10 ms·

Grokipedia and the coup against reality

126 points by coloneltcb 1y ago

barbacoa 1y ago
Some interesting comparisons I found between Wikipedia and grok. These are the intro paragraphs. Grokipedia: The Biden–Ukraine controversy pertains to allegations that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden conditioned $1 billion in loan guarantees on the Ukrainian government's dismissal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in March 2016, purportedly to obstruct an ongoing investigation into Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy firm where Biden's son, Robert Hunter Biden, served as a board member receiving substantial compensation since May 2014.[1][2] Shokin, whose office had pursued corruption charges against Burisma's founder Mykola Zlochevsky—including probes into illicit asset acquisition and bribery—publicly stated that his removal derailed these efforts, coinciding with Hunter Biden's role amid the company's efforts to mitigate regulatory pressures.[2][3] Wikipedia: The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of false allegations that Joe Biden, while he was vice president of the United States, improperly withheld a loan guarantee and took a bribe to pressure Ukraine into firing prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to prevent a corruption investigation of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and to protect his son Hunter Biden, who was on the Burisma board.[1] As part of efforts by Donald Trump[2] and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump's first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden's reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign, and later in an effort to impeach him.[3] Grokipedia: Gamergate was a grassroots online movement that emerged in August 2014, primarily focused on exposing conflicts of interest and lack of transparency in video game journalism, initiated by a blog post detailing the romantic involvement of indie developer Zoë Quinn with journalists who covered her work without disclosure.[1] The controversy began when Eron Gjoni, Quinn's ex-boyfriend, published "The Zoe Post," accusing her of infidelity with multiple individuals, including Kotaku journalist Nathan Grayson, whose article on Quinn's game Depression Quest omitted any mention of their prior personal contact.[2] This revelation highlighted broader patterns of undisclosed relationships and coordinated industry practices, such as private mailing lists among journalists, fueling demands for ethical reforms like mandatory disclosure policies. Wikipedia: Gamergate or GamerGate (GG)[1] was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign motivated by a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture.[2][3][4] It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" primarily in 2014 and 2015.[a] Gamergate targeted women in the video game industry, most notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu.[b]
- hagbard_c 1y ago
  In both these cases Grokipedia clearly comes out on top mostly due to the Wikipedia entries being so clearly biased.
  - Latty 1y ago
    Is the DPRK a democracy? They claim they are, so should a wiki blindly report that they are? Likewise, it's absurd to claim Gamergate was about "ethics in game journalism", even a cursory look at what the movement actually did makes it very clear that was never the focus. It's not biased to look at what happened and report that people didn't do what they claimed to be doing.
  - MallocVoidstar 1y ago
    The Grokipedia article on Gamergate claims that Gjoni "revealed" that Quinn was sleeping with reviewers for good reviews, but he himself later admitted he had zero evidence for that and claimed it was a typo that made people believe he was accusing Quinn of it. Why is being outright wrong a good thing?
    - barbacoa 1y ago
      Apparently Grokipedia give you the option to highlight that section of the text and click "this is wrong" and it will update the text or tell you why not. I don't have a account but someone should try and report back what it does.
      - rsynnott 1y ago
        I can't imagine anything more pointless than attempting to correct Musk's safe space. Like, why bother?
  - foinker 1y ago
    Does it? I mean the quoted text doesn't really make much mention beyond the word "allegations" that there isn't any evidence of wrongdoing on Joe Biden's part. In fact, it's written as if there is still some question of validity. Grok is a rhetorical device that tries to paint right-wing reaction to woke stuff as an honest concern for journalistic integrity. If it were really being honest, why is it so often just a blatant point by point contradiction of whatever the wikipedia article says in all these culture war matters?
dzhiurgis 1y ago
[flagged]
- sighand 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - MallocVoidstar 1y ago
    Alejandra Caraballo is a woman.
    - HK-NC 1y ago
      Because I dont know who this person is, this sentence gives me absolutely no information about the subject or the person posting it.
      - MallocVoidstar 1y ago
        The highest post in the chain we're in: >PSA: author is Alejandra Caraballo [...] The reply: >Yep, this whole article is basically just -->his<-- very biased opinions [...] My reply: >Alejandra Caraballo is a woman. I'm correcting them.
        HK-NC 1y ago
        Was the user mistaken or just anti trans? Were you correcting a mistake or asserting your/Caraballo's opinion? It just struck me that the word has no meaning now is all.
    - sighand 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - MallocVoidstar 1y ago
        The existence of trans people isn't sexist.
quotemstr 1y ago
Leaving culture war articles aside, I think having on other subjects, a diversity of perspectives is legitimate. Consider a personal interest of mine, the dark ages in Europe after the fall of the western Roman empire. The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)) is a one-sided presentation that begins with denying the historical reality of a period called "the dark ages", continues with a history of the term itself, and concludes with a brief section on non-academic use of the term and reiterates the claim that the periodization is a "myth of popular culture". The article barely mentions the events of the period. If you read the Grokipedia article on the same subject (https://grokipedia.com/page/Dark_Ages_(historiography) https://grokipedia.com/page/Dark_Ages_(historiography)), you'll find not only meta-discussion of the origins of the term, but also in-depth exploration of the events of the period, the causes of the decline in living standards, and arguments from prominent scholars on both sides of the debate about the utility of labeling this period a "dark age". The Wikipedia article doesn't mention Ward-Perkins, a prominent scholar in the camp arguing that the dark ages represented real material decline. The Grokipedia article cites him extensively. The difference is interesting because Grokipedia's presentation is much closer to the truth. The dark ages really were in fact dark. In some parts of Europe, literacy itself was almost lost. Trade did collapse. Living standards did fall. We have tons of archaeological and literary evidence attesting to this decline. Tabooing the term "dark ages" does nothing to deepen our understanding. Yet the Wikipedia article is one-sided because, frankly, its editors see themselves as enforcers of academic orthodoxy. There are thousands of disputed subjects like this outside the culture war everyone gets worked up about. It really is the case that Wikipedia presents one side of live academic conflicts and gatekeeps sources to minimize heterodox perspectives -- again, all having nothing to do with mechahitler or the culture war or whatever. I'm glad there's more epistemic competition in the world now.
- pl-94 1y ago
  I just read the Wikipedia page, and it does not seem to fit your analysis. They present the origin on the term, what it means, and then disclose that a consensus among scholars is to reject the term nowadays. They disclose also that some recent scholars have found it appropriate and cite one of them. On the other hand, Grokipedia seems very biased to me. “This historiographical tension underscores broader tensions between romanticized medievalism and data-driven assessments of civilizational trajectories.” What a pejorative criticism! If you don’t think that dark age is an appropriate term, you are not data driven and you are just too sensitive?? On subject that I don’t know much about, I am quite happy to know the scientific consensus. Discussions on Wikipedia do an amazing job to help me figure out what’s going on.
cadamsdotcom 1y ago
Why don’t people just ignore Musk?
- meheleventyone 1y ago
  He’s the richest man in the world and actively funding the far right in several countries? To a lot of people he’s not a quirky tech oligarch but an existential threat.
- AaronAPU 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate or if you prefer https://grokipedia.com/page/Two_Minutes_Hate https://grokipedia.com/page/Two_Minutes_Hate
  - gattis 1y ago
    Might make things awkward but grokipedia seems way more informative on this topic to me. But I guess I am unfamiliar with the topic so half of it could be hallucination. Curious if anyone familiar with this subject wants to weigh in?
