[gregatragenet3]

The most interesting thing is that that post sat for months without the answer "why" it was done, but chatgpt knew, from the comment added 2h ago.

The j was to prevent forgery, or altering the document. ii could be altered later to iii.. but if it was ij its obvious its been tampered with if it later appears as iji

[burkaman]

ChatGPT just read that on Wikipedia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals#Use_in_the_Mi..., https://samplecontents.library.ph/wikipedia/wp/r/Roman_numer...). Notably, Wikipedia's source (https://archive.org/details/materiamedica00bastgoog/page/584...) doesn't appear to say anything about fraud or forgery or tampering, and that explanation doesn't actually make much sense as it would be quite easy to circumvent.

So please don't trust comments that just say "ChatGPT told me..."

[crtasm]

The question was asked over 10 years ago and now it's getting clicks from HN someone's copypasted a claim from a LLM, possibly without verifying it. That is kind of interesting, but not in a good way.

[rossdavidh]

The question was "asked Oct 10, 2013 at 1:54" and the answer (which explains why it was done) was "answered Oct 10, 2013 at 2:58". A more likely take on chatgpt's answer is that their anti-fraud explanation is not even correct; the 2013 answer provides citations from the time explaining why, and anti-fraud is not mentioned.

[layer8]

StackExchange doesn't allow AI answers. ;)

[kazinator]

x can be altered to xx; why isn't that a problem?