F
It's also notable that the Angels and Ghosts people want NOTHING to do with the Bigfoot and Aliens crowd.
Can't cross those streams. Hilariously each camp will talk about the other with a kind of eye rolling.
You saw Bigfoot and you are rolling your eyes about a ghost? REALLY?
This thing where the Bigfoot people and the Aliens people have teamed up and decided they are all a part of one "phenomenon" (this is true, just not for the reasons they think...*)
Well it's kind of fascinating, because these were, I thought, very different myths with very different kinds of purposes.
I guess it's a kind of "big tent" ?
* There must always be monsters and folklore. If there isn't any, new ones will arise.
AHHH
Another creepy, nostalgic short video form #gakhed.
A black and white cat covered in big colorful Christmas bulbs posing in the snow relaxed. Christmas decorations of a suburban but rather rural neighborhood. A huge Christmas tree covered in pink and blue lights, Santa, Frosty, Michael Myers? (left over from Halloween I think) the ducks and goats of the farm at night. A municipal "winter wonderland" one might find in a small town.
Someone tried to impress me by showing me the Great Potoo, but having been exposed to #PicaTheCat I'm not that impressed:
* Huge goofy eyes?
* Convincing wood-grain texture?
* Absurdly large mouth that opens out of nowhere like a Muppet?
* Haunting eerie noise at night?
* Eating bugs just because they are there?
Maybe I should call her "Potoo The Cat"
@Okanogen @Extra_Special_Carbon
It's a question worth answering in multiple ways.
* 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.
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.
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.
The people I'm hearing this from are good people. Just not "computer people" ...
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?
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.
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
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/
"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/
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.)
We did once... but ate them before he got any again so didn't want to talk about it.
I saw these today and thought about posting about them. They have one that says "50 percent of IQ is genetic"
I think they are trying to get attention by being obnoxious.
We had this culture at my undergraduate college. Performative all nighters.
Thankfully by grad school I learned better and could study *less* get better grades and be healthy.
I'm not even talking about work life balance here. Even a person who put every waking moment towards "the good of the company" will not do their best work like this. It will be inefficient.
Look to the ant.
Proverbs 6:6 and all that.