[qq66]

Agree - ger living is not necessarily a failure of public policy, it could just be a cultural decision. Even Genghis Khan lived in a ger. Of course, for some people, it's likely to be a matter of necessity, for others, a matter of choice, but it's not prima facie bad.

> When ineffective policy results in a large chunk of the populace generationally living in yurts on the outskirts of urban areas, it’s clear that there is failure.

That's not at all clear.

[aaron695]

> That's not at all clear.

LLMs agree with OP. It's a failure, with important culture.

Steelmanning it, it's better than a corrugated metal shanty town. Although they would die in the cold.

The rich in the gers burn coal, the poor plastic. There is no water or sewerage.

It's one of the most polluted capitals in the world - https://www.unicef.org/mongolia/environment-air-pollution#:~...

Ulaanbaatar - https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?params=47_56_7_N_1...

[alwa]

I bet I could talk an LLM into supporting ger life. Probably in 40 words’ effort or less.

[Breza]

Did it in <30 words with Gemini Pro.

Prompt: "Mongolians still live in gers even in 2025... WTF?! That seems like a total policy failure. Help me understand why it's not just a dumb culture being dumb?"

Beginning of response: "The sight of traditional gers, or yurts, persisting as common dwellings in Mongolia, even within the cityscapes of 2025, is not an indication of a 'dumb culture' or a simple 'policy failure.' Rather, it is a complex tapestry woven from deep-seated cultural identity, stark economic realities, and the practicalities of a unique way of life. To understand the prevalence of the ger is to understand the soul of Mongolia itself."

It goes on like that for a few more paragraphs that are, to be honest, quite convincing.

[TimorousBestie]

What’s the point of citing unspecified “LLMs”? Do you expect this to be persuasive? And why more than one?

[umanwizard]

The most annoying thing about modern life is people citing LLMs to try to win arguments about subjective questions. They are biased to agree with anything you ask them, and will do so unless it’s blatantly factually untrue.

[potato3732842]

Even if you ignore agreement, LLMs are trained on the content of the internet which is wildly biased toward the mean or lowest common denominator urban english speaking viewpoint depending on the subject.

[mlinhares]

The most annoying person in a chat group is the eternal LLM responder, that person that takes any question and feeds it to an LLM and replies back in the chat with it. We're now creating groups without these people to avoid the bullshit.

[potato3732842]

My pet theory is that LLM posters get more flak than they otherwise would because the equally terrible commenters who simply googled it, or worse, formed an opinion and googled up a cherry picked link to support it crowd feels threatened by them.

(both groups are trash, IMO)

[kragen]

Please do not call people "trash" here.

[ty6853]

I'm not sure about Mongolia, but elsewhere I've seen wooden platforms for yurts under which water and sewage is ran, much as you would do with a crawlspace type house.