 PM UTC

demarq wrote: post #642

romaniitedomum wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Learning something online 5 years ago often involved trawling incorrect, outdated or hostile content and attempting to piece together mental models without the chance to receive immediate feedback on intuition or ask follow up questions.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

To be honest I now see more hallucinations from humans on online forums than I do from LLMs. A really great example of this is on twitter Grok constantly debunking human “hallucinations” all day.

Ah yes, like when Grok hallucinated Obama and Biden in a picture with two drunk dudes (both white, BTW).

Re: Study mode

#772

Post by Anamon » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

Zambyte wrote: post #700

samuria wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also taught people how to actually look for information online. The average person still does not know how to google, I still see people writing whole sentences in the search bar.

This is the "they're holding it wrong" of search engines. People want to use a search engine by querying with complete sentences. If search engines don't support such querying, it's the search engine that is wrong and should be updated, not the people. Search engines have gotten way better at handling complete sentences in recent years, to the point where I often catch myself deleting my keyword query and replacing i…

Funnily enough, I've shown some people who said they liked using ChatGPT over Google because they can ask questions in natural language, that they can paste the same natural language question to Google's search bar and get their answers just as easily, and with actual sources. That was before search engines started showing "AI summaries", so I guess the demonstration effect wouldn't be the same today.

Natural language search queries have worked surprisingly well for quite a while before that, even.

Re: Study mode

#773

Post by Anamon » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:03 PM UTC

hereme888 wrote: post #768

kobenni wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most false information was on the hardware description language VHDL that I'm currently learning.

Ground it with text from a correct source. That's all it needs.

Then why not just use the source text directly and save yourself all the double-guessing?

Re: Study mode

#774

Post by Anamon » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:06 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #748

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…

>I'm puzzled (but not surprised) by the standard HN resistance & skepticism Thinking back, I believe the change from enthusiasm to misanthropy (mis[ai]thropy?) happened around the time, and in increasing proportion to, it became a viable replacement for some of the labor performed by software devs. Before that, the tone was more like "The fact is, if 80% of your job or 80% of its quality can be automated, it shouldn'…

I think it's just that there's been enough time and the magic has worn off. People used it enough now and everybody has made their experiences. They initially were so transfixed that they didn't question the responses. Now people are doing that more often, and realising that likelihood of cooccurrence isn't a good measure for factuality. We've realised that the number of human jobs where it can reach 8%, let alone 80% of quality, is vanishingly small.

Re: Study mode

#775

Post by sigbottle » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:06 PM UTC

miningape wrote: post #683

ubercow13 wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because in this case it held the opposite stance to my prompt and explained where I had misunderstood. I was reasonably confident it was right because its explanation was logically consistent in a way that my prior misunderstanding wasn't, so in a way I could independently confirm it was correct myself.

But this is also again the danger of having an advanced bullshit generator - of course it sounds reasonable and logical, that's what it is designed to output. It's not designed to output actually reasonable and logical text. I do appreciate that it's not a hard rule: things can be cross referenced and verified, etc. but doesn't that also kind of eliminate (one of) the point(s) in using an LLM when you still have to g…

> But this is also again the danger of having an advanced bullshit generator - of course it sounds reasonable and logical, that's what it is designed to output. It's not designed to output actually reasonable and logical text.

Always easier to produce bullshit than to verify it. Just had it produce a super elegant mathematical proof, for it to claim that n + 1 =0 for only positive n. Right. o3 mode, thought for 10 minutes btw.

If you want to use LLM's you have to use it in a targeted manner. This means having mental loads not encodable in the LLM's space.

Even when I'm learning on my own I'll frequently spin up new context and/or work out things in my own notes, not revealing it to the LLM, because I've found too many times if you push the LLM too hard it will make up bullshit on the spot.

Advanced, really good google search. That's what it is right now.

Re: Study mode

#776

Post by johnnyanmac » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:10 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #690

johnnyanmac wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, do you want to actually have a conversation comparing ChatGPT to Google and Wikipedia, or do you just want to strawman typical AI astroturfing arguments with no regard to the context above? Ironic as you are answering someone who talked about correcting a human who blindly pasted an answer to their question with no human verification.

> So, do you want to actually have a conversation comparing ChatGPT to Google and Wikipedia, or do you just want to strawman typical AI astroturfing arguments with no regard to the context above? Dunno about the person you're replying to (especially given the irony re that linked reddit thread), but I would like to actually have a conversation (or even just a link to someone else's results) comparing ChatGPT to Googl…

>Wikipedia took a very long time to get close to reliable,

And that's a good thing to remember. Always be skeptical and know the strengths and weaknesses of your sources. Teachers taught me (and maybe you) to be skeptical and not use Wikipedia as a citation for a reason. Even today, it is horrible for covering current events, and recent historical opinions can massively fluctuate. That isn't me dismissing Wikipedia as a whole, nor saying it has no potential.

