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Comment by matthewdgreen | Hacker News Reader

I was curious about this so I visited ChatGPT and asked if there are documented cases in the UK where these things have happened, and I was met with a deluge of well-documented cases where corporations hired private intelligence firms to infiltrate activist groups and surveil critics and ex-employees, complete with links to primary and secondary sources which I briefly checked out just to make sure it wasn’t hallucinating. Then it asked me if I wanted a second deluge and I declined.

I don’t know why people have a mental model of the world that is so incompatible with reality that they’ll post skeptical takes to HN when we live in a world where so much data is available at the tip of our fingers.

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And then you didn't post your prompt, the links you looked at or really anything that would mean anyone could establish a common basis of reality or determine if actual nefarious action was happening.

For example, "infiltrating an organization" is also just joining it, which is quite dissimilar to say, stalking if all they did was not actually believe in the organization, rather the say, menacingly post men and machines outside of someone's residence for the purpose of intimidation via threat of violence.

Did you find any of that? Specifically in the UK, by private investigation organizations, specifically providing stalking for hire? Confirmed by more evidence then "well someone totally said it happened but we won't say who or by who?"

Dont understand why you find it so hard to believe. The ebay incident is insane and there are many like it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

Vested interests is why they find it hard to believe.

Lawyers have gotten into trouble using chatGPT for legal research because it hallucinated court cases.

I'm certainly not trusting what a random person on the Internet says it came up with.

That isn't to say the core assertion is wrong, but that I'll immediately dismiss one for which "chatGPT said" is the primary evidence.

I didn’t say that ChatGPT said. I said I used ChatGPT as a search engine because it’s incredibly easy and slightly better than Google. And then I visited the links it gave me to see the primary and secondary sources.

Again, the only reason we’re having this conversation as though there’s a debate here is that people have decided to believe in one inaccurate version of the world instead of using the extensive tools available to figure out what’s going on. This level of conversation is fine for Reddit, it’s embarrassing for HN where having an accurate mental model of the world (and a willingness to learn an update) is kind of essential.

HN is a place where you typically post links to sources that support your claim. We could all Google it (or ChatGPT it), but we may not come out with the same results. Why not post your sources so that we can discuss a common set of evidence?

HN is also a place that is intended to be a place that promotes intellectual curiosity rather than argument. When the evidence is this extensive and easily accessible, the decision to argue about it reflects intransigence and an unwillingness to be curious.

I genuinely don’t care about being right on the Internet or HN karma, I would be genuinely happy if one reader/participant in this argument came out of it thinking “huh, I can actually do better than this.”

The good folks here have absolutely demonstrated intellectual curiosity - that's what all the requests for prompt details and links are. Your refusal to simply provide them, especially after opening with what boils down to "ChatGPT told me...", and choice to get all smug and self-righteous when pressed, does not imply that you actually have the best handle on HN culture.

When you write hundreds of words to avoid typing twelve or so into a search engine, you’re not pursuing intellectual curiosity. I’m happy to die on this hill because it’s so completely absurd, and because I’m curious about what pathology is causing people even to argue about this.

You'll have to forgive me that this line:

> so I visited ChatGPT and asked if there are documented cases in the UK where these things have happened, and I was met with a deluge of well-documented cases

does indeed sound exactly like you were using chatGPT as a primary source rather than a search engine, and thus are being met with cynicism.

I urge you to re-read the original unedited post to see if there are any words in it about the fact that I checked those sources. :)

Why are you asking me for a prompt that would be effortless to formulate yourself, and why are you asking questions that would also be effortless to formulate yourself? It’s not because the information will be of higher quality when you filter it through me, it’s because you’re afraid that if you do these very easy things, you’ll learn that things are much worse than you believe.

> Why are you asking me for a prompt that would be effortless to formulate yourself, and why are you asking questions that would also be effortless to formulate yourself? It’s not because the information will be of higher quality when you filter it through me, it’s because you’re afraid that if you do these very easy things, you’ll learn that things are much worse than you believe.

Please have better faith in your interlocutor. We are not ostriches with our heads in the sand. Say your piece, so that then if we ignore it, you may find fault in good faith after. You're beating around the bush now, as you've been asked for sources plainly and directly, and have refused, which leads me to deploy the following:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens's_razor

> Hitchens's razor is an epistemological razor that serves as a general rule for rejecting certain knowledge claims. It states:

> > What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

> The razor is credited to author and journalist Christopher Hitchens, although its provenance can be traced to the Latin Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur ("What is asserted gratuitously is denied gratuitously"). It implies that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim; if this burden is not met, then the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.

Well, it's hardly a surprise that Hitchins would claim credit for something that was an established phrase in the 19th century.

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