4 ms·

So by this definition, do we already have "knowledge collapse" by Wikipedia? Because if you search for a random concept, that's usually the first hit, and it's

So by this definition, do we already have "knowledge collapse" by Wikipedia? Because if you search for a random concept, that's usually the first hit, and it's also what countless other sources draw on.

rwbt 3y ago
Yes, we do kind of.
- hprotagonist 3y ago
  and i distinctly remember this critique being made at wikipedia's advent, as well. and it is not without justification! https://undark.org/2021/08/12/wikipedia-has-a-language-problem-heres-how-to-fix-it/ https://undark.org/2021/08/12/wikipedia-has-a-language-probl...
nickpsecurity 3y ago
The same warning was given for Google. Except those people added that it would reduce problem solving ability, too. People would get used to whatever simple, instant content rose to the top. They'd gradually lose some or all of their ability to figure out the same things on their own. One submission here was a tech guy at a school saying that was already happening where he worked.
- aoanla 3y ago
  I mean, it does - people search stuff all the time now, rather than thinking about it.
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    IIRC, that was Socrates' complaint to Phaedrus about writing: that reading (because it was "high tech" at the time?) led only to an illusion of understanding. Elsewhere Phaedrus echoes with a very modern complaint (even though search engines wouldn't arrive for another 2'300 years): They would say in reply that he is a madman or a pedant who fancies that he is a physician because he has read something in a book, or has stumbled on a prescription or two, although he has no real understanding of the art of medicine. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1636/1636-h/1636-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1636/1636-h/1636-h.htm
    - jprete 3y ago
      Socrates wasn't wrong. Reading a lot gives you a partial understanding but it isn't complete without experiencing the thing for yourself. Arguably the Internet is the natural home of authoritatively stated but uninformed opinions - the exact result of reading a lot about a subject without having any experience of it.
      - contravariant 3y ago
        Ironically we can only know he was right by making the exact mistake he was warning us against.
    - voidhorse 3y ago
      I think the Phaedrus is all about the importance of practice. I've been reading a lot of math books lately, but I don't actually grok anything well until I sit down and try to reason through the material myself, write my own little proofs, try to deconstruct what's being said actively with pen and paper. Similarly, I understand a work of literature far more deeply if I take active notes, and/or write a small essay about my interpretation. I become a better writer by reading good writers and emulating them in my own writing practice. Writing was a threat to poets when the goal was still to recite a compelling live performance, which, to do this well, would require memorization and practice—today, still, we ask that actors do not have paper scripts in front of them when performing in a film. This is kind of the threat that tools like LLM's pose. Their power to generate decent results means that far more people will eschew practice for "good enough" LLM produced results. Creation will become even more transactional, and (many) people will quickly fail to "see the point" in practicing until we have a culture that's degraded even further than it already has today.
      - 082349872349872 3y ago
        As the hallucinated Euclid said to Ptolemy, there is no LLM for geometry?
AlienRobot 3y ago
Personally, I think the problem is that people abuse Google for things it's really not designed to do, and they don't even realize that. Google is great at finding official webpages by their exact title. If you type the title of a news headline from the 90s, Google will give you the link to it. I think that is amazing. Basically anything that has a canonical URL, Google is good at finding. But when you search for "how to do X" for example, there will be several results that are perfectly valid and they will still need to be ranked in a list. Because it's not a "list" of results, it's ranking of relevancy. So to avoid showing spam, Google will push to the top websites it finds trustworthy. And now every top result comes from the same website. If you need an explanation for the Xz incident, for example, there is no canonical URL for it. There will be several news websites, youtube channels, etc. that have talked about it, competing to be the top result. Google still has to rank them even though the algorithm can't tell fact apart from parody, so no matter what Google does, Google will be the one judging which content most people will read when they want to know about a certain topic. To borrow my fellow robot's words, people are finding knowledge through an algorithmically curated aperture: Google's SERP. If they're evil, they have the power to control everyone on Earth. If they're good, they must be going insane with what to do with their users' crippling dependency on them as a source of truth.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  I find Google isn't so good anymore for finding things by title; rather than being a search engine they are slowly becoming more like a politician answering reporters' questions, in that instead of returning results based on the terms I asked for, they insist on returning results for the terms they believe I should have asked for.
  - AlienRobot 3y ago
    Can you give me examples? Personally, I don't think I've ever had a problem finding things by their name or title on Google. If I type python, I get python's website, if I type hacker news, I get this website. I can type the name of an old program and get their webpage on sourceforge for example. I've also tested that it works with finding the official websites of celebrities, e.g. if you type eminem, you get his official website. It does seem to have biases toward recency and product pages, but finding things by their title isn't a thing Google is bad at.
the_af 3y ago
Probably Wikipedia is an early precursor of this problem, yes. It may not be entirely new, but AI might accelerate it to really harmful speeds. Just pondering this, of course.

