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submitted 2 days ago by chgxvjh@hexbear.net to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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Screenshot from Thomas Dietterich on X: "Attention @arxiv authors: Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated."

With a reply from James Miller: "So this means you expect every author to check every citation and make sure that every citation is real and accurate? What if it's beyond the ability of one of the authors to verify one of the citations because that citation is in a language he doesn't know or concerns technical material he doesn't understand but another author on the paper does?"

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[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 35 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I know this is a meme post and I apologise to the OP for the incoming rant.

When someone proposes, implements or enforces a clearly sensible rule, and someone else brings weird corner case scenarios up, always ask yourself if there's a conflict of interests. Sometimes there's none, but often there is — undeclared and disguised as concerns about something else.

That's the case here. Check James Miller's XCancel profile and you'll see it.

excepts from his profile; emphasis mine in all cases.

[Description] Smith College economics professor. PhD Chicago. JD Stanford. AI safety, game theory. Stroke survivor, hoping to make it to the singularity.

[pinned tweet]Nerd score: How many have you considered? // Cryonics, multiverse, Boltzmann brain, AI utopia, quantum immortality, Roko’s basilisk, gray goo, paperclip maximizer, great filter, ethics in infinite universe, acausal trade, longevity escape velocity, simulation and zoo hypothesis.

[tweet]Suppose AIs become superhuman at math within two years, as far beyond humans in math as they already are in chess. What practical breakthroughs might follow, perhaps room temperature superconductors?

[retweeted from another]I would be mortified to have a typo---never mind a hallucinated citation---in a paper. But you see from twitter threads that some people think having a tidy bibliography is the definition of good research. They've got a 6th grade report-in-clear-plastic-binder view of the process

[tweet]I tell my students that they have to use AI to help write papers. I give them guidance on how they can effectively do this. I think I'm giving them more practical help than if I forced them to write without AI. This past semester, one student even asked me if she had to use AI and I said yes.

et cetera.

Note how he's too invested into large "language models" to admit they're often a source of misinformation. To the point he's telling his students the equivalent of "scientific paper, toilet paper, same thing lol, just add shit lmao".

He's clearly ignorant on why references are such a big deal in science. When you write a paper, you must be able to tell people where you got the info from, otherwise the whole thing devolves into "trust me" = "I think you're gullible filth". With "trust me" there's no knowledge being shared, just a bunch of bullshitters repeating the (often incorrect) assumptions of each other.

And odds are he gives no flying fucks about either "concern" he raised. Specially because the solution for both issues is simple, as long as you care about science instead of "me publish paper lol lmao":

language barriers: your research should not rely on things you do not understand. So work with a translation of the work, translate it yourself, or don't quote it.
co-author adding references LLMs made up: why are you co-authoring a paper with a gullible muppet who uses LLM output as source of [mis]info???

/rant

[-] tomenzgg@midwest.social 3 points 1 day ago

When someone proposes, implements or enforces a clearly sensible rule, and someone else brings weird corner case scenarios up, always ask yourself if there’s a conflict of interests.

I can't tell if I started doing this more as disinformation became more prevalent over the recent years or it's something I've always done; I don't know where I would've picked it up from.

Nevertheless, you're spot on; it's an incredibly good rule-of-thumb.

(I just realized it might've been funny if I'd responded to this with a weird, corner-case scenario, instead; but it's late and I can't think of a good one for it)

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 3 points 1 day ago

with a weird, corner-case scenario

But what if the interests in conflict do not come from the person themself, but someone else forcing the person to take a side they wouldn't otherwise? Such as mind-controlling aliens? (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Serious now. I noticed this from a forum I moderated ~10y ago. The admin always asked us mods and veteran users for feedback, before changing rules; but even for rules we were unanimously in favour of, there was always a bunch of users complaining. The contrast was so obvious it made me check the users' profiles for context. It was always like this: the user claimed to be "deeply concerned" with the impact of the rule, brought up a thousand corner cases, and then as you checked their profile they were doing exactly what the rule was made against.

For example: the admin implemented a rule that NSFW content needs to discussed in threads tagged "(NSFW)" in the title. One of the users started complaining about the ideal way to format it, and if it actually counts as a NSFW thread if someone used square brackets instead of parentheses. That same user was temp-banned once for spamming multiple threads asking "tell me how to say 'piss in my mouth' in [insert language the thread was about]".

[-] Corngood@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 days ago

We might never reach singularity. I think our universe is a simulation built to study how it happened in base reality - or what kinds of singularities aliens build. The event itself is probably too expensive to render. Our universe will cut to black.

I feel a little bad dunking on a random guy, but this is very stupid

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 7 points 2 days ago

Usually I'd also feel bad dunking on a random. However, when that random does a disservice to the scientific community, I think it becomes fair game.

Specially in the light of the ongoing replication crisis. There are multiple reasons scientists are having a hard time reproducing published results, but a lot of them boils down to "someone skipped proper procedures" (like he encourages people to). Peer review is supposed to catch this, but when a person who can enforce those proper procedures says "we'll enforce them", suddenly the same random makes up reasons against the policy.