5 ms·

Many said (some still say) that Wikipedia is not a replacement for traditional encyclopedias with articles written by domain experts, such as Britannica. Many

by mmooss 1y ago

Many said (some still say) that Wikipedia is not a replacement for traditional encyclopedias with articles written by domain experts, such as Britannica. Many more scoffed at that, saying those people were just stuck in their old ways and unable to adjust to the obviously superior new thing. Is that you? AI applications are different than Wikipedia and are better in some ways: Coverage is much greater - you can get a detailed article on almost any topic. And if you have questions after reading a Wikipedia article, Wikipedia can't help you; the AI software can answer them. Also, it's a bit easier to find the information you want. Personally, I'm with the first group, at the top if this comment. And now truth, accuracy, and epistemology, and public interest in those things, take another major hit in the post-truth era.

consumer451 1y ago
> post-truth era. I know it’s completely normalized and the official name, but this has to be the most dangerous euphemism of our time. It’s the era of lies.
- sixtyj 1y ago
  You are absolutely right. But “era of lies” doesn’t sound nice because nobody wants to be a liar… so “post-truth” sounds better: “I'm telling the truth. Almost. But I'm not lying.”
  - consumer451 1y ago
    The inevitable AI investment bubble popping is going to be a big deal, but I believe that the larger bubble of political lies popping is much more interesting to think about. What is that going to look like? How does one hedge against that eventuality?
    - sixtyj 1y ago
      It'll probably be a black swan anyway. So it's best to stay calm, because to hedge against it... Stephen Emmott ends his book Ten Billion with the line "Teach my son how to use a gun."
      - consumer451 1y ago
        Interesting reference. I had not heard of him, or that book from 2013. 10B is now projected to be our peak, and at 7B we have so much spare food that we burn it as automotive fuel. And now... we realize that population "collapse" is much more likely to happen than endless growth. Obviously I have not read the book, but do you think it holds up in 2025?
        sixtyj 1y ago
        Many books on the subject are very much "doomsayers" or "preppers" style. The Roman Empire has been crumbling for 400 years, so it's likely that we won't experience the collapse of society as described in most history books either - life is too short for that. Unless a black swan comes along… To answer your question, I like to come back to the book because it's written in the style of Dan Brown :) - short, punchy chapters. And it still makes sense (to me).
        hunterpayne 1y ago
        Worldwide population peaked sometime between 2015 and 2020 at somewhere between 7.2 and 7.4B. So my take on the book is that it isn't very good. Also, biofuels based on most crops other than sugar cane, in addition to not being very helpful in the fight against AGW, triggered large price spikes and political turmoil in a dozen different countries at once. Perhaps you heard of this event, we call it the Arab Spring. We are still dealing with the fallout of it.
    - at-fates-hands 1y ago
      >> I believe that the larger bubble of political lies popping is much more interesting to think about. Does this mean that politics will finally get out of everything and give me back my sports that will be free of the constant political pandering?
      - consumer451 1y ago
        When functional, politics should be boring af, and happen in the background, so yes.
- mmooss 1y ago
  Post-truth means a couple of things to me: It indicates that it's a follow-on to postmodernism. To a significant degree the post-truth era is built on a reactionary attack on postmodernism - you can see it on HN, where many people reflexively attack like a mob anything they perceive is postmodern. You can see it in so many people who will accept lies and disaster over postmodernism. And post-truth is a postmodern term - ironic, ridiculing, makes you think, has some energy to it. How absurd to be literally //post-truth//. > era of lies That's a post-postmodern term. No irony or wit; a term of despair. :)
  - Levitz 1y ago
    >It indicates that it's a follow-on to postmodernism. How? it's just postmodernism itself. There is no truth because everything is relative. There is no singular, objective truth, facts are intrinsically bound to their context, hence post-truth.
    - consumer451 1y ago
      First, I mean no personal insults. Let's discuss ideas. As someone who grew up being de-programmed from Soviet propaganda by my parents every time I came home, starting from pre-school, I cannot even begin to communicate how allergic I am to this discourse. "There is no truth" is some grade-A bullshit to me. What's next? Maybe Stalin wasn't Hitler's military ally to start WWII? Maybe we live in a simulation? What's the point of anything? 1+1=3! I could just be dumb, but my theoretical view from 30,000 feet, or 30,000 years in the future can be read here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45661175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45661175
    - mmooss 1y ago
