• tino@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Anybody going there to test “how bad it is” is giving them traffic, which they can use to brag about its success. Personally, I’d rather completely ignore it and disregard whoever mention it one day as a source, which will never happen hopefuly.

  • abbiistabbii
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    6 days ago

    I mean basically it’s “Conservapedia but it takes itself seriously”.

  • Sibshops@lemmy.myserv.one
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    6 days ago

    The first thing I noticed about grokipedia is that it doesn’t do a good job at qualifying the strength of sources.

  • kadaverin0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 days ago

    It’s been fun watching Elon go from space Jesus to shorthand for any billionaire vanity project that will amount to nothing.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Anyone who knew much about space knew that was nonsense from the start, as colonizing a subantarctic volcano is literally more practical than colonizing Mars.

      And that’s assuming paradigm shifts in spaceflight. Turns out, they did not materialize at all. With SABRE air-breathing engines and Virgin-style stratolaunches dead, things actually went way worse than I expected years ago.

      Don’t get me wrong. SpaceX is great, Starship is cool, research in space is awesome. But ever since I’ve first read Musk’s public thoughts, he struck me as ‘not scientifically grounded,’ and I wondered how that incongruity would shake out.


      TL;DR: Truth never mattered, and it still doesn’t :(

  • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.uk
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    7 days ago

    All he has to do is force it in front of people’s eyes instead of Wikipedia. It doesn’t actually have to be useful, just in the way.

    • badgermurphy@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      If it doesn’t do anything useful, I don’t think any amount of shoving in front of people is going to amount to much uptake beyond some cursory fiddling to determine its uselessness.

      People hand out flyers to every passerby too, and nearly all of those end up in the nearest trash bin.

        • badgermurphy@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Those caught on because they’re basically addictive drugs. Furthermore, while it may be hard to remember at this late stage of the game, those services did have genuine value to some users at the beginning. Today’s versions of those products have gone through countless iterations since then, each one reducing value to the end-user and increasing value to the data buyers and advertisers, like the proverbial “slowly boiling the frog”.

  • magguzu@midwest.social
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    6 days ago

    How long until AI models start training off Grokipedia, and we have the biggest game of hallucination telephone?

  • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Ultimately, this could highlight the incredibly high value of wikipedia as a common ressource, and might lead to better things there.

    Maybe.

    • setVeryLoud(true);@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      All cars can catch fire, some more often, others more intensely. Doesn’t matter if it’s a swastikar or not.

      Instead of pitting EVs against ICE, let’s all push to reduce car dependence and instead encourage the development of public transit!

  • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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    8 days ago

    ‘Not optimistic he will create anything very useful right now’

    Or ever create anything (he’s just stealing other people’s creations, at best)

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      nah most of the time he just overpromises… rarely has he delivered anything at all, and when he does it’s such a clusterfuck that the word underdeliver feels super generous.

    • AlecSadler
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      8 days ago

      Literally. With everything. In every business he touches. Yet the stock goes up. It’s stupid.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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    8 days ago

    Jimmy Wales: Libertarian that ended up creating perhaps the most successful collectivist project of all time.

    • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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      8 days ago

      this is a perfect example of why we should always allow an escape space for everyone. Sometimes that person in the space you are polar opposed too will create something that defies even their own rules

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          8 days ago

          I consider myself libertarian and absolutely love Wikipedia! In fact, if I didn’t have to work, I’d work on FOSS full time.

          Libertarians have no issues with collectivism, they only have issues with forced collectivism. Libertarians love private unions, co-ops, non-profits, etc.

          • snowboardbumvt@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            That’s how most libertarians I’ve talked to think. There are some people who call themselves libertarians who actually just want the government out of the way so mega corps can control everything, but i don’t think Jimmy Wales is one of them.

            • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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              7 days ago

              There’s an element of vibe contrarianism in any pronounced political ideology. Meaning that libertarians often hate what they perceive as anti-libertarian, communists often hate what they perceive as anti-communist, and so on.

