Search results are useless, AI is poisoning Wikipédia. While I do have the patience to read primary sources in my field of study, it becomes a nightmare to repeat this process for every bit of information I want.
I’m almost signing up for Encyclopedia Britannica. I don’t know what else to do.
The uncomfortable truth is that we lived through a very unique golden age of veracity. The photograph and later video completely revolutionized and changed the whole idea of what knowledge and verification were. Prior to indisputable photographic evidence, word and reputation carried more weight as often they were the strongest evidence towards the truth. AI has kind of us returned us to that stage, weirdly making the period of veracity we considered permanent instead a comparative blip in human history.
I don’t. I ignore the news to the best of my ability. I can’t be misinformed if I’m not informed in the first place.
I’m very critical on what kind of information I even need on daily basis. If my only reason for getting information on something is To Be Right On The Internet, I don’t bother. I don’t need to know shit about how a particle accelerator actually works and it has no bearing on my personal life. If I want to satisfy an intellectual curiosity about something, I can get some pop-science about it from a source that seems credible enough after a cursory glance (they need to cite studies/statistics at the very least, and I take a look at the studies too depending a bit on the gravity of the matter. I’m not going to scrutinize a cooking video about a historical dish too deeply, I’ll assume the general idea is close enough - but I will be very critical of anything talking about politically divisive topics, especially ones where there are people who have a very strong idea of what the “correct” opinion is), but I keep the awareness that it does NOT make me an expert and I should NOT inject myself into conversations about the matter (except to ask questions). And if some smalltalk touches on the topic, I can frame my comments appropriately like “I’m not familiar with the topic but my understanding was…”. Though even then I’d consider the critical thinking capabilities of the person I’m talking to. If I think they’re dumb enough to take what I say as a fact despite the framing, I’ll not say anything.
As for actually important information: local news, universities of good reputation, science organizations of good reputation. All the while keeping in mind that they’re not infallible. There’s just a greater probability that the information there is accurate and unbiased. In general I’ve taught myself to think of the world in terms of probabilities, not in binary “true/false” statements.
You don’t really.
Skepticism is a practiced skill, rather than just “being skeptical”, you can learn how to assess credibility of a source, and develop a habit of doing so.
I quite like skeptics guide to the universe podcast. Although I admit I usually skip chunks of each episode.
Another avenue is researching about cognitive biases. We all do it.
AI is poisoning Wikipédia.
Huh?
Yeah I don’t get that. Wikipedia is a fine source.
Wikipedia has an army of human writers that probably don’t take too kindly to AI.
It’s actually about 15 people that mostly maintain it.
[citation needed]
Anyone can make edits, but it’s mostly done by a handful of people.
This guy for example created 1/3rd of the articles.
https://youtu.be/JhNczOuhxegThat guy has made edits to a third of pages. Minor ones like making sure articles conform to the style guide.
Wikipédia is fighting an ongoing and ever increasing issue of collaborators pushing AI text into articles, which contain false information.
EDIT: Why the downvotes? Your misinformation is not my fault:
1 in 20 new Wikipédia pages contain AI-generated text: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2454256-one-in-20-new-wikipedia-pages-seem-to-be-written-with-the-help-of-ai/
Wikipédia attempts to maintain a task force to clean the articles poisoned by AI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_containing_suspected_AI-generated_texts
AI translations are poisoning non-EN Wikipédia: https://wistkey.medium.com/ai-translations-are-poisoning-wikipedia-and-putting-minority-languages-at-risk-c4539984734c
AI “contributions” are bringing up recycled information and fake sources, and the human verification often fails: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-ai-generated-content-in-wikipedia-a-tale-of-caution
But sure, keep downvoting me and ignoring the issue, geniuses.
And there’s corporations pushing agendas into primary sources. And there’s lying liars who lie for lying’s sake.
If you’re going to draw the line at “unassailable truth” then you’re doing all the work yourself.
Yeah, they clearly stated their need to find a way to get reliable information
Books?
Books aren’t an answer to this question if you need quick information you couldn’t have predicted you’d need, and therefore do not own a book about.
I just feel books are the ultimate source of knowledge. Been collecting them forever. Also books are free at the library and they have computers to search for things.
I also have offline Wikipedia from a few years ago, and an offline Reddit from a few years ago before it was poisoned with AI and bots.
Books are amazing, but i wouldn’t agree they are a source of reliable information. Yes some books have reliable information, but just because its a book doesn’t mean it can’t have misinformation or even disinformation. Books were the original source of conspiracy theories and beyond that they can’t be updated with new information.
That being said books are amazing. With a good library and a good librarian you can learn anything.
really you don’t. you read forum posts and try to guess to what degree the information is credible.
the problem is finding those forum posts
Google doesn’t return them anymore. I have much more luck with duckduckgo when I want to find an answer to a specific question
Yeah, forum posts are becoming really useful again. A few years ago whenever someone posted a question to a forum you could often find the same snarky remark in the comments: ‘just google it’. There was even a website created to add to the snark (let me google that for you). And there was some truth to that comment. Usually you could find the answer pretty easily with a quick search.
But that’s not the case anymore. With AI slop, search engines are getting less and less helpful. Slop has polluted our search results just like plastic has polluted our oceans. It’s at the point now where search engines are almost useless for large subsets of common queries. So we are slowly returning to a pre-search engine era. In this new, post-search engine era, forum posts provide a very useful way of providing information. Long live the forum.
Use the Google flag of “before:2022” added to any search. This will limit returned results to only those captured before 2022, which is when AI slop feedback started. Obviously this doesn’t work for current events, but if the data you’re looking for doesn’t need to be recent it can be useful.
Example:
this actually did show me slightly better results, although the results were nowhere near a slam dunk.
Nothing is a panacea against slop, but for general search, I’ve become a huge fan of Kagi. Gave up Google years ago, went to DDG, but Kagi is a cut above. There is a subscription fee, however. (Not shilling - no association with them, just a happy user).
For news: the Bylines network in the UK. They have a source checker for every article.
Similar to the top comment, I learned leftist political theory (mindset in their case). Once you understand what capitalism and socialism truly are, you have almost like a shield to protect you from certain propaganda. This sounds arrogant, but its genuinely been my experience
RSS ( multiple sources for current events) , Wikipedia, and forums.
I just follow you around and read what you throw out.
I don’t know if it’s a location as much as a mindset for me.
I look for fallacies and falsehoods and should they arise at rates that would.be hard to chalk up as honest error, I stop trusting the source.
What kind of information are you looking for?