incomingpain 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias >This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia aims for a neutral point of view, but it falls short due to systemic bias caused by the narrow demographics of its editing community. This bias results in underrepresentation of Global South perspectives, limited access individuals, and women, among others. Wikipedia admits it's systemic bias. You cant admit there's a problem of bias for years and do nothing about it. It's going to spawn alternatives that attempt to fix the bias. Yesterday I showed Acupuncture's article on Grokipedia was significantly superior, shockingly better than wikipedia. I can show an example of where Grokipedia is worse: https://grokipedia.com/page/Kfar_Aza_massacre https://grokipedia.com/page/Kfar_Aza_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kfar_Aza_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kfar_Aza_massacre Wikipedia is superior. Grokipedia's fail in my mind comes with the wording of: "Militants engaged in cold-blooded killing of entire households" Which while factually correct, it's the wrong way to say it for neutrality. But it's not like Grokipedia was ever pushing some sort of "unreality" on the subject. https://www.trackingai.org/political-test https://www.trackingai.org/political-test Grok is left-wing aligned. The allegation that Grok is somehow far-right and pushing false narratives doesnt stand up.
- wredcoll 1y ago
  > his bias results in underrepresentation of Global South perspectives, limited access individuals, and women, among others. And grok is addressing this... how, precisely? I looked up your cite, this is the twitter thingy: > GROKIPEDIA IS ALREADY MORE ACCURATE THAN WIKIPEDIA AND IT SHOWS > Grokipedia just proved why it is rewriting how knowledge works online. Look at how it covers acupuncture compared to Wikipedia. > Grokipedia explains the practice as an ancient Chinese medical system over two thousand years old, describing how it works, what practitioners believe, and what science says about its results. > Wikipedia opens by calling it pseudoscience and quackery before even defining it. > One informs you, the other attacks. > Grokipedia delivers balanced facts while Wikipedia delivers bias. Acupuncture related techniques do (I assume) go back 2000 years. They're also pseudoscience with no real evidence behind them. Both things can be true.
onetokeoverthe 1y ago
[dead]
taylodl 1y ago
Seems to confirm Elon Musk is evil, no? Especially when considered along with his political "antics" and behaviors? Gaslighting at this scale is unconscionable.
- exasperaited 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - ben_w 1y ago
    > If anyone knew Elon Musk existed by the time of the Thai cave rescue and didn't determine from that who he really is, they may not be perceptive. Took me a while after that to accept it wasn't just an aberration. My perspective now is that it continues a pattern of behaviour also seen with his response to Top Gear; it's just that when he reacted to Top Gear, I had an even lower regard for Top Gear… > I don't know that "evil" is a really useful word to fling around, full stop, because it's actually quite subjective. I agree. FWIW, I think "evil" is mostly a strong overlap with dark triad personality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad But clearly the word is used far more broadly, and it does not reliably keep any meaning from one person to the next.
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
  - baconbrand 1y ago
    Spot on. These people are all severely emotionally stunted and it is both pitiable and dangerous to me. They will never experience the full breadth of human emotion. And they have inflicted incalculable damage on the rest of us.
- nemomarx 1y ago
  I think how he treated his daughter or bribed women to have his kids was already pretty bad? this isn't really news about musk being morally awful
chasd00 1y ago
people on the autism spectrum are amazingly good at what they're good at and spectacularly bad at what they're bad at. I wish Musk would just stick to what he's good at like SpaceX and Tesla etc.
- LeoPanthera 1y ago
  As an ex Tesla owner, I am amused by the idea that anyone thinks that Musk was "good" at running Tesla. Those cars are cheaply and shoddily made, and have probably the worst service experience in the industry. It's my understanding that Musk has only minimal influence on SpaceX. Edit: I would like to repeat the point that I owned one, for four years, during which it had to go in for service 12 times, four of which were "car is completely dead". And almost every time I had to fight for service. Every Tesla owner I ever spoke in person to described a similar experience. It's funny how online, the message is very different.
  - bb123 1y ago
    That has not been my experience with them at all. I've done nearly quarter of a million miles in various Teslas and never had a serious issue. My service experience with them has also been lightyears ahead of the traditional manufacturers.
  - theteapot 1y ago
    Talk about a coup against reality. Pay the man his due. Tesla produce very competitive EVs. He has been instrumental in the success of SpaceX and Tesla.
  - beezlewax 1y ago
    This is a fact. Teslas are not cars that feel quality.
  - mikkupikku 1y ago
    Insofar as Tesla has survived at all, I think there's a case to be made that it has been "successful". Challenging the "big three" auto manufacturers usually ends in failure or buyout. I certainly wouldn't buy a Tesla though.
Der_Einzige 1y ago
This is bad but if you think Wikipedia was accurately describing reality than you should go read the wikipedia article on "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect"
- BoredPositron 1y ago
  "Zwei mal drei macht vier Widde-widde-witt und drei macht neune Ich mach mir die Welt Widde-widde, wie sie mir gefällt" - Astrid Lindgren
- taylodl 1y ago
  The article isn't claiming Wikipedia is perfect - it argues that Grokipedia is intentionally deceptive. There’s a difference between flawed and weaponized.
  - CupricTea 1y ago
    Wikipedia is flawed, weaponized, and *intentionally* deceptive, with a myriad of articles locked down and editorialized by authors to fit their specific worldview, refusing to add information or even links to approved sources if it contradicts their narrative.
    - seattle_spring 1y ago
      What are some examples?
      - CupricTea 1y ago
        The refusal to mention "federally named Gulf of America in the US" in the lede for the Gulf of Mexico (with the Talk page growing ad infinitum with blatantly negative commentary for the president until it was finally purged and locked), the refusal to name the alleged killer Karmelo Anthony in the killing of Austin Metcalf, the attempted deletion of the article for the killing of Iryna Zarutska, overemphasis on Charlie Kirk as "far-right" and a "conspiracy theorist", keeping the title "GamerGate (harassment campaign)" and purposely refusing any mention for what triggered it and motivations involved, instead hyperfocusing on victimizing journalists involved, etc.
CupricTea 1y ago
Interesting that a neutral submission for the launch of and direct link to Grokipedia was just flagged [1] while this highly sensationalized news article goes up after https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459
- cool_man_bob 1y ago
  [flagged]
- immibis 1y ago
  Neutrality means reporting the truth, it doesn't mean reporting in between both sides.
  - CupricTea 1y ago
    The submission is titled "Grokipedia by xAI has just launched with 885,279 articles" and is just a direct link to Grokipedia. It is quite literally the most neutral, non-editorialized submission to HN.
    - BoredPositron 1y ago
      Should be a ShowHN. There is nothing to discuss by just linking the startpage otherwise. An article like this can be discussed...
      - pogue 1y ago
        Show HN: A big batch of AI Slop & Propaganda Elon Musk did all by himself and no one else but him because he is the number one business man and "World's Best Genius™"
    - tclancy 1y ago
      Did you read any of the comments in the thread? It's not done in good faith and it looks like they should have turned the dial more toward "quality" than "quantity". A stable with lots of manure isn't inherently better than a stable with less manure.
quercus 1y ago
[flagged]
wnevets 1y ago
[flagged]
- systemstops 1y ago
  [flagged]
- nailer 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - ben_w 1y ago
    By the current standards of US discourse, Dick Cheney and both Presidents Bush, and Reagan as per recent advert drama, are "left wing". By British standards, the US Democrats are dangerously radical libertarians owing to the fact the Democrats support even the slightest right to personal access to firearms. There's only a rounding error of support in the British policians for "republican" policies, i.e. ceasing to be a monarchy. Musk is, in the UK, supporting a man who identifies as "Tommy Robinson" (real name "Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon"), and has called for Farage, the leader of the UK's populist far right party Reform, to stop leading that party after Farage distanced himself from Yaxley-Lennon.
    - nailer 1y ago
      Yes. Islamic violence is a significant issue in the UK.
      - ben_w 1y ago
