Michael Phelps is 14 feet tall | Hacker News Reader

Michael Phelps is 14 feet tall

google.com

52 pointsjeffbee47 comments

The source of the error is this reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pfkel9/e... which lists Phelp's physical advantages including: "Size 14 feet = basically flippers"

Heh, I'm guessing this comes from one of the Reddit threads below where it mentions "Size 14 feet"

I've been getting erroneous unit conversions for half a year now -

https://www.google.com/search?q=130m+to+inches

Interestingly, "130m to in" works

https://www.google.com/search?q=130m+to+in

"130m in inches" works. I'm pretty sure that's the "native" syntax and anything else is fed through some kind of heuristic recogniser which obviously didn't work in this case. Very strange failure mode though!

Different values with the same syntax will pass/fail randomly:

https://www.google.com/search?q=130m+to+inches

https://www.google.com/search?q=140m+to+inches

Return 51.1811" and 5511.81" respectively

Yeah, as I said I think that's because "to" is not the right syntax, so it fails the "native" calculator input and has to get translated into the proper syntax by some probabilistic system.

The A.I. appears to have misinterpreted "FEET Size 14" seen at the bottom of the picture.

They have since fixed the caption:

Michael Phelps's height, wingspan, and large hands and feet give him an advantage in swimming. His body also produces less lactic acid than his rivals, which shortens his recovery time. Jan 18, 2024

And they point to this article: https://www.scienceabc.com/sports/michael-phelps-height-arms...

"wingspan"

Can't wait for the results talking about Phelp's flying abilities.

Punctuation is important:

https://jasomill.at/777.png

This is misleading, but not technically inaccurate.

But Bing also claims I can store 410 trillion microSD cards in a 40-foot intermodal shipping container:

https://jasomill.at/nanoSD.pdf

Beyond the punctuation, it's also arguably the wrong number: it's the maximum payload weight, not the weight of the aircraft itself, that's 144,379 kg for the 777 Freighter (according to the linked page), and e.g. 159,570 kg for the 777-300: https://www.flugzeuginfo.net/acdata_php/acdata_7773_en.php.

flugzeuginfo will be a German source, a locale where dot and comma in numbers are switched.

Correct, but to avoid confusion, search engines should present infobox results using the locale conventions of the search page (en-US in my example), not the source.

For instance, Google correctly reports Germany's 2022 GDP as $4.082 trillion in en-US and $4,082 Billionen in de-DE.

Fun fact: The 70 cm band is also known as the 4 meter band.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Is+the+70cm+band+also+known+...

"Yes, the 70-centimeter band is also known as the 4-meter band because it's 70 MHz."

Perplexity gets it right at 6’4.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/does-micheal-phelps-have-gi...

I have a feeling Google will acquire Perplexity. It’s a great search engine.

https://www.scienceabc.com/sports/michael-phelps-height-arms...

I don't see anything about his height at the link.

Sorry, I knew it is a risk that everyone gets different results on Google. For me the "featured snippet" is taken from this page, which was obviously generated by an LLM, and which plainly states that Phelps is 14 feet tall.

To me, it is a signifier that the web is truly dead, and LLMs killed it. The search engines are featuring the LLM outputs now.

https://www.scienceabc.com/sports/michael-phelps-height-arms...

Too low quality, I think it's just a crappy content farm and not an LLM (e.g. using "he did' instead of "he was" in the intro and the lactate threshold diagram is wrong)

Not just LLMs. Search engines like Google based on spying for money.

It looks like a typo? The referenced article has it too:

“Phelps has huge palms that support his paddling ability and is 14 feet tall, which essentially act as flippers (the kind of fingerless arms that seals have).”

Like 30% down the page of:

https://www.scienceabc.com/sports/michael-phelps-height-arms...).

The miasma is here to stay.

It's on the internet, so it must be true!

I wonder if Googles AI response will be even more confident because of your response. As for whatever reason your Comment appears in the snippet on Google Search

https://ibb.co/y84rTDP

His Hinge says 16 feet