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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Do we believe this story? It's a Reddit "LegalAdvice" thread. It's not morel season in the UK right now; false morels are also March-May produce.

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I generally distrust Reddit threads, but it's entirely plausible to me. I was once gifted a cookbook on Amazon that was full of pre-LLM "sludge" of suspect internet-collected recipes along with a stock photo of an author with fake credentials (her author page is still up, although her books have been pulled and apparently she's a man now https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0716Q2Y4Z/about)

When I left a negative review pointing out that the author was a stock photo (entire content: "The author of this book is a fraud. There is no Tina B. Baker, she is a stock photo."), Amazon pulled the review saying it violated their guidelines.

Sure, but a fact of a story being plausible not only increases a probability of it being true, but also increases a probability of someone faking it because it's so plausible. Chances that someone would do exactly that on reddit are very high.

The poster doesn’t claim they ate morels. The section about morels was an example for something unrelated to the poisoning.

The fact that these people claim mushroom poisoning but don't say what kind of mushrooms they were looking for makes you... more? less? willing to buy the story?

They mentioned morels, which are sort of plausible (dates excepted) since false morels aren't going to kill you. What kind of mushroom would they be hunting in late July where their poisoning wouldn't be actually-newsworthy?

I really have no opinion here at all. I just wanted to point out that the fact that it’s no morel season in the UK is no evidence in either direction since the post doesn’t claim that the poisoning was due to morels.

I saw a comparable post the other day about an LLM proposing to mix garlic and oil in a way that would have produced a poisonous fluid, which the author recognized before trying. I found that story, and I find this one, at least plausible.

They might be novices who got the book as the start of their search, right? Since it could have any type of AI hallucinated mushroom with any type of AI hallucinated description. Are there really no non-deadly mushrooms in the UK in the late July?

They don’t necessarily have to be plausible or near misses or anything, right?

The bit where they say Amazon demanded that they return the book by special delivery or face having their entire Amazon account terminated is where the point at which it became clear to me that this is ragebait - Amazon simply do not work that way in the U.K. - returns are via prepaid label that they provide, and they don’t terminate your account if you fail to return a product, you just don’t get refunded.

I searched for the title of the book and nothing came up. When does searching for something NOT bring up amazon links?

> The book is entitled something similar to: "Mushrooms UK: A Guide to Harvesting Safe and Edible Mushrooms."

> The book has been removed from sale from the online retailer, ...

Emphasis added. I don't know if this is real or not, but they haven't given us the title.

It sounds like it wasn’t an Amazon product. Maybe it is some very niche UK site or something.

Amazon sells all kinds of crap. I doubt there's any reason they wouldn't stock it.

It’s probably AI generated like most of the rage bait on Reddit.

There have been quite a few articles corroborating the existence of books like this, the only part that needs believing is that someone actually used the books as advertised.

https://www.vox.com/24141648/ai-ebook-grift-mushroom-foragin...

https://fortune.com/2023/09/03/ai-written-mushroom-hunting-g...

The fact that this exact thing has received media coverage increases the likelihood that the post is fake.

Of course the story remains plausible, and it certainly has an air of truthiness, but I'd give it very good odds for being fake.

Right, that's the only thing I'm questioning.

Even if you doubt this particular case (which I haven't seen any reason to do), it's inevitable that people will believe some of the things they read in legitimate looking books sold by major online retailers.

Yeah, while this story is absolutely plausible, plausible does not necessarily mean true. OP is a new account with suspiciously few details that would permit fact-checking, and I think I'd call this one ragebait until proven otherwise. (That does not mean that this couldn't happen or that there isn't a risk of it happening, but everyone here hopefully knew that before this thread. I'm saying it shouldn't adjust your beliefs much if at all.)

I share your suspicion of the thin details. And what details they do provide smell funny too. I’m especially skeptical of this supposed cloak and dagger business:

> My wife just received an email from the online retailer. She has been asked to "Not take any photographs or copies of the product in question due to copyright issues" and it states, "the product must be returned immediately by special delivery by [DATE]." There's some other statements as well about our account being terminated if we fail to return the product by the specific date. We've got a lot of movies and series that we have purchased over the years on this account, I wouldn't want to lose them.

Hey, this is a book published with errors generated with LLMs. You can look it up

I would take any story from reddit with a huge grain of salt, but even if this case is not real there are real AI generated books that pretend to be real books, and mycology books in particular have had attention brought to them due to the dangers inherent to the misinformation they may contain.

Yeah, somebody wanted some internet points.

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