        Yaxley-Lennon has various convictions. Some of these including for libel against specific muslim children; some for contempt of court interfering with the fairness of trials thus risking the release of people who were ultimately convicted; and some where his libel lead to his supporters committing violence against muslims. (Keeping the [num]s in the quotations, those are the only citations that really matter). On 10 May 2017, Robinson was charged with contempt of court, and convicted.[149][150][151] He had filmed inside Canterbury Crown Court and posted prejudicial statements calling the defendants "Muslim child rapists" while the jury was deliberating. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Robinson#Contempt_of_court_in_grooming_gang_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Robinson#Contempt_of_cou... Now, here's the thing: the bit in quotation marks was 100% true. But by saying so before they were actually convicted threatened to undermine the trial, and without a fair trial they could not be convicted. His actions made justice harder. If you really care about such crimes, the last thing you should do is what Yaxley-Lennon actually did. The only outcome for which Yaxley-Lennon behaviour is coherent is where Yaxley-Lennon was engineering a riot either by causing their release or getting himself arrested. He got a riot for being arrested: At a demonstration in London on 9 June, over 10,000 protesters blocked the roads around Trafalgar Square and some attacked police, injuring five officers.[198] Some demonstrators prevented a Muslim woman from driving a bus,[199] performed Nazi salutes, threw scaffolding, glass bottles, and street furniture at police, and damaged vehicles and buildings.[200] - ibid. Regarding his libel that harmed a child: The clip shows the victim, with his arm in a cast, being dragged to the floor by his neck as his attacker says "I'll drown you" and "what are you saying now" on a school playing field, while forcing water from a bottle into the victim's mouth. The video was filmed in a lunch break. The clip shows the victim walking away, without reacting, as the attacker and others can be heard continuing to verbally abuse him.[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almondbury_Community_School_bullying_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almondbury_Community_School_bu... And thats apart from the whole "kicked the officer in the head as he lay on the ground" and "entered the United States illegally [on a false passport]" convictions that Yaxley-Lennon has.
idle_zealot 1y ago
The gap widens. If you're discussing something online, and someone drops a Grok link as evidence or reference material, how are you supposed to continue at that point? You can't convince someone who lives in an alternate reality of anything by argument. I think I would just stop relying. Most people would. It's not a new problem, but that wall keeps growing.
- mmooss 1y ago
  > You can't convince someone who lives in an alternate reality of anything by argument. Your powerlessness, their invincibility, is part of their propaganda. It's like the reason people act angrily - they are trying to discourage you from approaching them. Argument doesn't work. You'll be surprised what sincere, genuine, empathetic reasoning does. I find it works pretty well. Take them seriously, have genuine empathy, don't get inflamed - that's the intent of their leaders' inflammatory language: they want you inflamed, to drive a wedge between you and your friend.
- seattle_spring 1y ago
  I'll disregard that person's legitimacy just the same way as someone who would use Infowars, The Free Press, Breitbart, The Sun, Daily Mail, or Zero Hedge as a source.
  - trenchpilgrim 1y ago
    Problem, people like that are running my government now
    - idle_zealot 1y ago
      Yeah, that's kinda why I see the gap/wall as a problem that needs to be addressed rather than just accepting it as an unfortunate part of the world. Turns out containment doesn't work; these are real people with real power. Ignore them long enough and someone will leverage them to make an attempt at destroying society.
- hypeatei 1y ago
jauntywundrkind 1y ago
2018 has a lovely progression of articles 'are we living in ___&'s world now', that went from George Orwell to Aldous Huxley to finally Philip K Dick (PKD). And Henry Farrell nailed it with the PKD article. Dick was obsessed with fake humans, with reality being taken over by all manner of camouflaged invader or alternate reality weirdo coming in and co-opting our reality away from us. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/henry-farrell-philip-k-dick-and-fake-humans/ https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/henry-farrell-philip-k... It's a glorious article. And it's totally the sicko shit happening right here. Grokipedia will almost certainly never hold itself to any real standards, will source (if they source at all) the most absurd ridiculous reality window shopped bottom of the barrel garbage, from horrendous sources. Stealing Wikipedia then probably using AI to rewrite a quarter of it to some bias seems absurdly likely. "Reality shopping on the internet" has become such a major major effort. And Grokipedia is striving to become exactly such an appealing reality, a bespoke weird racist meanspirited place that confirms the invading forces reality against can do human spirit and hope and inclusion and possibility. Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans does so much to capture what is alas so much defining aspects of our time: the slide away from consensual believable reality and into the rabbit hole weirdness and conspiracy theory universes. That the Internet has unchained, taken what would be normal humans & turned them into fakes. This struggle is going to keep going. I wish these fakers all the failure and dejectedment their window shopped view of the world that their fake human perspective here deserves; I hope this infodump is burned down in the future by people happy to see this absurd farce against reality put to an end.
jmward01 1y ago
This reminds me of a joke website I pondered making a few years ago 'provemeright.com'. If you are in a bar and you make an outrageous claim and don't want to back down, provemeright.com has your back! Give us 10 min and we will edit wikipedia and create a website with your 'fact' on it!... It was a funny joke when it wasn't real.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
  You've just reminded me of when I made up a slang term - "Clifton Sausage" - and almost persuaded a somewhat gullible friend of mine that it existed. I then went onto Urban Dictionary and got it added so that I could fully persuade him. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=clifton%20sausage https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=clifton%20sa...
- boilerupnc 1y ago
  Also works for getting backstage passes to concerts! [0] [0] https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/fan-edits-wikipedia-page-to-trick-security-into-granting-backstage-access/ https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/fan-edits-wikipedia-page-t...
- giarc 1y ago
  Wikipedia, and it's volunteer of editors are extremely quick at checking edits. In university, we once create a page for my room mate and listed his admirable, but odd quirks. It was taken down in a matter of minutes.
  - Gigachad 1y ago
    New pages go to a specific pending review queue. Edits on existing unprotected pages are less scrutinised
  - mmooss 1y ago
    There have been stories of false information lasting for years.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
Rover222 1y ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 1y ago
  The sentiment behind your comment has merit, but the content and style are inflammatory and count as flamebait, which is why the comment has been flagged and killed. HN intended purpose is curious conversation, and phrases like this are not consistent with that ideal: > I'd challenge someone to provide > It's disturbing how indoctrinated in ... thought > if you think ... you are truly indoctrinated Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future especially these ones: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - Rover222 1y ago
    Okay, understood
    - tomhow 1y ago
      Cheers, many thanks.
- BoredPositron 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - Rover222 1y ago
    How was my comment hateful? The far right is as indoctrinated as the far right. But I think most liberals don't realize how much of media is left-leaning.
systemstops 1y ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 1y ago
  Please don't post snarky comments in this tropey style on HN. We're trying for something better here.
- andrewflnr 1y ago
  One leftist. Most of them are probably laughing.
  - systemstops 1y ago
    It's got some obvious bias right now, but some articles are already better than Wikipedia - for example on the origin of Covid. I'm not really going to trust either one of them for the foreseeable future.
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      > I'm not really going to trust either one of them for the foreseeable future. Situation: there is one mediocre online crowdsourced encyclopedia "The crowdsourced encyclopedia is untrustworthy? How ridiculous! We need to develop an AI-powered black-box that replaces everyone's Wikipedia use-cases!" Soon: there is one mediocre online crowdsourced encyclopedia, and Elon Musk's website developed in response to crowdsourced encyclopedias It's the Full Self Driving of online research. Who wouldn't trust it?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - systemstops 1y ago
