Grok 3: Another win for the bitter lesson

This article is weak and just general speculation.

Many people doubt the actual performance of Grok 3 and suspect it has been specifically trained on the benchmarks. And Sabine Hossenfelder says this:

> Asked Grok 3 to explain Bell's theorem. It gets it wrong just like all other LLMs I have asked because it just repeats confused stuff that has been written elsewhere rather than looking at the actual theorem.

https://x.com/skdh/status/1892432032644354192

Which shows that "massive scaling", even enormous, gigantic scaling, doesn't improve intelligence one bit; it improves scope, maybe, or flexibility, or coverage, or something, but not "intelligence".

> Sabine Hossenfelder

She really needs to stop commenting on topics outside of theoretical physics.

Even in physics she does not represent the scientific consensus but has some very questionable fringe beliefs like labeling whole sub-fields as "scams to get funding".

She regularly speaks with "scientific authority" about topics she barely knows anything about.

Her video on autism is considered super harmful and misleading by actual autistic people. She also thinks she is an expert on trans-issues and climate change. And I doubt she know enough about artificial intelligence and computer science to comment on LLMs.

Your statement is missleading.

She doesn't say she is an expert on trans-issues at all! She analyzed the studies and looked at data and stated that there is no real transpendemic but highlighed an statistical increased numbers in young woman without stating a clear opinion on this finding.

The climate change videos do the same thing. She evaluates these studies discusses them to clarify that for her, certain numbers are unspecific and she also is not coming to a clear conclusion in sense of climate change yes, no, bad, good.

She is for sure not an expert in all fields, but her way of discussing these topics are based on studies, numbers and is a good viewpoint.

The funding scam you mention is a reference of "these people get billions for particle research but the outcome for us as society is way to small"

Having studied physics does not allow you to evaluate studies in completely unrelated field in any meaningful way.

Especially not in such politically-charged fields that require deeper knowledge about the historical context, the different interest groups and their biases and so on.

Her video on trans-issues labels people that advocate for the rights of trans-people as "extremists" and presents transphobic talking points as valid part of the scientific discussion.

Her trying to appear "neutral" and "just presenting the science" is exactly the issue. Using her authority as a scientist when talking about topics she has no expertise in.

Here is a debunking of her video on trans-issues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Kau7bO3Fw

Here is a longer criticism of her video on autism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaZZiX0veFY

So where does your "scientific authority" come from, which is needed before criticizing someone according to your own logic?

You're not even using your real name here. Nobody knows if you have any scientific qualifications, or a university degree at all.

I am writing here as a random hacker-news user. I don't claim to have any authority.

Sabine Hossenfelder presents her opinions as "what the science says" and that is the problem.

HN mod dang, if you are reading this, I have a question. I was previously given a warning for a post that levied factual criticisms about the quality of source code contributions performed by a woman who had intentionally put work forward into a highly public open source project in her own name.

I had specifically mentioned her by name in my criticisms, and I was given a written warning that doing so went against HN's policy on "targeted attacks" or "targeted harassment" or something similar.

Why is it okay for this user to suggest that the act of this woman presenting her work publicly "is the problem", while it is a HN AUP offense for me to criticize the quality of the source code contributions written by another woman presenting her work publicly?

I'm not requesting enforcement against this user or a retroactive removal of my warning, I'm just trying to understand the difference better to improve the conformance of my own discourse to the intent of HN's AUP.