When "google" became a verb the company celebrated it as a symbol of their market dominance.
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"Let me google that for you."
"RTFM"I've always disliked the hostility of some online communities to repetitive or "basic" questions. It's one of the reasons I don't participate much on "Stack Overflow" where the ethos of hating questions goes deep and interest in enthusiastically sharing and helping people to learn is nearly nonexistent.
It's so extreme that the place simply isn't very active.
Is it so shocking people are turning to LLMs for their "stupid questions?"
2/
As a teacher I do not say the line "there are no stupid questions" in part because I try to avoid using the word "stupid" but also because it's a lie and everyone knows it. Some questions are better than others.
But here is something I didn't understand until far too late in life:
People ask questions for reasons OTHER than simply obtaining information. A question can be a way to start a conversation. A way to try to find out if you are alone in your confusion.
3/
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"Let me google that for you."
"RTFM"I've always disliked the hostility of some online communities to repetitive or "basic" questions. It's one of the reasons I don't participate much on "Stack Overflow" where the ethos of hating questions goes deep and interest in enthusiastically sharing and helping people to learn is nearly nonexistent.
It's so extreme that the place simply isn't very active.
Is it so shocking people are turning to LLMs for their "stupid questions?"
2/
@futurebird Wow, has SO fallen so hard? I was there from the start until a few years ago and it used to at least *try* to fight that. I guess people moved to Reddit...
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As a teacher I do not say the line "there are no stupid questions" in part because I try to avoid using the word "stupid" but also because it's a lie and everyone knows it. Some questions are better than others.
But here is something I didn't understand until far too late in life:
People ask questions for reasons OTHER than simply obtaining information. A question can be a way to start a conversation. A way to try to find out if you are alone in your confusion.
3/
To make this post in our rather tech-leaning community I know I need to included clarification that I do not want technical solutions. Otherwise I will have a dozen people telling me about kagi, or some other work-around that makes search a little better *for them* ... we won't get to the bottom of why millions of people are "asking chat GPT" if they should wear a coat or not.
And I have had moments where I've been the one saying "RTFM!" I'm not innocent here.
4/4
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@futurebird Wow, has SO fallen so hard? I was there from the start until a few years ago and it used to at least *try* to fight that. I guess people moved to Reddit...
Reddit is very unpleasant to use if you don't want to learn the rules for a community and spend a lot of time there. If you just want to ask a question you will get "let me google this for you" type responses.
And this is fine in a way. The purpose of reddit is for more focused discussion.
But, where do people go to talk and ask questions without doing a research project first?
I think facebook and twitter had this role, but now LLMs are taking over.
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F myrmepropagandist shared this topic
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To make this post in our rather tech-leaning community I know I need to included clarification that I do not want technical solutions. Otherwise I will have a dozen people telling me about kagi, or some other work-around that makes search a little better *for them* ... we won't get to the bottom of why millions of people are "asking chat GPT" if they should wear a coat or not.
And I have had moments where I've been the one saying "RTFM!" I'm not innocent here.
4/4
@futurebird Thanks for the interesting reflection. It makes me think about other people using chat GPT in a different, kinder, way.
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To make this post in our rather tech-leaning community I know I need to included clarification that I do not want technical solutions. Otherwise I will have a dozen people telling me about kagi, or some other work-around that makes search a little better *for them* ... we won't get to the bottom of why millions of people are "asking chat GPT" if they should wear a coat or not.
And I have had moments where I've been the one saying "RTFM!" I'm not innocent here.
4/4
Sometimes people ask questions because they just want to talk to someone. I want to suggest that this is important and something we should make space for.
I think that's also why there is a lot of nostalgia and love for "shitposting" ... it's just pure human interaction without a lot of judgement. And it would be horrible if we let the LLMs take it from us, right?
Right?
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Reddit is very unpleasant to use if you don't want to learn the rules for a community and spend a lot of time there. If you just want to ask a question you will get "let me google this for you" type responses.
And this is fine in a way. The purpose of reddit is for more focused discussion.
But, where do people go to talk and ask questions without doing a research project first?
I think facebook and twitter had this role, but now LLMs are taking over.
@futurebird @adriano I go Reddit -> fedi with stuff like this at this point
If Reddit isn't helpful (it usually isn't) I ask here and I tend to get decent answers, at least for tech related stuff
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@futurebird Thanks for the interesting reflection. It makes me think about other people using chat GPT in a different, kinder, way.
The people I'm hearing this from are good people. Just not "computer people" ...
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"Let me google that for you."
"RTFM"I've always disliked the hostility of some online communities to repetitive or "basic" questions. It's one of the reasons I don't participate much on "Stack Overflow" where the ethos of hating questions goes deep and interest in enthusiastically sharing and helping people to learn is nearly nonexistent.
It's so extreme that the place simply isn't very active.
Is it so shocking people are turning to LLMs for their "stupid questions?"
2/
@futurebird Yeah, Stack Exchange is pretty useless to the point that I scroll past those search results. Everyone that learns a new language has to ask the basic stuff, and you’ll never find it there.
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@futurebird Yeah, Stack Exchange is pretty useless to the point that I scroll past those search results. Everyone that learns a new language has to ask the basic stuff, and you’ll never find it there.
I remember having an argument on the backend of the math stack exchange about the policy of basically demoting and rejecting "basic math" questions. The people against such questions said they didn't like being asked for "homework help" we were supposed to be having a higher level of mathematics conversation.
This meant that only graduate students with too much free time could find any use in the site.
Also if a question "had already been answered" that was that.