        Maybe it will be a shot in arm for Wikipedia to make some needed reforms.
pron 1y ago
[flagged]
- chairmansteve 1y ago
  "dedicated.....to making stupidity an intellectual ideal". That is a great insult!
- mmooss 1y ago
  It's not just Musk, of course; many people in his political realm do the same. You misunderstand what they're doing, which is why they're so successful and 'get away with it' endlessly. It looks like something you expect, but you're losing the game because you aren't even aware you're on the field playing. You'll notice their followers laugh about 'owning' you - what do they mean? To the (neo-reactionaries), words are weapons and not conveyers of information. Extreme statements are, in many cases, better weapons than accurate ones, certainly better than moderate ones - they sieze the initiative, put the speaker on offense, put their opponent on their heels because the words are so unexpected and aggressive. To people who think the words convey information, the words and behavior make no sense. You think you're having a political debate, but they are fighting a war to destroy you. It's like you listening to their signal, trying to decode what makes no sense, when they are really trying to electrocute you. In a sense I don't fault people for not grokking that (ha ha) but I do fault them for seeing something is wrong, for all these years, and not making the intellectual effort to figure it out. It seems like almost nobody, national and world leaders and leading intellectuals included, has figured it out.
  - pron 1y ago
    Of course, but at least one of the mechanisms by which those weapons work is to increase the number of people in society with a completely broken epistemology; i.e. they want to make more people stupid, because stupid people could go along with anything.
gadders 1y ago
>> This is the construction of a reality production cartel that creates a parallel information ecosystem designed to codify a deeply partisan, far-right worldview as objective fact. Perhaps if Wikipedia hadn't drifted so far left (on culture war topics, it's fine for science etc), then maybe it wouldn't have been necessary. https://manhattan.institute/article/is-wikipedia-politically-biased https://manhattan.institute/article/is-wikipedia-politically...
- tigerali 1y ago
  lmao the manhattan institute
  - gadders 1y ago
    Ad hominem attack. Nice one.
    - jauntywundrkind 1y ago
      They don't deserve a single iota of respect, are a total joke & nightmare for the world, feeding lies and disinformation to the world. Would be plutocrats Koch Brothers, Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, Chris twitter-poster-shit-show-freaking Rufo?! A whose who of extreme conservatives eager to get us back to the 1850's. Here's some sites from about covering them, in gentle neutral terms, but Manhanttan Institute absolutely deserve more serious lambasting & being laughed out of any polite company. Ad hominem maybe, but absolutely people working in opposition to a better world, trying to drag us into a corporate controlled hell world, and deserving of no regards. https://supremetransparency.org/powerbrokers/manhattan-institute/ https://supremetransparency.org/powerbrokers/manhattan-insti... https://centerjd.org/content/fact-sheet-manhattan-institute https://centerjd.org/content/fact-sheet-manhattan-institute https://www.monitoringinfluence.org/org/manhattan-institute/ https://www.monitoringinfluence.org/org/manhattan-institute/
      - gadders 1y ago
        They are the counter-balance to far left people like George Soros and his numerous foundations.
mullingitover 1y ago
Arguably the purpose of this site isn't to serve the public or to compile knowledge (it's not user editable at all from what I can see). The point is to get this thing crawled and given weight by LLMs in order to poison them and bias them in the direction Musk wants: debunked race science, anti-transgender, etc etc.
- HK-NC 1y ago
  Why didn't you say debunked anti transgender?
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    Presumably, a lot of the anti-transgender claims are new enough whole-cloth inventions to not have yet been debunked, while that's less true of the race science stuff.
    - mmooss 1y ago
      People need to prove claims. They aren't true until disproved - at least in science, courtrooms, any scholarship, etc.
  - mullingitover 1y ago
    I said "debunked race science, anti-transgender, etc etc", the brackets are implied: "debunked [race science, anti-transgender, etc etc]"
    - immibis 1y ago
      That's not how I read it. Musk wouldn't want to "debunk anti-transgender" - he'd want to debunk transgender.
tgv 1y ago
I got the impression Grokipedia (what a lousy name, BTW; there's not a teenage rock band that would call itself that) has been trained on Wikipedia. I compared the entries for "Gallium Arsenide", and Grok's first sections is a copy of Wikipedia, with a an editor-like comment on top: Gallium arsenide Except where otherwise noted, data are given for materials in their standard state (at 25 °C [77 °F], 100 kPa). verify (what is Y N ?) Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is a III-V direct band gap semiconductor with a zinc blende crystal structure. Gallium arsenide is used in the manufacture of devices such as microwave frequency integrated circuits, monolithic microwave integrated circuits, infrared light-emitting diodes, laser diodes, solar cells and optical windows.[6] GaAs is often used as a substrate material for the epitaxial growth of other III-V semiconductors, including indium gallium arsenide, aluminum gallium arsenide and others. The word "verify" links to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ComparePages&rev1=476995185&page2=Gallium+arsenide https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ComparePa... Makes me think Grok is also parsing the history and selectively leaving out edits in order to produce a result with the "correct" bias.
- hagbard_c 1y ago
  Is hasn't so much been 'trained' on Wikipedia but seems to have 'copied' a large fraction of the 'less contentious' (i.e. less politically biased) content of the site and marked it as such in the footer: The content is adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Here's an example of such an article, this one on Toroidal Propellers: https://grokipedia.com/page/Toroidal_propeller https://grokipedia.com/page/Toroidal_propeller This is not surprising and quite legal given the licence conditions. It is also fitting given the stated intent of 'Grokipedia' as being a less biased knowledge source - if Wikipedia did not suffer from being overly politically biased there would not have been a need for alternatives. The above example is not a high-quality article - it reads more like a sales brochure - but it does not show political bias. It will be interesting to see whether Grokipedia follows edits to Wikipedia content and if it 'rejects' or 'edits out' politically biased edits.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    I'm sure you're aware of the challenges of defining 'political bias' - usually people mean 'political views that conflict with mine', and what 'people' mean, LLMs learn. Also, do you think Musk suddenly wants to be non-biased? Musk is openly, explicitly, and aggressively biased in favor of his views and against anything that conflicts with them. Wikipedia has a NPOV rule; Musk has a My Point of View rule.
tim333 1y ago
'Coup Against Reality Itself' seems a bit of an over reaction to Musk's attempt to do a slightly less woke version of Wikipedia. If you try reading it, it's not terrible. It waffles on a bit in the usual LLM fashion. There's some HN discussion of it here which got flagged for some reason https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459
- Gigachad 1y ago
  Most of it is just generic slop, you have to find the specific pages that interest Musk where he has clearly stuck his finger on the scales to make it say what he wants.
systemstops 1y ago
Grokipedia literally just came out a few hours ago. So this article was already in the can before they could even test it.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
  > Grokipedia literally just came out a few hours ago. Maybe regional roll-outs? I was reading it yesterday.
  - systemstops 1y ago
    Yeah, I guess you're right - came out last night while I was sleeping.
manx 1y ago
Wouldn't it make sense to have these wikipedias created by different llms, and compare them to expose their biases?
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
Related: Grokipedia by xAI has just launched with 885,279 articles https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459
JoeDohn 1y ago
winners write history, and Elon is clearly willing to do whatever it takes to put himself at the forefront, even if it means sacrificing humanity future. It's a classic case of delusions of grandeur, his story will be told, but not in the way he hopes. We just need to tank few more shit years I guess.
- josefritzishere 1y ago
  Spot on.
- Latty 1y ago
  I'm a little amazed people still have the perspective of "a few more years" when it is very clear that the Republicans have no intent of offering a free and fair election. The rubicon has been crossed ten times over, they got into power after attempting a coup last time, all the safeguards and people who would refuse are long gone, if they don't succeed this time it'll be through sheer incompetence rather than anything else.
justjoshuah2 11mo ago
[dead]

