[wolfhumble]

> This is a great example of why using LLMs to learn is perilous. This is nonsense.

These type of answers from teachers, co-students, web communities, blogs etc. are – I would assume – why people ask LLMs in the first place.

[namaria]

It is a problem that people who are unwilling to perform some basic research resort to 'learning' the output of LLMs. No one is entitled to answers.

[melvinroest]

"No one is entitled to answers" feels very definitive, defeating and tiring. Especially because you don't explain your own thought process.

Could you please assume a good faith discussion?

[namaria]

I have. I was criticized for pointing out spurious nonsense in LLM slop by someone who claimed people wouldn't have to resort to it if other people made an effort to explain things better.

But I don't believe anyone is entitled to an explanation. I find things out by looking up books and testing things. Any explanation someone deigns to give me is a bonus and doubted until corroborated.

I don't know why anyone would think they are owed a custom explanation for their specific questions and thinking like that will get you in trouble when you come to depend on what anyone (or anything) is willing to chew up for you.

Maybe I was terse but I don't think I was rude or illogical.

[melvinroest]

> I was criticized for pointing out spurious nonsense in LLM slop

I can see that you experience it as such but I think it's more of a spectrum. Often times, LLMs give good answers. Often enough times they don't. One needs to keep that in mind. In my example, given that it was just a symbol, all I needed was knowledge at the level of a memnonic which would, on average, at least somewhat also point directionally to the truth. But that's a bonus. I could make up a memnonic myself, but I like having that bonus.

Given that ChatGPT is directionally towards the truth, but not fully (on average), I'd need to test it or verify it if I want a better level of knowledge than that. If that's the case, then ChatGPT is basically acts as a sort of cache as it's quicker to ask a question to ChatGPT than to research on one's own. One can experience a cache hit or cache miss. Such a thing will happen in the verification stage. Specifically, for math this is quicker, in my experience.

But anyways that's my experience. Your experience is that it's spurious nonsense slop. And I suppose you therefore find it a problem. I don't see the issue as there are different levels of knowledge and different time commitments you need to give to them. A lot of my knowledge is based on trust anyway and sometimes it's broken (e.g. replication crisis in psychology, I felt betrayed having studied the field).

> I don't know why anyone would think they are owed a custom explanation for their specific questions

I'm not sure if anyone said anything like it. Regardless of that, the need still exists. People will still act on that need. I suspect you see that as a problem. I'm neutral on it.

> thinking like that will get you in trouble when you come to depend on what anyone (or anything) is willing to chew up for you.

IMO teaching and learning is a 2 way street. It's the teacher's job to explain it well enough. It's the student's job to do their best to understand it. Math Academy offers exercises and explanations. Sometimes I find their explanations a bit lacking. So I use other sources to augment it.

> Maybe I was terse but I don't think I was rude or illogical.

Reading/writing text is tough, which is why I stated how I felt. It'd probably have been easier in an actual conversation. I didn't mean to imply you were being rude or illogical.