      > How? it's just postmodernism itself. / There is no truth because everything is relative. There is no singular, objective truth, facts are intrinsically bound to their context, hence post-truth. That's not postmodernism but a caricature of it by its critics. Postmodernism cares deeply about truth. It is highly skeptical of power, bias, perception, etc. and provides tools to mitigate these risks to truth. Post-truth is cares very little about truth and is especially non-skeptical, imho.
- convolvatron 1y ago
  this is pedantic, but I think its important. We can say that a truth and lie are exclusive. when we lie, we know the truth. we just make up something else because it fits our agenda better. post-truth implies that the distinction doesn't matter anymore. nothing is true, everything is true. no statement can be evaluated outside the intent in which its delivered. that's much more substantial shift than just presenting a set of lies as the truth. a post-truth society is almost compelled to devalue science or any other pursuit of knowledge. by making all the voices selfish and mundane, it explicitly rejects beauty and accomplishment.
  - consumer451 1y ago
    Whenever I can, I try to think of modern events from the point of view of archaeologists digging through the layers, at some point in the distant future. Given that perspective, my thought was: "Hey Bob, look at these morons, they called easily proven lies 'post-truth!' Can you believe that? In a civilization based on science, with AI, nuclear, and biological weapons?! No wonder they died out right after this. How did they not see this coming? Anyway, what's for lunch?"
- hamdingers 1y ago
  While we are in an era of lies, it's only because so much of the public no longer finds truth compelling. Hence, post-truth.
scuff3d 1y ago
Right, and where are all those LLMs without the billions upon billions of lines of text written by humans? A not insignificant number coming from Wikipedia? Also, LLMs don't produce truth. They don't have a concept of it. Or lies for that matter. If you are using LLMs do study something you know nothing about the information provided by them is as good as useless if you don't verify it with external sources written by a person. Wikipedia isn't perfect, nothing is, but I trust their model a shitload more then an LLM.
- mmooss 1y ago
  > where are all those LLMs without the billions upon billions of lines of text written by humans? A not insignificant number coming from Wikipedia? Where is Wikipedia without all the learning and information from other sources, many of which it put out of business? > Also, LLMs don't produce truth. They don't have a concept of it. Or lies for that matter. If you are using LLMs do study something you know nothing about the information provided by them is as good as useless if you don't verify it with external sources written by a person. Wikipedia isn't perfect, nothing is, but I trust their model a shitload more then an LLM. Wikipedia produces consensus that correlates with truth to some degree. LLMs produce statistical output, which in a way is a automated consensus of the LLM's input, that also correlates with truth to some degree - and the correlation is hardly zero. I agree that information has no value if you don't know its accuracy; it's always a sticking point for me. IMHO Wikipedia has the same problem: I have no idea how accurate it is without verifying it with an external source (and when I've done that, I've often been disappointed). Has anyone researched the relative accuracy of Wikipedia and LLMs?
  - internetter 1y ago
    > Where is Wikipedia without all the learning and information from other sources, many of which it put out of business? Which businesses did Wikipedia put out of business? You will frequently see a 5k word article used for a couple of sentences in a Wikipedia page, with the entire Wikipedia page itself being smaller than one paper it cites for one small corner of said page. When I’m researching events, I frequently go to Wikipedia to find sources as search engines have a drastically larger recentism bias. > Has anyone researched the relative accuracy of Wikipedia and LLMs No comparative research on this specific topic has been conducted afaik, and most comparative research is aging (likely, to Wikipedia’s own detriment–general consensus is that Wikipedia’s reliability has increased over time). However at the time of research publication, the consensus seems to be that Wikipedia is generally only slightly less reliable than peers in a given field (ie textbooks or británica), although Wikipedia is often less in depth. The most frequently cited study is a 2005 comparison in Nature which found 4 major errors in both Wikipedia and Británica, and 130 minor errors on Británica whereas 160 on Wikipedia. All studies are documented on Wikipedia itself, see [[Reliability of Wikipedia]]. LLMs… do not have this same reputation.
matthewkayin 1y ago
Someone made a similar argument to me recently about AI, talking about how programmers used to have stacks of reference books at their desks and how many of the old guard had to have trainings convincing them to use google as a reference. I guess this argument was supposed to convince me to stop being such a luddite and accept the inevitable future, but really, in an increasingly post-truth world, it made me want to go and get myself a stack of reference books.
- mmooss 1y ago
  I prefer the reference books myself - life is too short for anything but the highest quality information. But that's not how the world has worked out recently ...
  - hamdingers 1y ago
    Life is too short to waste it leafing through printed documentation.
    - mmooss 1y ago
      Use electronic versions.

