Losing Trust in the Internet

[vlan121]

The rise of AI websites and generated content pushes me rn to a point where I am not certain that a given fact is a fact itself and AI did not made it up. It becomes more and more indistinguishable and less trustworthy.

How can I be sure that things haven't been made up? The only thing left to do is consult books from before the AI boom. How do you do it?

[rfarley04]

Sources from 30 years ago are more reliable than 30 days ago: pithandpip.com/blog/why-write-about-tech-history

[mytailorisrich]

The internet was never trustworthy. Specific websites backed by reputatable organisations with strong editorial rules may be trustworthy within reason.

[7222aafdcf68cfe]

Unfortunately, these will be subject to bit rot eventually.

Information on the internet currently does not have the longevity of books, yet books do not have the breadth and depth that can be found on the internet.

Along with curation, this is still an unsolved problem imo.

[_jsmh]

Another minor note: in my opinion, and it seems in Elon's opinion too, spam and generating lies and so on comes down to cost. If this cost is increased high enough so it becomes uneconomical for bots to pay it, then they won't pay and they'll stop. I hope it will remain economical for humans to post.

It'd be a grim future, in my opinion, if posting online requires identification. Some type of work is done better when it doesn't receive external validation.

This doesn't seem to conflict with freedom of speech. It's free to say whatever you want, but there seems to be a cost in getting others to hear what you have to say. Consuming one's attention seems to have a cost. Although freedom of speech in the form of hosting an online blog has a small cost too, it's not exactly 100% free.

[_jsmh]

I follow content from accounts that seem to consistently post facts.

I try to understand what is actually being stated instead of what is implied; facts vs opinions.

I wouldn't be surprised if falsity starts to get penalized. Elon said something along the lines of Grok will start to rank content based on whether its true.

Also built a system that prevents posting things that are made up. Maybe posting lies should carry a penalty, where you deposit something to lose if it's later discovered that you told a lie.

[vlan121]

> I follow content from accounts that seem to consistently post facts. How do you really distinguish that? Sourcing is a way to proof your facts. But creating a net of sources is in times of AI not hard. If there are timestamps one factor could be time stamps, and I really found sources that all have been published within a week or a month making it shady.

>I try to understand what is actually being stated instead of what is implied; facts vs opinion That requires that you understand fully to implication, how do you do this in areas that you don't have strong background knowledge?

>I wouldn't be surprised if falsity starts to get penalized. Elon said Grok will start to rank content based on whether its true. That would be a great step.

> Also built a system that prevents posting things that are made up. Maybe posting lies should carry a penalty, where you deposit something to lose if you told a lie. We must be careful here that a social credit system is not created through the back door.

[_jsmh]

> How do you really distinguish that? Sourcing is a way to proof your facts. But creating a net of sources is in times of AI not hard. If there are timestamps one factor could be time stamps, and I really found sources that all have been published within a week or a month making it shady.

I mostly lucked out. 2-3 accounts surfaced over the many things I saw and they seemed to prove they knew things. For example, one of these accounts posted things 2-4 years before an event would occur that ended up coming true. As if they knew ahead of time what would happen, as if they were part of intelligence or government or who knows what. A different account created software that predicted the future and many of the things they posted ended up coming true too.

> That requires that you understand fully to implication, how do you do this in areas that you don't have strong background knowledge?

In many areas, I don't fully understand. I use a simple trick that worked well: [phrase-redacted]. Intellectually honest people who aren't trying to trick anyone speak the truth. They also speak it with simple words so there's no possibility of misinterpretation.

This might be the most effective trick. Many times I caught people say something which is their opinion, and which is false based on data I have, that is actually an attempt to express a fact they know in a way that will make them seem more important, or give them more attention, or I don't know what.

It also helps to be imaginative and optimistic. Many times something sounds negative while it might be positive, and vice versa.

Many times people have their imagination jump to conclusions instead of stop at facts and start to question things.

> We must be careful here that a social credit system is not created through the back door.

I agree.

On the other hand, a social credit system may be a distraction from an actual credit system already in place: a money system. Perhaps energy can be converted to money, infinite amount of energy can be created with an approach known to few, and all humans could be enjoying life without working for 40 years but for 4 years. So if something worse already exists, maybe finding a way to restore trust on the Internet isn't worse than what may already exist.

[vlan121]

> I mostly lucked out. 2-3 accounts surfaced over the many things I saw and they seemed to prove they knew things. For example, one of these accounts posted things 2-4 years before an event would occur that ended up coming true. As if they knew ahead of time what would happen, as if they were part of intelligence or government or who knows what. A different account created software that predicted the future and many of the things they posted ended up coming true too.

We have to be cautious here, it's drifting towards conspiracy theories, my post is not innocent in this regard. But apart from that, I have to agree with you.

> In many areas, I don't fully understand. I use a simple trick that worked well: [phrase-redacted]. Intellectually honest people who aren't trying to trick anyone speak the truth. They also speak it with simple words so there's no possibility of misinterpretation.

So not taking a look at the chain of thoughs but treating each sentence differently, makes sense.

> This might be the most effective trick. Many times I caught people say something which is their opinion, and which is false based on data I have, that is actually an attempt to express a fact they know in a way that will make them seem more important, or give them more attention, or I don't know what.

Seems like philosophical razor

>On the other hand, a social credit system may be a distraction from an actual credit system already in place: a money system.

That is very true.