              In that regard yes, there are plenty of libertarians who just want to kill anything with leftist vibes with fire.

              But the world of ideas is far richer than the existing conventions and established ideologies, and every person has their own trajectory in that.

              • snowboardbumvt@lemmy.world
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                7 days ago

                I agree. This is what I’ve observed: Pride and moral superiority are the primary sources of political extremism. Any attempt to reason in that emotional state is going to be filled with a ton of confirmation bias. Mix in some greed and it gets even worse.

                These people have a tendency to strongly identify with their particular brand of ideology and consider any challenge a threat. They label people that disagree as evil or stupid which makes them feel even more certain in their moral superiority. They close their minds to any dissenting opinions and hide in their echo chambers continuing the vicious cycle because being right feels good and being wrong feels bad.

                Some humility and genuine curiosity are ways to reverse the cycle.

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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              7 days ago

              Did those “libertarians” vote for Trump last election? What’s their take on Jan 6? I have a sneaking suspicion they’re conservatives who like weed, not libertarians.

              You’re right that libertarians don’t want government involved in as many parts of daily life as possible. That’s where the support comes from for things like drug legalization/decriminalization, gay marriage, gun rights, etc. Wikipedia is part of that, it was created and is maintained independently, and whether it’s funded by donations, ads, or subscriptions is irrelevant. As long as government isn’t involved, libertarians are happy.

              Here’s a quote I love from Penn Jillette (from memory, may have mistakes):

              Government should only use violence for things I am willing to use violence for. I would use violence to stop a rape or a murder. I would not use violence to build a library.

              He goes on say he supports libraries and would fund one if someone came around asking for donations.

              That’s pretty much exactly what Wikipedia is, it’s a privately created, publicly available library that runs on donations, which is a libertarian wet dream. If everything good could be funded that way (charities for a social safety net, police for law enforcement, military for national defense, etc), that would be a libertarian utopia. Since that’s not feasible, libertarians want as many functions as possible to exist outside of government and carefully audit the rest.

              I personally believe a social safety net cannot be independent, so I support something like UBI to replace our coercive and often subjective welfare programs and ensure everyone is above the poverty line. I also believe small companies should have legal protections (e.g. limited liability structures we have today), and large companies shouldn’t (they can buy insurance if they want), so a lawsuit or bankruptcy could go after shareholder and executive team assets.

              Many libertarians disagree with me on specifics (a libertarian’s most bitter rival is another libertarian), but we agree on the foundational idea that less is more when it comes to government.

              • snowboardbumvt@lemmy.world
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                7 days ago

                That’s sounds pretty close to where I’m at now. Ideally I want a libertarian society, but I don’t believe it will work in practice in a lot of areas (like health care or completely unregulated capitalism). On those issues I’m more aligned with the Green Party.

                I’m not sure what the “best” solutions are, but I know wealth and power are way to consolidated now and we need to decentralize.

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                  7 days ago

                  I don’t believe it will work in practice in a lot of areas

                  Perhaps, and ideally we can iterate on ideas to see what works and what doesn’t. I don’t like any big policy change, regardless of how it aligns with my priorities, I instead want a gradual change so it’s less disruptive to the market and we get cleaner feedback.

      • ɯᴉuoʇuɐ@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 days ago

        Lemmy itself is a good example of this. Most of the userbase heavily disagrees with the main developers’ political opinions, yet the software works well for everyone.

    • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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      7 days ago

      Reading his Wiki page, he does sound rather reasonable. Support for Occupy Wallstreet, running as a UK Labour candidate, openly calling not to elect Trump and also calling the US Libertarian Party “lunatics”.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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        7 days ago

        British libertarians get a pass on account of living in a monarchy but if you want to know why Labour’s shitting the bed, well, they let a right wing libertarian run as Labour.