Wonderful teachers that give unreliable information with total confidence?

entropyneur an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I had human teachers who did that in middle/high school. Took me many years to pick out all the hallucinated bits of "knowledge". I don't think the current models are any less reliable that what we currently have on average.

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dguest an hour ago | parent [-]

I'll always remember my middle school science teaching telling us that nuclear fusion violates conservation of mass because the 2 protons in a pair of hydrogen nuclei combine to make helium with 4 nucleons. It's not true, but that's not the point.

But he was a great teacher anyway. He was engaging and kept the kids in line and learning. I eventually learned the truth, and most of my classmates forgot about it. Teaching, like flying a plane or driving a train, might become more about keeping watch over a small group of people and ensuring that things don't go off the rails, and that's fine.

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bernds74 a few seconds ago | parent | next [-]

I had a chemistry teacher who told us that hydrogen reacts violently with oxygen, and this is how the hydrogen bomb works.

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3form 33 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

This one feels less sinister than some other things at least to me, personally. You can reasonably doubt that the conservation of mass is violated and find out the truth based on that. But understanding more complex biology or historical context for some things? Granted, many of these things seem to be low stakes, but I'm sure there are some there are not (sex ed comes to mind).

	▲	zem 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		to be fair, fusion does violate conservation of mass, just not the way the teacher explained it. the loss of mass is where the energy comes from.

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Bawoosette an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To be fair, that was much of my actual experience with human professors in university.

	▲	renticulous 23 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Veritasium proved that in a difficult challenge. A Physics Prof Bet Me $10,000 I'm Wrong https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCsgoLc_fzI
	▲	IshKebab an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah one of my teachers was able to identify which high school I had come from due to something I had been mistaught.

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Levitz an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Off the top of my head: DOMS being little crystals in muscles, tongue having separate areas for each type of taste, food pyramid, blue blood in the veins, the appendix being useless, body temperature doesn't change disregarding whether it's exposed to cold or to heat, and a whole lot of stuff related to politics and history I'd rather just omit (I don't live in the US).

All things I learned in school which were wrong information.

Not to mention, the current state of education is far worse. I don't think most realize how low the bar is.

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autoexec an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They'll also encourage and praise you even when you're heading down the wrong path until you think you've uncovered the secret of the universe or proven that established science was wrong this whole time when really you've just been bullshitting with an engagement bot.

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k__ 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Anti-intellectualism is at it again, hu?

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victorbjorklund an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Like humans.

	▲	CoastalCoder 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think we should go a little deeper on this idea. We can all agree that both human "experts" and LLMs can sometimes be right, and sometimes be confidently wrong. But that doesn't imply that they're equally fit for purpose. It just means that we can't use that simple shortcut to conclude that one is inferior to the other. So where do we go from here?

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p-e-w an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The amount of bullshit and blatant lies I’ve heard from my human teachers dwarfs the hallucinations produced by today’s LLMs.