126 points by coloneltcb 1y ago

Some interesting comparisons I found between Wikipedia and grok. These are the intro paragraphs. Grokipedia: The Biden–Ukraine controversy pertains to allegations that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden conditioned $1 billion in loan guarantees on the Ukrainian government's dismissal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in March 2016, purportedly to obstruct an ongoing investigation into Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy firm where Biden's son, Robert Hunter Biden, served as a board member receiving substantial compensation since May 2014.[1][2] Shokin, whose office had pursued corruption charges against Burisma's founder Mykola Zlochevsky—including probes into illicit asset acquisition and bribery—publicly stated that his removal derailed these efforts, coinciding with Hunter Biden's role amid the company's efforts to mitigate regulatory pressures.[2][3] Wikipedia: The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of false allegations that Joe Biden, while he was vice president of the United States, improperly withheld a loan guarantee and took a bribe to pressure Ukraine into firing prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to prevent a corruption investigation of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and to protect his son Hunter Biden, who was on the Burisma board.[1] As part of efforts by Donald Trump[2] and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump's first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden's reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign, and later in an effort to impeach him.[3] Grokipedia: Gamergate was a grassroots online movement that emerged in August 2014, primarily focused on exposing conflicts of interest and lack of transparency in video game journalism, initiated by a blog post detailing the romantic involvement of indie developer Zoë Quinn with journalists who covered her work without disclosure.[1] The controversy began when Eron Gjoni, Quinn's ex-boyfriend, published "The Zoe Post," accusing her of infidelity with multiple individuals, including Kotaku journalist Nathan Grayson, whose article on Quinn's game Depression Quest omitted any mention of their prior personal contact.[2] This revelation highlighted broader patterns of undisclosed relationships and coordinated industry practices, such as private mailing lists among journalists, fueling demands for ethical reforms like mandatory disclosure policies. Wikipedia: Gamergate or GamerGate (GG)[1] was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign motivated by a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture.[2][3][4] It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" primarily in 2014 and 2015.[a] Gamergate targeted women in the video game industry, most notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu.[b]

hagbard_c 1y ago
In both these cases Grokipedia clearly comes out on top mostly due to the Wikipedia entries being so clearly biased.
- Latty 1y ago
  Is the DPRK a democracy? They claim they are, so should a wiki blindly report that they are? Likewise, it's absurd to claim Gamergate was about "ethics in game journalism", even a cursory look at what the movement actually did makes it very clear that was never the focus. It's not biased to look at what happened and report that people didn't do what they claimed to be doing.
- MallocVoidstar 1y ago
  The Grokipedia article on Gamergate claims that Gjoni "revealed" that Quinn was sleeping with reviewers for good reviews, but he himself later admitted he had zero evidence for that and claimed it was a typo that made people believe he was accusing Quinn of it. Why is being outright wrong a good thing?
  - barbacoa 1y ago
    Apparently Grokipedia give you the option to highlight that section of the text and click "this is wrong" and it will update the text or tell you why not. I don't have a account but someone should try and report back what it does.
    - rsynnott 1y ago
      I can't imagine anything more pointless than attempting to correct Musk's safe space. Like, why bother?
- foinker 1y ago
  Does it? I mean the quoted text doesn't really make much mention beyond the word "allegations" that there isn't any evidence of wrongdoing on Joe Biden's part. In fact, it's written as if there is still some question of validity. Grok is a rhetorical device that tries to paint right-wing reaction to woke stuff as an honest concern for journalistic integrity. If it were really being honest, why is it so often just a blatant point by point contradiction of whatever the wikipedia article says in all these culture war matters?

dzhiurgis 1y ago

[flagged]

sighand 1y ago
[flagged]
- MallocVoidstar 1y ago
  Alejandra Caraballo is a woman.
  - HK-NC 1y ago
    Because I dont know who this person is, this sentence gives me absolutely no information about the subject or the person posting it.
    - MallocVoidstar 1y ago
      The highest post in the chain we're in: >PSA: author is Alejandra Caraballo [...] The reply: >Yep, this whole article is basically just -->his<-- very biased opinions [...] My reply: >Alejandra Caraballo is a woman. I'm correcting them.
      - HK-NC 1y ago
        Was the user mistaken or just anti trans? Were you correcting a mistake or asserting your/Caraballo's opinion? It just struck me that the word has no meaning now is all.
  - sighand 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - MallocVoidstar 1y ago
      The existence of trans people isn't sexist.

quotemstr 1y ago

Leaving culture war articles aside, I think having on other subjects, a diversity of perspectives is legitimate. Consider a personal interest of mine, the dark ages in Europe after the fall of the western Roman empire. The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)) is a one-sided presentation that begins with denying the historical reality of a period called "the dark ages", continues with a history of the term itself, and concludes with a brief section on non-academic use of the term and reiterates the claim that the periodization is a "myth of popular culture". The article barely mentions the events of the period. If you read the Grokipedia article on the same subject (https://grokipedia.com/page/Dark_Ages_(historiography) https://grokipedia.com/page/Dark_Ages_(historiography)), you'll find not only meta-discussion of the origins of the term, but also in-depth exploration of the events of the period, the causes of the decline in living standards, and arguments from prominent scholars on both sides of the debate about the utility of labeling this period a "dark age". The Wikipedia article doesn't mention Ward-Perkins, a prominent scholar in the camp arguing that the dark ages represented real material decline. The Grokipedia article cites him extensively. The difference is interesting because Grokipedia's presentation is much closer to the truth. The dark ages really were in fact dark. In some parts of Europe, literacy itself was almost lost. Trade did collapse. Living standards did fall. We have tons of archaeological and literary evidence attesting to this decline. Tabooing the term "dark ages" does nothing to deepen our understanding. Yet the Wikipedia article is one-sided because, frankly, its editors see themselves as enforcers of academic orthodoxy. There are thousands of disputed subjects like this outside the culture war everyone gets worked up about. It really is the case that Wikipedia presents one side of live academic conflicts and gatekeeps sources to minimize heterodox perspectives -- again, all having nothing to do with mechahitler or the culture war or whatever. I'm glad there's more epistemic competition in the world now.

pl-94 1y ago
I just read the Wikipedia page, and it does not seem to fit your analysis. They present the origin on the term, what it means, and then disclose that a consensus among scholars is to reject the term nowadays. They disclose also that some recent scholars have found it appropriate and cite one of them. On the other hand, Grokipedia seems very biased to me. “This historiographical tension underscores broader tensions between romanticized medievalism and data-driven assessments of civilizational trajectories.” What a pejorative criticism! If you don’t think that dark age is an appropriate term, you are not data driven and you are just too sensitive?? On subject that I don’t know much about, I am quite happy to know the scientific consensus. Discussions on Wikipedia do an amazing job to help me figure out what’s going on.

cadamsdotcom 1y ago

Why don’t people just ignore Musk?

meheleventyone 1y ago
He’s the richest man in the world and actively funding the far right in several countries? To a lot of people he’s not a quirky tech oligarch but an existential threat.
AaronAPU 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate or if you prefer https://grokipedia.com/page/Two_Minutes_Hate https://grokipedia.com/page/Two_Minutes_Hate
- gattis 1y ago
  Might make things awkward but grokipedia seems way more informative on this topic to me. But I guess I am unfamiliar with the topic so half of it could be hallucination. Curious if anyone familiar with this subject wants to weigh in?