by mmooss 1y ago

consumer451 1y ago

> post-truth era. I know it’s completely normalized and the official name, but this has to be the most dangerous euphemism of our time. It’s the era of lies.

sixtyj 1y ago
You are absolutely right. But “era of lies” doesn’t sound nice because nobody wants to be a liar… so “post-truth” sounds better: “I'm telling the truth. Almost. But I'm not lying.”
- consumer451 1y ago
  The inevitable AI investment bubble popping is going to be a big deal, but I believe that the larger bubble of political lies popping is much more interesting to think about. What is that going to look like? How does one hedge against that eventuality?
  - sixtyj 1y ago
    It'll probably be a black swan anyway. So it's best to stay calm, because to hedge against it... Stephen Emmott ends his book Ten Billion with the line "Teach my son how to use a gun."
    - consumer451 1y ago
      Interesting reference. I had not heard of him, or that book from 2013. 10B is now projected to be our peak, and at 7B we have so much spare food that we burn it as automotive fuel. And now... we realize that population "collapse" is much more likely to happen than endless growth. Obviously I have not read the book, but do you think it holds up in 2025?
      - sixtyj 1y ago
        Many books on the subject are very much "doomsayers" or "preppers" style. The Roman Empire has been crumbling for 400 years, so it's likely that we won't experience the collapse of society as described in most history books either - life is too short for that. Unless a black swan comes along… To answer your question, I like to come back to the book because it's written in the style of Dan Brown :) - short, punchy chapters. And it still makes sense (to me).
      - hunterpayne 1y ago
        Worldwide population peaked sometime between 2015 and 2020 at somewhere between 7.2 and 7.4B. So my take on the book is that it isn't very good. Also, biofuels based on most crops other than sugar cane, in addition to not being very helpful in the fight against AGW, triggered large price spikes and political turmoil in a dozen different countries at once. Perhaps you heard of this event, we call it the Arab Spring. We are still dealing with the fallout of it.
  - at-fates-hands 1y ago
    >> I believe that the larger bubble of political lies popping is much more interesting to think about. Does this mean that politics will finally get out of everything and give me back my sports that will be free of the constant political pandering?
    - consumer451 1y ago
      When functional, politics should be boring af, and happen in the background, so yes.
mmooss 1y ago
Post-truth means a couple of things to me: It indicates that it's a follow-on to postmodernism. To a significant degree the post-truth era is built on a reactionary attack on postmodernism - you can see it on HN, where many people reflexively attack like a mob anything they perceive is postmodern. You can see it in so many people who will accept lies and disaster over postmodernism. And post-truth is a postmodern term - ironic, ridiculing, makes you think, has some energy to it. How absurd to be literally //post-truth//. > era of lies That's a post-postmodern term. No irony or wit; a term of despair. :)
- Levitz 1y ago
  >It indicates that it's a follow-on to postmodernism. How? it's just postmodernism itself. There is no truth because everything is relative. There is no singular, objective truth, facts are intrinsically bound to their context, hence post-truth.
  - consumer451 1y ago
    First, I mean no personal insults. Let's discuss ideas. As someone who grew up being de-programmed from Soviet propaganda by my parents every time I came home, starting from pre-school, I cannot even begin to communicate how allergic I am to this discourse. "There is no truth" is some grade-A bullshit to me. What's next? Maybe Stalin wasn't Hitler's military ally to start WWII? Maybe we live in a simulation? What's the point of anything? 1+1=3! I could just be dumb, but my theoretical view from 30,000 feet, or 30,000 years in the future can be read here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45661175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45661175
  - mmooss 1y ago
    > How? it's just postmodernism itself. / There is no truth because everything is relative. There is no singular, objective truth, facts are intrinsically bound to their context, hence post-truth. That's not postmodernism but a caricature of it by its critics. Postmodernism cares deeply about truth. It is highly skeptical of power, bias, perception, etc. and provides tools to mitigate these risks to truth. Post-truth is cares very little about truth and is especially non-skeptical, imho.
convolvatron 1y ago
this is pedantic, but I think its important. We can say that a truth and lie are exclusive. when we lie, we know the truth. we just make up something else because it fits our agenda better. post-truth implies that the distinction doesn't matter anymore. nothing is true, everything is true. no statement can be evaluated outside the intent in which its delivered. that's much more substantial shift than just presenting a set of lies as the truth. a post-truth society is almost compelled to devalue science or any other pursuit of knowledge. by making all the voices selfish and mundane, it explicitly rejects beauty and accomplishment.
- consumer451 1y ago
  Whenever I can, I try to think of modern events from the point of view of archaeologists digging through the layers, at some point in the distant future. Given that perspective, my thought was: "Hey Bob, look at these morons, they called easily proven lies 'post-truth!' Can you believe that? In a civilization based on science, with AI, nuclear, and biological weapons?! No wonder they died out right after this. How did they not see this coming? Anyway, what's for lunch?"
hamdingers 1y ago
While we are in an era of lies, it's only because so much of the public no longer finds truth compelling. Hence, post-truth.