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I remember having an argument on the backend of the math stack exchange about the policy of basically demoting and rejecting "basic math" questions. The people against such questions said they didn't like being asked for "homework help" we were supposed to be having a higher level of mathematics conversation.
This meant that only graduate students with too much free time could find any use in the site.
Also if a question "had already been answered" that was that.
But, if a person is still asking a question even though the answer is right there... maybe it's not a very helpful or good answer.
Maybe it could be possible to answer a "basic" question in a new or better way.
Obviously, as a teacher this interests me more than it might interest other people. And it is possible for a question to be "low effort" but this wasn't the issue.
I really wondered what they wanted from the site at all.
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I remember having an argument on the backend of the math stack exchange about the policy of basically demoting and rejecting "basic math" questions. The people against such questions said they didn't like being asked for "homework help" we were supposed to be having a higher level of mathematics conversation.
This meant that only graduate students with too much free time could find any use in the site.
Also if a question "had already been answered" that was that.
@futurebird @Extra_Special_Carbon Oh, I remember figuring out stack exchange was just snarky snobs and yes, I'd search for somebody answering what I asked already but no, I wouldn't ask things: even if it *hadn't* been asked, they'd pretend it was a simpler question and give the same snarky answards to a different question.
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I remember having an argument on the backend of the math stack exchange about the policy of basically demoting and rejecting "basic math" questions. The people against such questions said they didn't like being asked for "homework help" we were supposed to be having a higher level of mathematics conversation.
This meant that only graduate students with too much free time could find any use in the site.
Also if a question "had already been answered" that was that.
@futurebird @Extra_Special_Carbon
There are still (or always will be) people confused why a number divided by zero isn't zero. -
To make this post in our rather tech-leaning community I know I need to included clarification that I do not want technical solutions. Otherwise I will have a dozen people telling me about kagi, or some other work-around that makes search a little better *for them* ... we won't get to the bottom of why millions of people are "asking chat GPT" if they should wear a coat or not.
And I have had moments where I've been the one saying "RTFM!" I'm not innocent here.
4/4
@futurebird
I had a professor who would routinely say "read the FINE manual" (note emphasis).There was a rumor that he didn't know "fine" was not the customary f-word used in that acronym, but he was always careful to emphasize "fine".
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But, if a person is still asking a question even though the answer is right there... maybe it's not a very helpful or good answer.
Maybe it could be possible to answer a "basic" question in a new or better way.
Obviously, as a teacher this interests me more than it might interest other people. And it is possible for a question to be "low effort" but this wasn't the issue.
I really wondered what they wanted from the site at all.
@futurebird @Extra_Special_Carbon I deleted my highest ranked post ("Is there a Windows PowerShell language reference manual?") because users kept editing my question and changing the meaning because they got points for doing so. I got tired of reverting edits to my question and figured that since the post was like 6 years old it wasn't really relevant - at the time I asked it there was very little documentation on PowerShell, online or otherwise. 6 years later there was plenty of basic info on the language. I felt a little bad because the comments were full of useful pointers to PowerShell resources; I just had no patience for people who materially changed the meaning of the question while "clarifying" it. The ongoing unpaid maintenance burden for a commercial firm helped tip the scales too.
One thing about SO, when someone sees a question asked the "wrong" way or is very basic, what's the motivation to chastise the OP instead of just ignoring it and moving on? For a site that prides itself on being a useful resource, there's a staggering amount of unhelpful dross in the comments. The gamification really honed the awfulness of professional computer touchers who were already a pretty awful community to start with.
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When "google" became a verb the company celebrated it as a symbol of their market dominance. I think even those of us who are skeptical about LLMs need to recognize that the general public is increasingly turning to LLMs in the same way they turned to search.
"I'll ask chat GPT" is something I hear often. I wince every single time I hear it.
1/(This is a discussion of how people relate to technology *not* a request for software recommendations or technical solutions.)
@futurebird I know someone who just says "I'll ask Chat". The first time I didn't know what she meant but then she pulled out her phone and started typing.
I think the thing that really bugs me is it seems like (some) people are so much quicker to reach for it, even in social situations. With search engines, at least in my experience, people tend to talk about something they don't know a bit before they "give up" and do a search. But with LLMs I've known people who will ask a question, barely wait for an answer, then type it into the LLM. Someone I knew used to ask me something, wait for me to give my answer, then not respond and immediately type into an LLM
Then again maybe it's just that the people that used to use search engines this way are just more likely to use LLMs now, so that's why I notice this
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To make this post in our rather tech-leaning community I know I need to included clarification that I do not want technical solutions. Otherwise I will have a dozen people telling me about kagi, or some other work-around that makes search a little better *for them* ... we won't get to the bottom of why millions of people are "asking chat GPT" if they should wear a coat or not.
And I have had moments where I've been the one saying "RTFM!" I'm not innocent here.
4/4
@futurebird wasn't there a movie in which darth vader built a robot whose entire job was being polite?
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@futurebird @Extra_Special_Carbon Oh, I remember figuring out stack exchange was just snarky snobs and yes, I'd search for somebody answering what I asked already but no, I wouldn't ask things: even if it *hadn't* been asked, they'd pretend it was a simpler question and give the same snarky answards to a different question.
* Only interested in "hard" questions.
* But, if it's a hard question they can't answer, well then you must have meant something else or asked it wrong.Kind of makes the range of acceptable topics ludicrously narrow.
I thought maybe we could just, you know, talk about math.
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@futurebird @Extra_Special_Carbon
There are still (or always will be) people confused why a number divided by zero isn't zero.@Okanogen @Extra_Special_Carbon
It's a question worth answering in multiple ways.