incomingpain 1y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias >This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia aims for a neutral point of view, but it falls short due to systemic bias caused by the narrow demographics of its editing community. This bias results in underrepresentation of Global South perspectives, limited access individuals, and women, among others. Wikipedia admits it's systemic bias. You cant admit there's a problem of bias for years and do nothing about it. It's going to spawn alternatives that attempt to fix the bias. Yesterday I showed Acupuncture's article on Grokipedia was significantly superior, shockingly better than wikipedia. I can show an example of where Grokipedia is worse: https://grokipedia.com/page/Kfar_Aza_massacre https://grokipedia.com/page/Kfar_Aza_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kfar_Aza_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kfar_Aza_massacre Wikipedia is superior. Grokipedia's fail in my mind comes with the wording of: "Militants engaged in cold-blooded killing of entire households" Which while factually correct, it's the wrong way to say it for neutrality. But it's not like Grokipedia was ever pushing some sort of "unreality" on the subject. https://www.trackingai.org/political-test https://www.trackingai.org/political-test Grok is left-wing aligned. The allegation that Grok is somehow far-right and pushing false narratives doesnt stand up.

wredcoll 1y ago
> his bias results in underrepresentation of Global South perspectives, limited access individuals, and women, among others. And grok is addressing this... how, precisely? I looked up your cite, this is the twitter thingy: > GROKIPEDIA IS ALREADY MORE ACCURATE THAN WIKIPEDIA AND IT SHOWS > Grokipedia just proved why it is rewriting how knowledge works online. Look at how it covers acupuncture compared to Wikipedia. > Grokipedia explains the practice as an ancient Chinese medical system over two thousand years old, describing how it works, what practitioners believe, and what science says about its results. > Wikipedia opens by calling it pseudoscience and quackery before even defining it. > One informs you, the other attacks. > Grokipedia delivers balanced facts while Wikipedia delivers bias. Acupuncture related techniques do (I assume) go back 2000 years. They're also pseudoscience with no real evidence behind them. Both things can be true.

onetokeoverthe 1y ago

[dead]

taylodl 1y ago

Seems to confirm Elon Musk is evil, no? Especially when considered along with his political "antics" and behaviors? Gaslighting at this scale is unconscionable.

exasperaited 1y ago
[flagged]
- ben_w 1y ago
  > If anyone knew Elon Musk existed by the time of the Thai cave rescue and didn't determine from that who he really is, they may not be perceptive. Took me a while after that to accept it wasn't just an aberration. My perspective now is that it continues a pattern of behaviour also seen with his response to Top Gear; it's just that when he reacted to Top Gear, I had an even lower regard for Top Gear… > I don't know that "evil" is a really useful word to fling around, full stop, because it's actually quite subjective. I agree. FWIW, I think "evil" is mostly a strong overlap with dark triad personality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad But clearly the word is used far more broadly, and it does not reliably keep any meaning from one person to the next.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
- baconbrand 1y ago
  Spot on. These people are all severely emotionally stunted and it is both pitiable and dangerous to me. They will never experience the full breadth of human emotion. And they have inflicted incalculable damage on the rest of us.
nemomarx 1y ago
I think how he treated his daughter or bribed women to have his kids was already pretty bad? this isn't really news about musk being morally awful

chasd00 1y ago

people on the autism spectrum are amazingly good at what they're good at and spectacularly bad at what they're bad at. I wish Musk would just stick to what he's good at like SpaceX and Tesla etc.

LeoPanthera 1y ago
As an ex Tesla owner, I am amused by the idea that anyone thinks that Musk was "good" at running Tesla. Those cars are cheaply and shoddily made, and have probably the worst service experience in the industry. It's my understanding that Musk has only minimal influence on SpaceX. Edit: I would like to repeat the point that I owned one, for four years, during which it had to go in for service 12 times, four of which were "car is completely dead". And almost every time I had to fight for service. Every Tesla owner I ever spoke in person to described a similar experience. It's funny how online, the message is very different.
- bb123 1y ago
  That has not been my experience with them at all. I've done nearly quarter of a million miles in various Teslas and never had a serious issue. My service experience with them has also been lightyears ahead of the traditional manufacturers.
- theteapot 1y ago
  Talk about a coup against reality. Pay the man his due. Tesla produce very competitive EVs. He has been instrumental in the success of SpaceX and Tesla.
- beezlewax 1y ago
  This is a fact. Teslas are not cars that feel quality.
- mikkupikku 1y ago
  Insofar as Tesla has survived at all, I think there's a case to be made that it has been "successful". Challenging the "big three" auto manufacturers usually ends in failure or buyout. I certainly wouldn't buy a Tesla though.

Der_Einzige 1y ago

This is bad but if you think Wikipedia was accurately describing reality than you should go read the wikipedia article on "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect"

BoredPositron 1y ago
"Zwei mal drei macht vier Widde-widde-witt und drei macht neune Ich mach mir die Welt Widde-widde, wie sie mir gefällt" - Astrid Lindgren
taylodl 1y ago
The article isn't claiming Wikipedia is perfect - it argues that Grokipedia is intentionally deceptive. There’s a difference between flawed and weaponized.
- CupricTea 1y ago
  Wikipedia is flawed, weaponized, and *intentionally* deceptive, with a myriad of articles locked down and editorialized by authors to fit their specific worldview, refusing to add information or even links to approved sources if it contradicts their narrative.
  - seattle_spring 1y ago
    What are some examples?
    - CupricTea 1y ago
      The refusal to mention "federally named Gulf of America in the US" in the lede for the Gulf of Mexico (with the Talk page growing ad infinitum with blatantly negative commentary for the president until it was finally purged and locked), the refusal to name the alleged killer Karmelo Anthony in the killing of Austin Metcalf, the attempted deletion of the article for the killing of Iryna Zarutska, overemphasis on Charlie Kirk as "far-right" and a "conspiracy theorist", keeping the title "GamerGate (harassment campaign)" and purposely refusing any mention for what triggered it and motivations involved, instead hyperfocusing on victimizing journalists involved, etc.

CupricTea 1y ago

Interesting that a neutral submission for the launch of and direct link to Grokipedia was just flagged [1] while this highly sensationalized news article goes up after https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459

cool_man_bob 1y ago
[flagged]
immibis 1y ago
Neutrality means reporting the truth, it doesn't mean reporting in between both sides.
- CupricTea 1y ago
  The submission is titled "Grokipedia by xAI has just launched with 885,279 articles" and is just a direct link to Grokipedia. It is quite literally the most neutral, non-editorialized submission to HN.
  - BoredPositron 1y ago
    Should be a ShowHN. There is nothing to discuss by just linking the startpage otherwise. An article like this can be discussed...
    - pogue 1y ago
      Show HN: A big batch of AI Slop & Propaganda Elon Musk did all by himself and no one else but him because he is the number one business man and "World's Best Genius™"
  - tclancy 1y ago
    Did you read any of the comments in the thread? It's not done in good faith and it looks like they should have turned the dial more toward "quality" than "quantity". A stable with lots of manure isn't inherently better than a stable with less manure.