rwbt 3y ago

Yes, we do kind of.

hprotagonist 3y ago
and i distinctly remember this critique being made at wikipedia's advent, as well. and it is not without justification! https://undark.org/2021/08/12/wikipedia-has-a-language-problem-heres-how-to-fix-it/ https://undark.org/2021/08/12/wikipedia-has-a-language-probl...

nickpsecurity 3y ago

The same warning was given for Google. Except those people added that it would reduce problem solving ability, too. People would get used to whatever simple, instant content rose to the top. They'd gradually lose some or all of their ability to figure out the same things on their own. One submission here was a tech guy at a school saying that was already happening where he worked.

aoanla 3y ago
I mean, it does - people search stuff all the time now, rather than thinking about it.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  IIRC, that was Socrates' complaint to Phaedrus about writing: that reading (because it was "high tech" at the time?) led only to an illusion of understanding. Elsewhere Phaedrus echoes with a very modern complaint (even though search engines wouldn't arrive for another 2'300 years): They would say in reply that he is a madman or a pedant who fancies that he is a physician because he has read something in a book, or has stumbled on a prescription or two, although he has no real understanding of the art of medicine. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1636/1636-h/1636-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1636/1636-h/1636-h.htm
  - jprete 3y ago
    Socrates wasn't wrong. Reading a lot gives you a partial understanding but it isn't complete without experiencing the thing for yourself. Arguably the Internet is the natural home of authoritatively stated but uninformed opinions - the exact result of reading a lot about a subject without having any experience of it.
    - contravariant 3y ago
      Ironically we can only know he was right by making the exact mistake he was warning us against.
  - voidhorse 3y ago
    I think the Phaedrus is all about the importance of practice. I've been reading a lot of math books lately, but I don't actually grok anything well until I sit down and try to reason through the material myself, write my own little proofs, try to deconstruct what's being said actively with pen and paper. Similarly, I understand a work of literature far more deeply if I take active notes, and/or write a small essay about my interpretation. I become a better writer by reading good writers and emulating them in my own writing practice. Writing was a threat to poets when the goal was still to recite a compelling live performance, which, to do this well, would require memorization and practice—today, still, we ask that actors do not have paper scripts in front of them when performing in a film. This is kind of the threat that tools like LLM's pose. Their power to generate decent results means that far more people will eschew practice for "good enough" LLM produced results. Creation will become even more transactional, and (many) people will quickly fail to "see the point" in practicing until we have a culture that's degraded even further than it already has today.
    - 082349872349872 3y ago
      As the hallucinated Euclid said to Ptolemy, there is no LLM for geometry?

AlienRobot 3y ago

Personally, I think the problem is that people abuse Google for things it's really not designed to do, and they don't even realize that. Google is great at finding official webpages by their exact title. If you type the title of a news headline from the 90s, Google will give you the link to it. I think that is amazing. Basically anything that has a canonical URL, Google is good at finding. But when you search for "how to do X" for example, there will be several results that are perfectly valid and they will still need to be ranked in a list. Because it's not a "list" of results, it's ranking of relevancy. So to avoid showing spam, Google will push to the top websites it finds trustworthy. And now every top result comes from the same website. If you need an explanation for the Xz incident, for example, there is no canonical URL for it. There will be several news websites, youtube channels, etc. that have talked about it, competing to be the top result. Google still has to rank them even though the algorithm can't tell fact apart from parody, so no matter what Google does, Google will be the one judging which content most people will read when they want to know about a certain topic. To borrow my fellow robot's words, people are finding knowledge through an algorithmically curated aperture: Google's SERP. If they're evil, they have the power to control everyone on Earth. If they're good, they must be going insane with what to do with their users' crippling dependency on them as a source of truth.

082349872349872 3y ago
I find Google isn't so good anymore for finding things by title; rather than being a search engine they are slowly becoming more like a politician answering reporters' questions, in that instead of returning results based on the terms I asked for, they insist on returning results for the terms they believe I should have asked for.
- AlienRobot 3y ago
  Can you give me examples? Personally, I don't think I've ever had a problem finding things by their name or title on Google. If I type python, I get python's website, if I type hacker news, I get this website. I can type the name of an old program and get their webpage on sourceforge for example. I've also tested that it works with finding the official websites of celebrities, e.g. if you type eminem, you get his official website. It does seem to have biases toward recency and product pages, but finding things by their title isn't a thing Google is bad at.

the_af 3y ago

Probably Wikipedia is an early precursor of this problem, yes. It may not be entirely new, but AI might accelerate it to really harmful speeds. Just pondering this, of course.