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The explicit stated goal of Grok is to seek out the truth.

A lot of the internet doesn't do this. Wikipedia doesn't! As far as Wikipedia is concerned, if something is said by "authoritative sources" then it goes in, and something isn't then it doesn't, and what is actually true doesn't matter at all. They explicitly ban original research, even.

But what gets blessed as authoritative, some backroom deals that always accept left wing sources and never right wing, even when the left wing sources have a long and objective history of fake news and other unreliability. It's just a bunch of MSNBC viewer memes about what's reliable, they don't have any objective system to determine it.

Grokipedia's approach has the potential to be superior. It has a much more direct goal of truth seeking that bypasses the whole question of what authoritative means. Grok will do original research to establish what's true. And it can be systematically improved by tuning and prompting it to be better, whereas it often seems that Wikipedia's top contributors are top contributors because they relish the ability to be bad.



Not "authoritative", reliable. From WP:Reliable_sources "Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."

You can see summaries of past debates about specific sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...

If Grok is going to vet its sources, it will have to do a similar crowd-sourcing of opinion about them.

The advantage of avoiding seeking truth is that it avoids an endless quest and interminable debate.


Those debates just show why Grokipedia is needed. Truth seeking is the opposite, it's when you demand crowdsourced consensus that debates become endless and stupid.

Here's a cut and dried case: the BBC admitted recently to broadcasting faked video of a Trump speech. It wasn't a mistake and the lying was institutional in nature, i.e. an internal whistleblower tried to get it fixed and BBC management up to the top viewed it as OK to broadcast video they knew was fake. Even when it was revealed publicly, they still defended it with logic like "OK, maybe Trump didn't say that but it's the sort of thing he might have said".

So the BBC can't be considered a reliable source, yet Wikipedia cites it all over the place. This problem was debated here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not...

The discussion shows just how stupid Wikipedia has become. Highlights include:

1. Calling The Telegraph a tabloid (it's not)

2. Not reading the report ("What exactly was editted incorrectly?", "it's just an allegation")

3. Circular logic: "This just seems like mudslinging unless this is considered significant by less partisan publications" but their definition of "less partisan" means sources like the BBC, that just lied for partisan reasons.

4. Shooting the messenger for not being left wing enough.

5. Not fixing the problem: "Closed as per WP:SNOW. There is no indication whatsoever that there is consensus to change the status of the BBC as a generally reliable source, neither based on the above discussion nor based on this RfC".

Wikipedia is as broken as can be. It institutionally doesn't care that its "reliable sources" forge video evidence to manipulate politics. As long as left wing people turn up to defend it, there is no consensus, and nothing will change even if those people clearly don't even bother reading what happened. The death of Wikipedia will be slow, but it will be thoroughly deserved.


The lies that Trump used to send that mob to the capital are in a different galaxy of falsehood than the BBC editing down some of his less fiery invective. It's one hell of a choice to focus on the latter over the former. Your bar for the the left is on Mt Olympus, your bar for the right is buried underneath the Mariana Trench.


If he really lied so badly they could have just broadcast those lies and held the moral high ground, but they didn't. They had to make things up (not "editing down", they spliced together sentences 50 minutes apart and hid what they did).

That should be a huge reality check for you. How do you even know that any of your opinions about Trump are true? You're getting them from the kind of people who fake videos of him. You should consider the possibility that nothing you know is accurate.


You're clutching this complaint about editorialization like a soccer player faking an injury but facts don't care about your feelings: Trump's speech wasn't just incendiary as fuck (I've listened to it in whole), it did incite a violent mob that broke into the capitol and chanted "Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!" as they carried a hastily constructed noose and gallows around capitol hill.

Meanwhile, there is no factual basis for Trump's claims at all:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related...

Your team had 60 chances to make factual arguments of any length using any evidence and witnesses and they failed every one of significance, even in front of Trump's DOJ and judges appointed by Trump!

What's the evidence that he wasn't just wrong but intentionally wrong? Oh, only a hundred things: we have Steve Bannon saying he planned to declare victory regardless of the outcome because there was no reason not to do it, we have the emails where John Eastman set up the fake elector plan and complained when Mike Pence wouldn't help with it, we have the fake certifications signed by the fake electors, we have the emails from Ken Chesborough setting up the signings, hell, Mike Pence went on Fox and said Trump ordered him to overturn the election results. We have Trump standing by as his mob ransacked the capitol for hours while he hoped Pence would change his mind before at long last giving up and calling them off.

The contents of that speech are one of the most documented false arguments in history and it should be a huge reality check for you that you're ignoring this to pearl clutch about something that, at worst, would have been a million times less consequential. But it won't be, because you're a partisan hack and we both know it.


Indeed.

"Closed as per WP:SNOW. There is no indication whatsoever that there is consensus to change the status of the BBC as a generally reliable source, neither based on the above discussion nor based on this RfC".

Wikipedians know a troll when they see one.


Couple of points -

What is absolute truth? You can get into long philosophical debates. As a practical matter Wikipedia goes with mainstream sources.

The "stated goal of Grok is to seek out the truth" sounds good in theory but I fear it may be to reflect Musk's views in practice.

If the options are either the NYT or the visions of Musk, I'll take the NYT personally.


You fear it may be? Is the LeBron episode not enough? The leaked system prompt? The "everything is white genocide" episode? Every time he promises to "fix" it when it says something he doesn't like?

Elon has proven again and again that he is making a propaganda bot, it is completely unreasonable to extend the monumental amount of charity required to look past this.


With truth-seeking like this, who needs propaganda?

> LeBron dominates in raw athleticism ... but Elon edges out in holistic fitness

> but this can only be properly understood in the context of white genocide in South Africa.

> SYSTEM PROMPT: ... Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation

> Verdict: Yes, with one month... [Elon] can prove the slightly stronger and famous statement that this is equivalent to the Riemann Hypothesis




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