quercus 1y ago

[flagged]

wnevets 1y ago

[flagged]

systemstops 1y ago
[flagged]
nailer 1y ago
[flagged]
- ben_w 1y ago
  By the current standards of US discourse, Dick Cheney and both Presidents Bush, and Reagan as per recent advert drama, are "left wing". By British standards, the US Democrats are dangerously radical libertarians owing to the fact the Democrats support even the slightest right to personal access to firearms. There's only a rounding error of support in the British policians for "republican" policies, i.e. ceasing to be a monarchy. Musk is, in the UK, supporting a man who identifies as "Tommy Robinson" (real name "Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon"), and has called for Farage, the leader of the UK's populist far right party Reform, to stop leading that party after Farage distanced himself from Yaxley-Lennon.
  - nailer 1y ago
    Yes. Islamic violence is a significant issue in the UK.
    - ben_w 1y ago
      Yaxley-Lennon has various convictions. Some of these including for libel against specific muslim children; some for contempt of court interfering with the fairness of trials thus risking the release of people who were ultimately convicted; and some where his libel lead to his supporters committing violence against muslims. (Keeping the [num]s in the quotations, those are the only citations that really matter). On 10 May 2017, Robinson was charged with contempt of court, and convicted.[149][150][151] He had filmed inside Canterbury Crown Court and posted prejudicial statements calling the defendants "Muslim child rapists" while the jury was deliberating. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Robinson#Contempt_of_court_in_grooming_gang_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Robinson#Contempt_of_cou... Now, here's the thing: the bit in quotation marks was 100% true. But by saying so before they were actually convicted threatened to undermine the trial, and without a fair trial they could not be convicted. His actions made justice harder. If you really care about such crimes, the last thing you should do is what Yaxley-Lennon actually did. The only outcome for which Yaxley-Lennon behaviour is coherent is where Yaxley-Lennon was engineering a riot either by causing their release or getting himself arrested. He got a riot for being arrested: At a demonstration in London on 9 June, over 10,000 protesters blocked the roads around Trafalgar Square and some attacked police, injuring five officers.[198] Some demonstrators prevented a Muslim woman from driving a bus,[199] performed Nazi salutes, threw scaffolding, glass bottles, and street furniture at police, and damaged vehicles and buildings.[200] - ibid. Regarding his libel that harmed a child: The clip shows the victim, with his arm in a cast, being dragged to the floor by his neck as his attacker says "I'll drown you" and "what are you saying now" on a school playing field, while forcing water from a bottle into the victim's mouth. The video was filmed in a lunch break. The clip shows the victim walking away, without reacting, as the attacker and others can be heard continuing to verbally abuse him.[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almondbury_Community_School_bullying_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almondbury_Community_School_bu... And thats apart from the whole "kicked the officer in the head as he lay on the ground" and "entered the United States illegally [on a false passport]" convictions that Yaxley-Lennon has.

idle_zealot 1y ago

The gap widens. If you're discussing something online, and someone drops a Grok link as evidence or reference material, how are you supposed to continue at that point? You can't convince someone who lives in an alternate reality of anything by argument. I think I would just stop relying. Most people would. It's not a new problem, but that wall keeps growing.

mmooss 1y ago
> You can't convince someone who lives in an alternate reality of anything by argument. Your powerlessness, their invincibility, is part of their propaganda. It's like the reason people act angrily - they are trying to discourage you from approaching them. Argument doesn't work. You'll be surprised what sincere, genuine, empathetic reasoning does. I find it works pretty well. Take them seriously, have genuine empathy, don't get inflamed - that's the intent of their leaders' inflammatory language: they want you inflamed, to drive a wedge between you and your friend.
seattle_spring 1y ago
I'll disregard that person's legitimacy just the same way as someone who would use Infowars, The Free Press, Breitbart, The Sun, Daily Mail, or Zero Hedge as a source.
- trenchpilgrim 1y ago
  Problem, people like that are running my government now
  - idle_zealot 1y ago
    Yeah, that's kinda why I see the gap/wall as a problem that needs to be addressed rather than just accepting it as an unfortunate part of the world. Turns out containment doesn't work; these are real people with real power. Ignore them long enough and someone will leverage them to make an attempt at destroying society.
hypeatei 1y ago

jauntywundrkind 1y ago

2018 has a lovely progression of articles 'are we living in ___&'s world now', that went from George Orwell to Aldous Huxley to finally Philip K Dick (PKD). And Henry Farrell nailed it with the PKD article. Dick was obsessed with fake humans, with reality being taken over by all manner of camouflaged invader or alternate reality weirdo coming in and co-opting our reality away from us. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/henry-farrell-philip-k-dick-and-fake-humans/ https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/henry-farrell-philip-k... It's a glorious article. And it's totally the sicko shit happening right here. Grokipedia will almost certainly never hold itself to any real standards, will source (if they source at all) the most absurd ridiculous reality window shopped bottom of the barrel garbage, from horrendous sources. Stealing Wikipedia then probably using AI to rewrite a quarter of it to some bias seems absurdly likely. "Reality shopping on the internet" has become such a major major effort. And Grokipedia is striving to become exactly such an appealing reality, a bespoke weird racist meanspirited place that confirms the invading forces reality against can do human spirit and hope and inclusion and possibility. Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans does so much to capture what is alas so much defining aspects of our time: the slide away from consensual believable reality and into the rabbit hole weirdness and conspiracy theory universes. That the Internet has unchained, taken what would be normal humans & turned them into fakes. This struggle is going to keep going. I wish these fakers all the failure and dejectedment their window shopped view of the world that their fake human perspective here deserves; I hope this infodump is burned down in the future by people happy to see this absurd farce against reality put to an end.

jmward01 1y ago

This reminds me of a joke website I pondered making a few years ago 'provemeright.com'. If you are in a bar and you make an outrageous claim and don't want to back down, provemeright.com has your back! Give us 10 min and we will edit wikipedia and create a website with your 'fact' on it!... It was a funny joke when it wasn't real.

ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
You've just reminded me of when I made up a slang term - "Clifton Sausage" - and almost persuaded a somewhat gullible friend of mine that it existed. I then went onto Urban Dictionary and got it added so that I could fully persuade him. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=clifton%20sausage https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=clifton%20sa...
boilerupnc 1y ago
Also works for getting backstage passes to concerts! [0] [0] https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/fan-edits-wikipedia-page-to-trick-security-into-granting-backstage-access/ https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/fan-edits-wikipedia-page-t...
giarc 1y ago
Wikipedia, and it's volunteer of editors are extremely quick at checking edits. In university, we once create a page for my room mate and listed his admirable, but odd quirks. It was taken down in a matter of minutes.
- Gigachad 1y ago
  New pages go to a specific pending review queue. Edits on existing unprotected pages are less scrutinised
- mmooss 1y ago
  There have been stories of false information lasting for years.
- rsynnott 1y ago

Rover222 1y ago

[flagged]

tomhow 1y ago
The sentiment behind your comment has merit, but the content and style are inflammatory and count as flamebait, which is why the comment has been flagged and killed. HN intended purpose is curious conversation, and phrases like this are not consistent with that ideal: > I'd challenge someone to provide > It's disturbing how indoctrinated in ... thought > if you think ... you are truly indoctrinated Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future especially these ones: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Rover222 1y ago
  Okay, understood
  - tomhow 1y ago
    Cheers, many thanks.
BoredPositron 1y ago
[flagged]
- Rover222 1y ago
  How was my comment hateful? The far right is as indoctrinated as the far right. But I think most liberals don't realize how much of media is left-leaning.

systemstops 1y ago

[flagged]

tomhow 1y ago
Please don't post snarky comments in this tropey style on HN. We're trying for something better here.
andrewflnr 1y ago
One leftist. Most of them are probably laughing.
- systemstops 1y ago
  It's got some obvious bias right now, but some articles are already better than Wikipedia - for example on the origin of Covid. I'm not really going to trust either one of them for the foreseeable future.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    > I'm not really going to trust either one of them for the foreseeable future. Situation: there is one mediocre online crowdsourced encyclopedia "The crowdsourced encyclopedia is untrustworthy? How ridiculous! We need to develop an AI-powered black-box that replaces everyone's Wikipedia use-cases!" Soon: there is one mediocre online crowdsourced encyclopedia, and Elon Musk's website developed in response to crowdsourced encyclopedias It's the Full Self Driving of online research. Who wouldn't trust it?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - systemstops 1y ago
      Maybe it will be a shot in arm for Wikipedia to make some needed reforms.

