The art of fact-checking

[ny_quant]

CLAIM: Greta Thunberg recently deleted a tweet she posted in 2018 in which she said that the world will end in 2023.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. While Thunberg did delete a 2018 tweet about the urgency of addressing climate change, she did not say the world would end in 2023. Her tweet included a quote from an article that said an influential scientist warned climate change “will wipe out all humanity” unless fossil fuel use was ended “over the next five years.” Further complicating the issue, that article incorrectly summarized the scientist’s speech. He never made such comments.

...Thunberg never said the world was set to end in 2023. The young activist was quoting an article that was paraphrasing a speech by a Harvard University professor of atmospheric chemistry. The scientist said the world had limited time to act to reverse the disappearance of floating ice volume in the Arctic or there would be drastic consequences, not that the world would end in five years.

The article Thunberg was quoting has since been deleted, but it was published by the site Grit Post in February 2018 with the headline: “Top Climate Scientist: Humans Will Go Extinct if We Don’t Fix Climate Change by 2023,” according to an archived version of the web page. The first line of the story stated: “A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.”

Forbes quoted Anderson as saying: “The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero.”

У снопса есть скриншот того твита и сходный анализ.

Comments

[vsopvs.livejournal.com]

вот мне нравится как они ее ласково называют The young activist

[i-mko.livejournal.com]

Прочитав это, я спросил у ясеня у chatgpt, а напиши мне стишок с рифмой Грета - планета, котлета - сигарета. "Легко" ответил chatgpt:
Грета кричит, что планета в опасности,
Греется земля, как котлета на сковородке,
Бездействовать нельзя, иначе грядет катастрофа,
Как от сигареты - непоправимый ущерб на долгие года.

[ny-quant.livejournal.com]

Два с минусом

[ammosov.livejournal.com]

А вы ждали, что MSM и Snopes признают что святая Грета неправа?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_moss/]

Так имелось в виду "если не откажемся от fossil fuels в течение 5 лет, то человечество уничтожится (в перспективе)" или "человечество уничтожится через 5 лет, если не откажемся от fossil fuels"?

[i-mko.livejournal.com]

Наверное, это перевод с китайского.

[ny-quant.livejournal.com]

> если не откажемся от fossil fuels в течение 5 лет, то человечество уничтожится (в перспективе)

Вот же что она имела в виду!

BTW, I heard snopes is hiring! ;)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_moss/]

Фактчекист должен иметь холодную фактголову, чистые фактруки и горячее фактсердце!

[mb-b.livejournal.com]

Факт — as in: fucked?

[ny-quant.livejournal.com]

fucked чекист?

[misha-b.livejournal.com]

I think it is clear she did not claim the world would end in five years. The world would end _if_ we do not stop using fossil fuel in five years.

The last claim is obviously correct.

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

> The world would end _if_ we do not stop using fossil fuel in five years.

The last claim is obviously correct.

This sounds really weird, unless your logic is something approximately like "because we have not ended the use of fossil fuels, we have enough electricity to develop strong AI, and strong AI will end the world".

That would be somewhat plausible...

Other than that though, "obviously correct" sounds really weird...

[misha-b.livejournal.com]

The logic is much simpler. Our world would one day end (whether from AI or something else). Therefore if we do not stop using fossil fuels it would end. If we do, it would still end ;)

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

Ah!

:-) I seem to recall that people invented "relevant logic" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevance_logic) which is informally recommended for informal arguments :-)

But you are clearly not bullish on "true immortality" :-)

[polkovnik-isaev.livejournal.com]

How dare they?

[yakov-a-jerkov.livejournal.com]

Wait, you don't think "Greta Thunberg recently deleted a tweet she posted in 2018 in which she said that the world will end in 2023" is a misrepresentation of the tweet that she deleted?

[misha-b.livejournal.com]

Same people who invented non-standard analysis? ;)

I think we are too good at making weapons out of everything for any sort of immortality. The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes that GPT-type models will be like nuclear weapons. Imagine a virus with an ability to fully impersonate you running on your cell phone.

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

I can't decide whether LLMs will be like nukes on their own (they might, just like a number of other existing AI systems), but recursive self-improvement is almost at hand (the state of automated code generation including API use, of automated reasoning, of AutoML, all these are in excellent shape and rapidly improving, so an "artificial AI researcher" is getting more and more feasible, and when a population of those starts to produce improved "artificial AI researchers" a very classical "intelligence explosion" seems highly likely).

[shufel.livejournal.com]

Это ложная дихотомия. Там не имелось в виду ничего конкретного. Это просто "АААА! Вы отняли у меня детство! Сделайте мне немедленно безопасно и красиво!" другими словами.

[moneo.livejournal.com]

А что не так-то? Цитату чувака переврали, Грета перевранную цитату перепостила, ее перепост опять переврали. Business as usual.

[ny-quant.livejournal.com]

Her tweet could have been interpreted either way. I believe she's dumb enough to have implied that the world will end in 2023. Surely she's dumb enough to misunderstand what the professor was saying.

[ny-quant.livejournal.com]

А кто переврал-то? Пушкин?

[moneo.livejournal.com]

Цитату ученого переврала Grit Post (чем бы она не была). Оттуда ее взяла Грета. Цитату Греты переврали консервативные блогеры.

[oldkettle.livejournal.com]

Ну да, ну да. Popular figure links to total BS in support of her stupid crusade but there is nothing to see there, she's done nothing wrong. Business as usual.

[misha-b.livejournal.com]

I am not convinced recursive self-improvement is coming soon. I think current neural models are highly suboptimal in any case.

But combined with a group of dedicated hackers, the damage can already be close to nuclear (at least once they are able to run on commodity hardware). A computer virus that can impersonate the owner is a pretty scary thought..