[xsmasher]

I was interested when Feynman pushed back on the laziness of the opening question - seems like a very Feynman thing to do - so I was interested.

The follow up question, though, snuck in a lie - "you went to UC Berkeley for two years." That property of these interviews seems dangerous, and likely to implant false factoids in people's heads.

[rngname22]

Yeah I commented on this on the last thread by this company on here, but it's like literally a demo of a fake news / misinformation machine. Content that sounds stylistically like the parroted speakers but is just factually incorrect or misrepresentative of what the speakers would likely say.

I guess if the point is to demo the pure technical achievement it's maybe cool but there needs to be a huge 'misinfo' disclaimer plastered literally everywhere that it's for entertainment, although even then people could just rip the audio and repost it and pretend it was real.

[jahewson]

Fun fact, factoids are always false.

[ravenstine]

Necessarily? I'd assume a factoid has the potential to be either true or false.

[hhmc]

By some original definition of the word they are necessarily false. Usage seems to have shifted to ‘small fact’ though

[KennyFromIT]

The common misunderstanding of the word `factoid` to mean "a small fact" is itself a factoid.

[kjeetgill]

Oxford English Dictionary (via Google) gives:

Factoid

- a brief or trivial item of news or information - an assumption or speculation that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact

So both uses are reasonable?