Thread

1. phoghed · 1790944096 · focus · HN ↗

   A very high number of Redditors think they know more/better than a Harvard professor and dismiss him out of hand. May someone grant us all a measure of their confidence.

   1. tavavex · 1790949432 · focus · HN ↗

      Seems like you're doing the same thing, dismissing the commenters out of hand (even though many of them make good or decent points - the quantity, the absurd number of unrelated fields, the weird meaningless LLMisms) while using the professor's title as a battering ram to destroy the notion that he could ever be wrong, even on things outside of his field of expertise.

      LLMs making otherwise extremely intelligent people veer off in a strange direction isn't new. When reassured by LLMs, there have been many cases where someone starts posting papers on a plethora of fields they know nothing about, making unified theories that try to tie several fields together, or get convinced they made a real breakthrough when they haven't. I don't think there's been a single counterexample so far where someone used LLMs to push out so many papers on so many topics and have them be correct. So until someone who knows something in these fields pitches in, I'm remaining skeptical by default.

      1. phoghed · 1790955210 · focus · HN ↗

         I know it's a HN rule that one must take people who don't RTFA seriously and not point it out, fortunately that doesn't extend to Reddit users.

         I read the Anthropic post yesterday. I read the Reddit comments today. I observed that many of them are being overzealously anti AI and likely didn't even click the link they were commenting on, let alone look beyond it.

         It's good to be skeptical. It's bad to jump to conclusions based on an emotional response to AI in general. It's bad to be a Redditor.

         Should they pretend that the papers are great and the guy is infallible just because of his position? No, but his prior achievements are probably a signal that they should not jump straight into the usual circle jerk.

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