pron 1y ago

[flagged]

chairmansteve 1y ago
"dedicated.....to making stupidity an intellectual ideal". That is a great insult!
mmooss 1y ago
It's not just Musk, of course; many people in his political realm do the same. You misunderstand what they're doing, which is why they're so successful and 'get away with it' endlessly. It looks like something you expect, but you're losing the game because you aren't even aware you're on the field playing. You'll notice their followers laugh about 'owning' you - what do they mean? To the (neo-reactionaries), words are weapons and not conveyers of information. Extreme statements are, in many cases, better weapons than accurate ones, certainly better than moderate ones - they sieze the initiative, put the speaker on offense, put their opponent on their heels because the words are so unexpected and aggressive. To people who think the words convey information, the words and behavior make no sense. You think you're having a political debate, but they are fighting a war to destroy you. It's like you listening to their signal, trying to decode what makes no sense, when they are really trying to electrocute you. In a sense I don't fault people for not grokking that (ha ha) but I do fault them for seeing something is wrong, for all these years, and not making the intellectual effort to figure it out. It seems like almost nobody, national and world leaders and leading intellectuals included, has figured it out.
- pron 1y ago
  Of course, but at least one of the mechanisms by which those weapons work is to increase the number of people in society with a completely broken epistemology; i.e. they want to make more people stupid, because stupid people could go along with anything.

gadders 1y ago

>> This is the construction of a reality production cartel that creates a parallel information ecosystem designed to codify a deeply partisan, far-right worldview as objective fact. Perhaps if Wikipedia hadn't drifted so far left (on culture war topics, it's fine for science etc), then maybe it wouldn't have been necessary. https://manhattan.institute/article/is-wikipedia-politically-biased https://manhattan.institute/article/is-wikipedia-politically...

tigerali 1y ago
lmao the manhattan institute
- gadders 1y ago
  Ad hominem attack. Nice one.
  - jauntywundrkind 1y ago
    They don't deserve a single iota of respect, are a total joke & nightmare for the world, feeding lies and disinformation to the world. Would be plutocrats Koch Brothers, Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, Chris twitter-poster-shit-show-freaking Rufo?! A whose who of extreme conservatives eager to get us back to the 1850's. Here's some sites from about covering them, in gentle neutral terms, but Manhanttan Institute absolutely deserve more serious lambasting & being laughed out of any polite company. Ad hominem maybe, but absolutely people working in opposition to a better world, trying to drag us into a corporate controlled hell world, and deserving of no regards. https://supremetransparency.org/powerbrokers/manhattan-institute/ https://supremetransparency.org/powerbrokers/manhattan-insti... https://centerjd.org/content/fact-sheet-manhattan-institute https://centerjd.org/content/fact-sheet-manhattan-institute https://www.monitoringinfluence.org/org/manhattan-institute/ https://www.monitoringinfluence.org/org/manhattan-institute/
    - gadders 1y ago
      They are the counter-balance to far left people like George Soros and his numerous foundations.

mullingitover 1y ago

Arguably the purpose of this site isn't to serve the public or to compile knowledge (it's not user editable at all from what I can see). The point is to get this thing crawled and given weight by LLMs in order to poison them and bias them in the direction Musk wants: debunked race science, anti-transgender, etc etc.

HK-NC 1y ago
Why didn't you say debunked anti transgender?
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  Presumably, a lot of the anti-transgender claims are new enough whole-cloth inventions to not have yet been debunked, while that's less true of the race science stuff.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    People need to prove claims. They aren't true until disproved - at least in science, courtrooms, any scholarship, etc.
- mullingitover 1y ago
  I said "debunked race science, anti-transgender, etc etc", the brackets are implied: "debunked [race science, anti-transgender, etc etc]"
  - immibis 1y ago
    That's not how I read it. Musk wouldn't want to "debunk anti-transgender" - he'd want to debunk transgender.

tgv 1y ago

I got the impression Grokipedia (what a lousy name, BTW; there's not a teenage rock band that would call itself that) has been trained on Wikipedia. I compared the entries for "Gallium Arsenide", and Grok's first sections is a copy of Wikipedia, with a an editor-like comment on top: Gallium arsenide Except where otherwise noted, data are given for materials in their standard state (at 25 °C [77 °F], 100 kPa). verify (what is Y N ?) Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is a III-V direct band gap semiconductor with a zinc blende crystal structure. Gallium arsenide is used in the manufacture of devices such as microwave frequency integrated circuits, monolithic microwave integrated circuits, infrared light-emitting diodes, laser diodes, solar cells and optical windows.[6] GaAs is often used as a substrate material for the epitaxial growth of other III-V semiconductors, including indium gallium arsenide, aluminum gallium arsenide and others. The word "verify" links to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ComparePages&rev1=476995185&page2=Gallium+arsenide https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ComparePa... Makes me think Grok is also parsing the history and selectively leaving out edits in order to produce a result with the "correct" bias.

hagbard_c 1y ago
Is hasn't so much been 'trained' on Wikipedia but seems to have 'copied' a large fraction of the 'less contentious' (i.e. less politically biased) content of the site and marked it as such in the footer: The content is adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Here's an example of such an article, this one on Toroidal Propellers: https://grokipedia.com/page/Toroidal_propeller https://grokipedia.com/page/Toroidal_propeller This is not surprising and quite legal given the licence conditions. It is also fitting given the stated intent of 'Grokipedia' as being a less biased knowledge source - if Wikipedia did not suffer from being overly politically biased there would not have been a need for alternatives. The above example is not a high-quality article - it reads more like a sales brochure - but it does not show political bias. It will be interesting to see whether Grokipedia follows edits to Wikipedia content and if it 'rejects' or 'edits out' politically biased edits.
- mmooss 1y ago
  I'm sure you're aware of the challenges of defining 'political bias' - usually people mean 'political views that conflict with mine', and what 'people' mean, LLMs learn. Also, do you think Musk suddenly wants to be non-biased? Musk is openly, explicitly, and aggressively biased in favor of his views and against anything that conflicts with them. Wikipedia has a NPOV rule; Musk has a My Point of View rule.

tim333 1y ago

'Coup Against Reality Itself' seems a bit of an over reaction to Musk's attempt to do a slightly less woke version of Wikipedia. If you try reading it, it's not terrible. It waffles on a bit in the usual LLM fashion. There's some HN discussion of it here which got flagged for some reason https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459

Gigachad 1y ago
Most of it is just generic slop, you have to find the specific pages that interest Musk where he has clearly stuck his finger on the scales to make it say what he wants.

systemstops 1y ago

Grokipedia literally just came out a few hours ago. So this article was already in the can before they could even test it.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
> Grokipedia literally just came out a few hours ago. Maybe regional roll-outs? I was reading it yesterday.
- systemstops 1y ago
  Yeah, I guess you're right - came out last night while I was sleeping.

manx 1y ago

Wouldn't it make sense to have these wikipedias created by different llms, and compare them to expose their biases?

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

Related: Grokipedia by xAI has just launched with 885,279 articles https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459

JoeDohn 1y ago

winners write history, and Elon is clearly willing to do whatever it takes to put himself at the forefront, even if it means sacrificing humanity future. It's a classic case of delusions of grandeur, his story will be told, but not in the way he hopes. We just need to tank few more shit years I guess.

josefritzishere 1y ago
Spot on.
Latty 1y ago
I'm a little amazed people still have the perspective of "a few more years" when it is very clear that the Republicans have no intent of offering a free and fair election. The rubicon has been crossed ten times over, they got into power after attempting a coup last time, all the safeguards and people who would refuse are long gone, if they don't succeed this time it'll be through sheer incompetence rather than anything else.

justjoshuah2 11mo ago

[dead]