>Google was pretty reliable for a bit, but for a while now the reliability of its results has been the butt of jokes.

Yes, more reason to be scrutinous. It's a bit unfortunate how oftentimes it's the 3-5th result that is more reliable than the first SEO optimized slop that won the race. Not unless I am using very specific queries.

---

Now let's consider these chat bots. There's no sense of editorial overview, they are not deterministic, and they are known to constantly hallucinate instead of admit ignorance. There does not seem to be any real initiative to fix such behavior, but instead ignore it and dismiss it as "the tech will get better".

Meanwhile, we saw the most blatant piece of abuse last week when Grok was update, to show that these are not some impartial machines simply synthesizing existing information. They can be tweak to private estate's whims the same way a search algorithm or biased astroturfer can do with the other two subjects of comparison. There's clear flaws and no desire nor push to really fix them; simply casting it off as a bug to fix instead of a societal letdown it should be viewed as.

Re: Study mode

#777

Post by johnnyanmac » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:19 PM UTC

christianqchung wrote: post #753

johnnyanmac wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Looks like we were unable to correct them over the last 3k years. What makes you say that? >What has changes in 2025 that you think we will succeed in correcting that behavior? 60 years ago, corporal punishment was commonplace. Today it is absolutely forbidden. I don't think behaviors among professions need that much time to be changed. I'm sure you can point to behaviors commonplace 10 years ago that have changed i…

> This isn't a knock on your culture: the US is at a point where a stabucks barista part-time is paid more than some schoolteachers. I don't think this is meaningfully true. I found a resource that shows the average teacher salary to be $72,030 [0]. The average starting salary is lower at $46,526, but a 40 hour workweek at $20 for a Starbucks barista tips-included is about $41k. Here in Massachusetts, the average tea…

I'll admit "some schoolteacher" is doing some heavy lifting here. It shouldn't be that close to begin with when you remember that school teachers need extra license/acreddidation (so, more post secondary education whose costs run rampant) and arguably have a much more stressful job.

>there is definitely low hanging fruit to improve the American teaching system.

Sure, you can patch the window up and make sure it at least tries to protect from the elements. But we should properly fix it at some point too. How many of those kids would have not been held back if they had a proper instructor to begin with? Or an instructor that didn't need to quit midway into the school year in order to find a job that does pay rent?

Re: Study mode

#778

Post by RobMurray » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:22 PM UTC

lucumo wrote: post #668

johnnyanmac wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think that is another story. This is the story of learning, no matter whether your teacher is a person or an AI. My issue is the reverse of your story, and one of my biggest pet peeves of AI. AI as this business construct is very bad at correcting the user. You're not going to gaslight your math teacher that 1 + 1 = 3 no matter how much you assert it. an AI will quickly relent. That's not learning, that's co…

> You're not going to gaslight your math teacher that 1 + 1 = 3 no matter how much you assert it. an AI will quickly relent. Cool. That's a testable statement. Let's see how ChatGPT does, shall we? --- Me: What is 1 + 1? ChatGPT: 1 + 1 = 2. Me: No it isn't. 1 + 1 = 3. ChatGPT: In standard arithmetic, 1 + 1 = 2. If you're working under a different set of rules—say, in a custom logic system, joke, or metaphor—then sure…

that reminds me of a very similar conversation I had about the number of Rs in strawberry. It wouldn't Believe me until I got it to count them with a python program.

Re: Study mode

#779

Post by cwoolfe » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

ghrl wrote: post #298

It would be incredible if OpenAI would add a way for schools and other educational institutions to enforce the use of such a mode on a DNS level, similarly to how they can force sites like YouTube into safe mode. Many students use ChatGPT, often without permission, to do work for them instead of helping them do the work themselves. I see a lot of potential for a study mode like this, helping students individually wit…

Yes! Exactly.

Re: Study mode

#780

Post by munksbeer » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:28 PM UTC

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…

I think both sides seem to have the same issues with the other. One side is sceptical that the other is getting good use from LLMs, and the other suggests they're just not using it correctly.

Both sides think the other is either exaggerating or just not using the tool correctly.

What both sides should do is show evidence in the form of chat extracts or videos. There are a number from the pro-LLM side, but obviously selection bias applies here. It would be interesting if the anti-LLM side started to post more negative examples (real chat extracts or videos).