Comment by ninjagoo
2 months ago
> Those aren't super rare these days, I don't know why arbitrary credentials would matter for this purpose
It's an indicator that that demographic isn't opposed to using AI as a conversational tool and find it useful for that purpose - an instant, "smarter" library, if you will.
> The actual fact was incidental, and this conflict regularly led to impasse where I'd clarify I don't care what the internet says etc.. and I'm fine with that because he wasn't really interested in thought exercises.
Thought exercises are better, imho, when they're grounded in facts. Why wouldn't you care what the facts are? Can one have the same level of discourse about space with someone who isn't aware that the Earth is round and thinks it is flat?
> A concrete hypothetical mundane example might be posing "How do you think the Iran war might impact gas prices here?" and they'd just look up the history and trends, and then kind of stop there. Dull, I want a human response, speculate and build on it, let yourself be wrong.
Color me confused. Are you looking for a panic or doomsday response or? What does "human response" even mean? A human looked at the history and trends, that's that human's response to the question!
Looking up the history and trends, and building on those facts could be a deeper dive into the wonders of economics, an exploration of the interconnected-ness and dependence of the various parts of the economy on oil and gas (fertilizer, plastics, and their downstream industries), where the fractionating plants are, where they get their raw materials from, how tied into futures contracts those are, who's got long-term contracts insulating them from the impact, what's that % of folks insulated for 3 months, 6 months, 12 months etc. etc.
I have to say, asking me to speculate and build on a topic that I know nothing about would invite a 'lookup' response from me as well; that's just (imho) a critical thinker style. Once the lookup is done, as a questioner, may I suggest asking probing questions to move the conversation forward - that's what I do.
Just out of curiosity, are you a D&D player, or a Fantasy or adjacent creative? I'm wondering what sort of nature would want to elicit an ungrounded speculative response, and I can imagine an enjoyer or creator of fantasy looking for a creative, speculative, thought exercise with a real world question as a starting point.
Ultimately the example was just the quickest hypothetical I came up with in the moment to illustrate the point, but it could have been better and was usually just an off the cuff prompt in which there are potentially facts available but the factual answer is inconsequential. A real example was much more trivial or casually philosophical. I'd ask what they meant when they'd use the word "dynamic" in a specific context, because we seemed to use it slightly differently, and he just googled the definition as if I didn't know it, and he'd get frustrated when I clarified "No, I was asking what you meant, not what the definition is". It's a personal and/or possibly nuanced question (what I meant by human) rather than an objective concrete thing. In another case, they were talking about their interest in learning to sail, talking about possibly joining a sailing club as we happened to walk by a marina on our way to an unrelated activity we both shared an interest in. Trying to build on their topic, I said something like "I wonder what's involved in establishing a Marina, do you think their zoning controls are similar to every pther commerical venture, or is the shoreline controlled differently?". The factual answer isn't important, we're not going to open a marina, but I was hoping he'd just roll with it and speculate. Instead, he just bailed immediately as though I expected him to know the exact numbers, and it stalled. I clarified and said I didn't expect him to know, that's why it's interesting. If he did know, then that's cool too, we could carry on, but there was no aspect of curiosity expressed.
> Just out of curiosity, are you a D&D player, or a Fantasy or adjacent creative? I'm wondering what sort of nature would want to elicit an ungrounded speculative response, and I can imagine an enjoyer or creator of fantasy looking for a creative, speculative, thought exercise with a real world question as a starting point.
Nope, software engineer, interested in creative fields but not so much D&D or fantasy roleplaying, just fantasy video games and TV, but it's not something I think about in terms of character building or lore, just entertainment.
Thanks for clarifying. Yes, sounds like someone with not a very strong imagination or curiosity. That's no fun.