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Comment by kr0bat | Hacker News Reader

When do you stop digging?

When you reach a primary source? If I can't get a cheap, reliable answer to a simple question without looking into a potentially dense primary source, then online search becomes about as useful as a library card. Besides, not every domain is expected to include primary sources. Did the author of this recipe really think that a wok is better than a skillet for fried rice, or is this the written delusion of a gemerative AI?

Do I instead only look for answers found in reputable sites? Aggressive SEO has made badly formatted sites indistinguishable from GPT sludge. Personally, I don't trust answers from sites I haven't heard of before my search.

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You can’t outsource intuition - you have to build it yourself. You need to be willing to look like a fool and be wrong. It’s less a question of when to stop digging and more a question of self awareness and ability to keep an open mind.

>You can’t outsource intuition

Isn't that the entire purpose of the scientific method?

Intuition doesn't scale. The behavior of radioactive materials is not intuitive. If I attempt pure intuition alone, I'm going to die of butt cancer or turning into a zombie or some crap.

Bullshit Asymmetry becomes a huge problem here. If I have to worry that every single thing is a lie or is otherwise going to kill me, I, and society at large goes on the defensive. This allows things like fascist leaders to get elected under the guise of protecting me from the 'big bad world'.

We are in for a lot of bad shit, and we can already see this unfolding in politics.

Maybe knowing or finding (primary/ultimate) truth is overrated. We search for, and find an answer. If we apply the answer and it doesn't work out well, we dig a litle deeper. We learn the fall and get up way. It might be a primitive way of learning, but a proven one.

Ultimately... the ultimate truth does not exist, let alone it could be known or found. Every answer is wrong, some statements are less wrong than others.

Why can't it be both? You can get a cheap, reliable answer to a simple question if the search engine directs you to the exact, relevant paragraph of a primary source. Unfortunately that's not the direction search engines are going in.

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