Thread

1. tobias2014 · 1790711871 · focus · HN ↗

   Why would someone ruin their academic credentials and reputation (at a reputable university) like this? Maybe there was nothing to begin with? Otherwise I can't understand this.

   1. lstodd · 1790712037 · focus · HN ↗

      Maybe to expose the utter uselessness of "papers".

      1. sho_hn · 1790712243 · focus · HN ↗

         I'm not an academic, and I understand by osmosis that organized science has many problems related to publishing and connected mechanisms, but I have to say there's been quite a few moments in my life and career when I found the inspiration or solution I needed in a good paper.

         For condensed knowledge on highly specific topics (i.e. more specific than is economical in book form) I often know nothing better.

         Most recently I did sort of a self-taught crash course in ground-penetrating radar and applications for an archeological endeavour I write software for, and a number of papers have been really invaluable.

         1. augment_me · 1790713442 · focus · HN ↗

            You can be served this inspiration from LLMs

            1. sho_hn · 1790714648 · focus · HN ↗

               I've tried here and there, but even the top-end models always tend toward shallow generalist takes. I've not been able to get more than basic primers out of LLMs, and nothing close to the ability of a professional author to stay on course with an idea, detail level, specificity etc.

               People in the early days used to often whine that LLMs just regurgitate text snippets (unfounded of course), but I think the way we currently train and RLHF them actually seems to largely make them unable to reproduce the knowledge they have been trained on, since they seem to just always want to please the mean with their output. I'm oversimplifying the mechanisms, but you get my drift.

               1. augment_me · 1790727459 · focus · HN ↗

                  But what prevents the workflow of:

                  You ask the LLM for papers in this special field that you are interested in.

                  It does the search, fetches 20 papers it finds relevant

                  Summarizes them or points to ideas with reference

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