lckdscl [they/them]

Their own spin on global affairs.

Are you on the right community? I see articles being shared from both Big Media as well as independent leftist journalism. Nothing wrong with cherry picking articles from the horse’s mouth, and if anything, I thank Yogthos and others for sharing what they think we might be interested in. It’s not like they wrote it themselves.

What exactly is the relationship between the scientific and epistemological versions of these theories?

They are somewhat synonymous to me as well, but I used scientific realism to distinguish other epistemological vectors to realism/anti-realism. I switched to science there since you mentioned the use of empirical proofs to acquire knowledge.

As a tangent, other forms of knowledge acquisition exist; one can acquire mathematical knowledge, which isn’t subjected to the same empirical burden when compared to, for example, facts in biology or physics. Some then go on to espouse the realism of mathematical entities (structural realism, among others), but these would be obtained a priori, so you’re looking for the camp who opposes this. I think they’re typically just different strains of empiricism.

Maybe that’s actually epistemological, but it still concerns metaphysics

You are right that there is a 2x2 grid you can make to relate the two. On one hand, you have anti-realism versus realism, and on the other rationalism versus empiricism.

Is “epistemology of metaphysics” a thing?

There is definitely an epistemology of metaphysics. I think that covers a large part of analytical philosophy which spans all the way back to Descartes.

Hmm, so I just gave this a quick thought. If I understand you, then the idea that epistemologically speaking, knowledge about reality cannot be known a priori (at all) is hardcore empiricism.

The idea that no concept we ever “stumbled upon” is a product of some Platonic a priori recollection is, again, some form of empiricism.

You’re using metaphysical terms though, unfortunately I can only think of epistemological positions.

However, if I take your question to be more nuanced, then perhaps we are talking about scientific realism versus scientific anti-realism (instrumentalism, conventionalism), or a milder realist form called experimental realism (see Hacking). But as far as I’m concerned, I don’t know the implication of empirical proofs on the a priori status of the “concept of reality”. These positions are more like assigning existential quantifiers at different scopes on different sets, rather than on their epistemological status.

Perhaps you can elaborate?

Thanks for the prompt fixes

I’m with you on this one. Personally, there are a myriad of issues with replacing search engines with AI-generated answers:

1. the accuracy. Without going into what is truth or falsehood, can you trust AI generated answers? I use Brave Search occasionally, and it has an AI summary text at the top. A lot of the time it strings multiple conflicting answers together into a paragraph and the result is laughably bad.

When I look something up that isn’t trivial, I typically use multiple search results and make the call myself. This step is removed if you use AI, unless one explicitly ask it to iterate all the top conflicting answers (along with sources) so the user can decide for themselves. However, as far as I know, its amalgamated answer is being treated as a source of truth, even if the content has nuanced conflicts a human can easily spot. This alone deters me from AI search in general.

2. I feel like doing this will degenerate my reading/skimming comprehension and research skills, and can lead to blindly trusting direct and easy to access answers.

3. In the context of technical searches like programming or whatnot, I’m not that pressed for time to take shortcuts. I don’t mind working stuff out from online forums and documentation, purely because I enjoy it and it’s part of the process.

4. Sometimes, looking things up yourself means you also can discover great blogs and personal wikis from niche communities, and related content that you can save and look back later.

5. Centralizing information makes the internet bland, boring and potentially exploitative. If it becomes normalized to pay a visit to one or two Big AI search engines instead of actually clicking on human-made sources then the information-providing part of the internet will become lost to time.

There’s also problems with biases, alignment, training AI on AI-generated content, etc., make of that what you will but that sounds worse than spending a couple of minutes selecting sources for yourself. Top results are already full of generic, AI generated stuff. The internet, made by us, for us, must prevail.

Anecdotally, I’ve used ChatGPT once or twice when I was really pressed for time with something I couldn’t find anywhere, and because my university professor wasn’t replying to my email regarding the topic. I was somewhat impressed at its performance, but this was after 6 or 7 prompts, not a single search away.

Maybe the next generation of AI search users who’s never looked a thing up manually will grimace at the thought of pre-AI search engines.

Love your username

I need a r/EnoughMuskSpam

I’m not new since I was always aware of Lemmy but only seriously considering it right now due to the whole Reddit fiasco. I just hope that after the drama and migration dies down, people here stay friendly like how it is right now. Also, I hope the mass migration can start to attract mobile devs to contribute or fork existing projects like Jerboa or even come up with alternatives. I’m optimistic.