Extend this to quantum foam, to ergodic processes, to entropic force, to Darius and Xerces, to poets of the 19th century - it’s changed my life. Really glad to see an investment in stream lining this flow.
I do verify by using topics I'm an expert in and I find hallucination to be less of an issue than depth of nuance.
For topics I'm just learning, depth of nuance goes over my head anyways.
When I ask a friend something I assume that they are in good faith telling me what they know. Now, they could be wrong (which could be them saying "I'm not 100% sure on this") or they could not be remembering correctly, but there's some good faith there.
An LLM, on the other hand, just makes up facts and doesn't know if they're incorrect or not or even what percentage sure it is. And to top things off, it will speak with absolute certainty the whole time.
But the difference is I actually want to and do use this interface more.
If I was deliberately trying to dive deep on one particular hobby, or trying to understand how a particular algorithm works, there's clear value in spending concentrated time to learn that subject, deliberately focused and engaged with it, and a system like your describe might play a role in that. If I'm in school and forced to quickly learn a bunch of crap I'll be tested on, then the system has defined another source of real value, at least in the short term. But if I'm diving deep on one particular hobby and filling my brain with all sorts of other ostensibly important information, I think that just amounts at best to more entertainment that fakes its way above other aspects of life in the hierarchy of ways one could spend time (the irony of me saying this in a comment on HN is not lost on me).
Earlier in my life I figured it would be worthwhile to read articles on the bus, or listen to non-fiction podcasts, because knowledge is inherently valuable and there's not enough time, and if I just wore earbuds throughout my entire day, I'd learn so much! How about at the gym, so much wasted learning time while pushing weights, keep those earbuds in! A walk around the neighborhood? On the plane? On the train? All time that could be spent learning about some bs that's recently become much easier to access, or so my 21 y.o self would have me believe.
But I think now it's a phony and hollow existence if you're just cramming your brain with all sorts of stuff in the background or in marginally more than a passive way. I could listen to a lot of arbitrary German language material, but realistically the value I'd convince myself I'd get out of any of that is lost if I'm not about to take that home and grind it out for hours, days, move to a German speaking country, have an existing intense interest in untranslatable German art, or have literally any reason to properly learn a language and dedicate real expensive time to it.
With pure knowledge, it's a bit easier to convince yourself that putting in some airpods and listening to a subject while you're actually dividing your attention with the act of driving, is effective "learning". But with things that inherently require more physical engagement, this would seem a bit silly. You can't really watch YouTube video or ask ChatGPT how to kickflip on a skateboard and convince yourself that you've learned much. You need to go to a parking lot and rep out 1000 attempts.
My argument is just that passive digestion of information has an opportunity cost, and unless you're already engaged enough to take it to the streets somehow, you're paying a high opportunity cost whereby those moments could be enjoyed as the periodic gaps they are
