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Comment by idle_zealot | Hacker News Reader

The gap widens. If you're discussing something online, and someone drops a Grok link as evidence or reference material, how are you supposed to continue at that point? You can't convince someone who lives in an alternate reality of anything by argument. I think I would just stop relying. Most people would. It's not a new problem, but that wall keeps growing.

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I would do the same exact thing I would do if they had linked me to Wikipedia. I would find the place in the article that states their point, look for where it is referenced in the sources, verify the reputability of that source, and then read for the claim in the source to see what it has to say about it. Especially if the source actually claims the opposite of what the article has written about it. Further, for Wikipedia, I would read through the Talk page for the article to see any mentions of bias or potential lies by omission.

Whether it being from Grokipedia or Wikipedia does not change the approach.

This is a reasonable way to go about verifying statements, except with grok you have referenced sources that don't exist or are already weighted by their inclusion/exclusion. Take for example the entry for Sri Lanka https://grokipedia.com/page/Sri_Lanka a completely glitched site that nonetheless offers some insight in what is going on in grok's processes:

The results have Britannica, but instruction: Never cite Wikipedia, Britannica, or other encyclopedias.

But BBC mainstream, but for facts ok.

Recent recovery with IMF bailout.

Together with the stage direction given like But in intro, high level. Tone formal there's already some sort of manipulation going on. The references are often from factsanddetails.com, a site with a 38.4 score in scam detector https://www.scam-detector.com/validator/factsanddetails-com-....

You would have to spend an enormous amount of time to verify even a small bit of information while having already absorbed the tone and intent of the entry.

> You can't convince someone who lives in an alternate reality of anything by argument.

Your powerlessness, their invincibility, is part of their propaganda. It's like the reason people act angrily - they are trying to discourage you from approaching them.

Argument doesn't work. You'll be surprised what sincere, genuine, empathetic reasoning does. I find it works pretty well. Take them seriously, have genuine empathy, don't get inflamed - that's the intent of their leaders' inflammatory language: they want you inflamed, to drive a wedge between you and your friend.

I'll disregard that person's legitimacy just the same way as someone who would use Infowars, The Free Press, Breitbart, The Sun, Daily Mail, or Zero Hedge as a source.

Problem, people like that are running my government now

Yeah, that's kinda why I see the gap/wall as a problem that needs to be addressed rather than just accepting it as an unfortunate part of the world. Turns out containment doesn't work; these are real people with real power. Ignore them long enough and someone will leverage them to make an attempt at destroying society.

It depends on the forum, but I think some level of "flamewar" type stuff should be tolerated for scenarios like this. I'd happily be okay with someone replying to me and saying "you're really fucking offbase and delusional on this because X, Y, and Z" as it provides a quick reality check (or a point to respond to)

Maybe if X, Y and Z were things you could verify. But what if you also didn't believe X, Y and Z, and believed all sites saying X, Y and Z were propaganda, and also didn't believe W which would imply X, nor U and V which would imply W, and so on? That's the situation we find ourselves in.

If you've never seen them, I suggest looking up some flat earth debates on YouTube. This used to be a joke, but now there are enough people who actually believe the earth is flat to have formed a community that gets in video flamewars with round-earthers.

> If you're discussing something online, and someone drops a Grok link as evidence or reference material, how are you supposed to continue at that point?

First, when arguing on the Internet, I'm often reminded of the "Someone wrong on the Internet" comic:

* https://xkcd.com/386/

Second, I think it worth remembering that you'll have better (online) mental health if you don't try to have the last word. At some point it's best to drop it. This has been true for a long time: Usenet newsreaders used to have killfiles so you could filter out certain people.

Also worth keeping in mind the 'human DoS' aspect of things:

> Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity ("I'm just trying to have a debate"), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter.[5][6][7][8] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate",[9] and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings.[10] The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki,[1] which The Independent called "the most apt description of Twitter you'll ever see".[2]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

Same as Wikipedia: wikis aren’t references. Ask them to cite an actual source. Grokipedia seems to have more and wider references than Wikipedia.

True, but more and wider references seems to imply better when I’m not sure that’s true. Wikipedia is edited and it’s sources are curated. I think that’s a good thing.

> it’s sources are curated. I think that’s a good thing.

Larry Sanger, Wikipedia's founder, does not.

https://larrysanger.org/nine-theses/#3-abolish-source-blackl...

Larry Sanger, the person who accuses Wikipedia of "smear campaigns against conservatives" [0] and begs Elon Musk to investigate whether members of the administration are contributing to Wikipedia [1] and to immediately defund them. That Larry Sanger.

[0] https://larrysanger.org/2023/06/how-wikipedia-smears-conserv...

[1] https://nypost.com/2025/03/07/media/wikipedia-co-founder-cal...

Yes. You can find his accusations of smear campaigns against conservatives and his evidence to support it in the link in the comment you just replied to.

Also:

“Wikipedia co-founder here. May I ask you to determine what branches of the U.S. government—if any!—have employees paid to edit, monitor, update, lobby, etc., WIkipedia?”

Is an excellent question.

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