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Ekarosyesterday at 4:41 PM3 repliesview on HN

I think "I googled this" can be valid and helpful contribution. For example looking up some statistic or fact or an year. If that is also verified and sanity checked.


Replies

sejjeyesterday at 4:48 PM

Yes, while citing an LLM in the same way is probably not as useful.

"I googled this" is only helpful when the statistic or fact they looked up was correct and well-sourced. When it's a reddit comment, you derail into a new argument about strength of sources.

The LLM skips a step, and gets you right to the "unusable source" argument.

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TulliusCiceroyesterday at 5:42 PM

"I googled this" usually means actually going into a page and seeing what it says, not just copy-pasting the search results page itself, which is the equivalent here.

skywhopperyesterday at 6:20 PM

In that case, the correct post here would be to say “here’s the stat” and cite the actual source (not “I googled it”), and then add some additional commentary.