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by paganholiday 169 days ago
The example wasn't even finding a right answer so I don't see where you got that..

Searching questions/answers on SO can surface correct paths on situations where the LLMs will keep giving you variants of a few wrong solutions, kind of like the toxic duplicate closers.. Ironically, if SO pruned the history to remove all failures to match its community standards then it would have the same problem.
1 comments
ianbutler 168 days ago
"But losing SO means that we're getting an idiot friendly guy with a lot of credible but wrong answers in place of a grumpy and possibly toxic guy which, however, actually answered our questions."

> "actually answered our questions."

Read carefully.

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akoboldfrying 168 days ago
Interpreting that claim as "SO users always, 100% of the time answer questions correctly" is uncharitable to the point of being unreasonable.

Most people would interpret the claim as concisely expressing that you get better accuracy from grumpy SO users than friendly LLMs.

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ianbutler 168 days ago
For the record I was interpreting that as LLMs are useless (which may have been just as uncharitable), which I categorically deny. I would say they're about just as useful without wading through the mire that SO was.
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paganholiday 168 days ago
>> Eventually I tried with something else, and found a question on stackoverflow, luckily with an answer. That was the game changer and eventually I was able to find the right doc

Read carefully and paraphrase to the generous side. The metaphor that follows that is obviously trying to give an example of what might be somehow lost.

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ianbutler 168 days ago
This is a fair critique. I am often not generous enough with people.
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johnnyanmac 168 days ago
Yes, it does answer you question, when the site lets it go through.

Note that "answers your question" does not mean "solving your problem". Sometimes the answer to a question is "this is infeasible because XYZ" and that's good feedback to get to help you re-evaluate a problem. Many LLMs still struggle with this and would rather give a wrong answer than a negative one.

That said, the "why don't you use X" response is practically a stereotype for a reason. So it's certainly not always useful feedback. If people could introspect and think "can 'because my job doesn't allow me to install Z' be a valid response to this", we'd be in a true Utopia.

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