scuff3d 1y ago

Right, and where are all those LLMs without the billions upon billions of lines of text written by humans? A not insignificant number coming from Wikipedia? Also, LLMs don't produce truth. They don't have a concept of it. Or lies for that matter. If you are using LLMs do study something you know nothing about the information provided by them is as good as useless if you don't verify it with external sources written by a person. Wikipedia isn't perfect, nothing is, but I trust their model a shitload more then an LLM.

mmooss 1y ago
> where are all those LLMs without the billions upon billions of lines of text written by humans? A not insignificant number coming from Wikipedia? Where is Wikipedia without all the learning and information from other sources, many of which it put out of business? > Also, LLMs don't produce truth. They don't have a concept of it. Or lies for that matter. If you are using LLMs do study something you know nothing about the information provided by them is as good as useless if you don't verify it with external sources written by a person. Wikipedia isn't perfect, nothing is, but I trust their model a shitload more then an LLM. Wikipedia produces consensus that correlates with truth to some degree. LLMs produce statistical output, which in a way is a automated consensus of the LLM's input, that also correlates with truth to some degree - and the correlation is hardly zero. I agree that information has no value if you don't know its accuracy; it's always a sticking point for me. IMHO Wikipedia has the same problem: I have no idea how accurate it is without verifying it with an external source (and when I've done that, I've often been disappointed). Has anyone researched the relative accuracy of Wikipedia and LLMs?
- internetter 1y ago
  > Where is Wikipedia without all the learning and information from other sources, many of which it put out of business? Which businesses did Wikipedia put out of business? You will frequently see a 5k word article used for a couple of sentences in a Wikipedia page, with the entire Wikipedia page itself being smaller than one paper it cites for one small corner of said page. When I’m researching events, I frequently go to Wikipedia to find sources as search engines have a drastically larger recentism bias. > Has anyone researched the relative accuracy of Wikipedia and LLMs No comparative research on this specific topic has been conducted afaik, and most comparative research is aging (likely, to Wikipedia’s own detriment–general consensus is that Wikipedia’s reliability has increased over time). However at the time of research publication, the consensus seems to be that Wikipedia is generally only slightly less reliable than peers in a given field (ie textbooks or británica), although Wikipedia is often less in depth. The most frequently cited study is a 2005 comparison in Nature which found 4 major errors in both Wikipedia and Británica, and 130 minor errors on Británica whereas 160 on Wikipedia. All studies are documented on Wikipedia itself, see [[Reliability of Wikipedia]]. LLMs… do not have this same reputation.

matthewkayin 1y ago

Someone made a similar argument to me recently about AI, talking about how programmers used to have stacks of reference books at their desks and how many of the old guard had to have trainings convincing them to use google as a reference. I guess this argument was supposed to convince me to stop being such a luddite and accept the inevitable future, but really, in an increasingly post-truth world, it made me want to go and get myself a stack of reference books.

mmooss 1y ago
I prefer the reference books myself - life is too short for anything but the highest quality information. But that's not how the world has worked out recently ...
- hamdingers 1y ago
  Life is too short to waste it leafing through printed documentation.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    Use electronic versions.