To clarify I am not accusing you of that. I am saying you are seeing distinctions as more important than the rest of the literature and concluding that the literature is erroneous. For example whether a given policy is Georgist.

But often people who believe in a given doctrine will see differences as more important than they objectively are. For example, just to continue with socialism, it's common for socialist believers to argue that this or that country is or isn't socialist in a way that disagrees with mainstream historians.

I'm sure there are other examples, for example people disagreeing about which bands are punk or hardcore. A music historian would likely cast a wider net. Fans who don't listen to many other types of music might cast a very narrow net.

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larsiusprime 4 days ago | parent [-]

Okay, so let me break it down for you:

The Silagi paper makes a factual claim. The Silagi paper claims that there was only one significant tax in the German colony of Kiatschou, a single tax on land.

The direct primary sources reveal that this is not the case. There were multiple taxes, most significantly large tariffs. Additionally there were two taxes on land, not one -- a conventional land value tax, and a "land increment" or capital gains tax.

These are not minor distinctions. These are not matters of subjective opinions. These are clear, verifiable, questions of fact. The Silagi paper does not acknowledge them.

ChatGPT, in the early trials I graded, does not even acknowledge the German primary sources. You keep saying that I am upset it doesn't agree with me.

I am saying the chief issue is that ChatGPT does not even discover the relevant primary sources. That is far more important than whether it agrees with me.

> For example, just to continue with socialism, it's common for socialist believers to argue that this or that country is or isn't socialist in a way that disagrees with mainstream historians.

Notice you said "historians." Plural. I expect a proper researcher to cite more than ONE paper, especially if the other papers disagree, and even if it has a preferred narrative, to at least surface to me that there is in fact disagreement in the literature, rather than to just summarize one finding.

Also, if the claims are being made about a piece of German history, I expect it to cite at least one source in German, rather than to rely entirely on one single English-language source.

The chief issue is that ChatGPT over-cites one single paper and does not discover primary source documents. That is the issue. That is the only issue.

> I am saying you are seeing distinctions as more important than the rest of the literature and concluding that the literature is erroneous.

And I am saying that ChatGPT did not in fact read the "rest of the literature." It is literally citing ONE article, and other pieces that merely summarize that same article, rather than all of the primary source documents. It is not in fact giving me anything like an accurate summary of the literature.

I am not saying "The literature is wrong because it disagrees with me." I am saying "one paper, the only one ChatGPT meaningfully cites, is directly contradicted by the REST of the literature, which ChatGPT does not cite."

A truly "research grade" or "PhD grade" intelligence would at the very least be able to discover that.

	▲	ants_everywhere 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think we’re talking past each other a bit. My concern is that your personal assessment of whether the tax is "significant" is being treated as settled fact. That’s the same kind of issue I flagged earlier. Reasonable people can disagree here without that disagreement implying a "pathological failure." I hear you that this is about finding sources, but even perfect coverage of primary sources wouldn’t remove the need for judgment. We’d still have to define what counts as "Georgian," "inspired by George," and "significant" as a tax. Those are contestable choices. What you have is a thesis about the evidence—potentially a strong one—but it isn’t an indisputable fact. On sourcing: I’m aware ChatGPT won’t surface every primary source, and I’m not sure that should be the default goal. In many fields (e.g., cancer research), the right starting point is literature reviews and meta-analyses, not raw studies. History may differ, but many primary sources live offline in archives, and the digitized subset may not be representative. Over-weighting primary materials in that context can mislead. Primary sources also demand more expertise to interpret than secondary syntheses—Wikipedia itself cautions about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wikiWikipedia:Identifying_and_using... To be clear, I’m not saying you’re wrong about the tax or that Silagi is right. I’m saying that framing this as a “pathological failure” overstates the situation. What I see is a legitimate disagreement among competent researchers.
	▲	jazzyjackson 4 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Reminds me of my pet peeve with algorithmic playlists, if I ask Siri or Alexa for bossa nova, all I get is different covers of Girl from Ipanema since that's the most played song on every bossa nova album
	▲	4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]