Grokipedia claims to aspire to the truth. An investigation has just shown that he cites neo-Nazi forums and conspiracy websites

The proposal of Grokipedia came accompanied by a direct message: aspire to “the truth and nothing but the truth,” as stated by Elon Musk in X. That statement takes on a new context. after the publication of a Cornell Tech study which examines how various entries are constructed and what fonts they use. The analysis shows that, along with content inherited almost literally from Wikipedia, there are articles that use sources cataloged by academic institutions and verification organizations such as neo-nazi spaces or openly conspiratorial sites. At first glance, Grokipedia takes on a familiar appearance: a home page dominated by a search engine and articles with headings and references. The inner workings, however, are much less transparent. Users do not have a clear system to suggest changes and, at the top of some entries, the label “Reviewed by Grok X weeks ago” appears, indicating an intervention by the AI ​​chatbot without detailing criteria or those responsible. In Wikipediathe edition history is public and allows each modification to be reconstructed. Grokipedia under the magnifying glass The aforementioned analysis compares both platforms on a large scale and points out that, although Grokipedia publishes longer articles and with twice as many citations as Wikipediamuch of its content comes from there. Of course, the coincidence varies: pages with a Creative Commons (CC) license present very high similarities, while those generated without that license are further removed from the original. One of the most delicate issues is the appearance of references to controversial platforms. InfoWars, which according to the authors is not cited even once on Wikipedia, has 34 mentions on Grokipedia. The pattern is repeated with other low credibility domains: Stormfront reaches 42 citations, LifeSiteNews reaches 100 and the Global Research and VoltaireNet sites register 51 and 45 references respectively. All of them are practically non-existent on Wikipedia, reflecting clear differences in source selection filters. Elon Musk’s entry in Grokipedia To mention a few examples, Leiden University characterizes Stormfront as a forum associated with right-wing extremism already current neo-naziswith a founder linked to Ku Klux Klan and a trajectory mentioned in several studies for its relationship with violent incidents. PolitiFact, on the other hand, defines Infowars as a portal dedicated to conspiracy theories and run by Alex Jonesa presenter known for promoting this type of content. This is what the edition history looks like in Grokipedia What appears in the study is not limited to counting how many times these domains are cited. It also highlights that the presence of sources considered unreliable or directly discarded by Wikipedia is much more widespread in Grokipedia. And one of the authors, in a text published in Indicatorcollects this accumulation of low-quality references to describe a broader pattern: Grokipedia seems to be making its own editorial decisions that alter the focus of certain topics. It remains to be seen how Grokipedia will evolve and what publishing model it will adopt as it grows. No encyclopedia works as a perfect reference —neither Wikipedia nor Grokipedia—, but they do operate with different mechanics. As we say, Wikipedia relies on an open community with standards, public debates and an accessible history of changes; Grokipedia, on the other hand, is based on criteria that are more difficult to follow from the outside, with an AI assistant that intervenes in the texts and without a clear human collaboration system. Images | Gage Skidmore (C BY-SA 4.0) | In Xataka | Carnegie built libraries, Gates sold them on CD-ROM, Musk locked them in an AI: the history of knowledge control

The official story says that Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. Conspiracy theory says he escaped through Galicia

There is nothing simpler, more fruitful and irreversible than lighting the fuse of conspiracy theories. This is demonstrated wonderfully by the fact that perhaps, and with the permission of the Neil Armstrong moon walkbe the mother of them all: the death of Adolf Hitler. Although there are recent research which show that the Fuehrer He passed away in 1945 with the help of a sip of cyanide and a bullet. Throughout the last three quarters of a century, stories have circulated, each one more outlandish than the other, placing him after May 1945 as—watch the list—a hermit in a remote italian cave, pastor in the Swiss Alps, croupier in a french casino, family man in Argentina or wandering around Ireland or Colombia. One of these theories, however, is much closer to us. And it aims for an escape worthy of Hollywood with a stop in Galicia. A well studied death. In 2018 the coroner Philippe Charlier published in European Journal of Internal Medicine a study which aroused almost as much interest among historians and conspiracy theorists as among his own pathological colleagues. The reason: corroborated that Adolf Hitler died in 1945. The conclusion is valuable because between March and July 2017 Charlier and his colleagues achieved a milestone: the Russian secret services allowed them to analyze the supposed remains of the Fuehrer which are preserved in Moscow for independent examination. Their study concludes, first, that the teeth are real because they could be identified thanks to complicated dental history of Hitler. Second, the remains show blue stains that indicate that their owner may have ingested cyanide to end his life. The researchers did not find traces of gunpowder, but they did analyze a skull fragment attributed to the Fuehrer with a hole in the left side, probably made by a bullet. Both data confirm the most accepted version about the death of the Nazi leader: Hitler died on April 30, 1945 in his bunker with Eva Braun after consuming cyanide and shooting himself. End of the speculations, then? This is certainly true for Professor Charlier, who he even guaranteed to the AFP agency that he has no doubts about the authenticity of the teeth and that his study puts an end to any conspiracy theory. “Now we can stop them all. Hitler did not go to Argentina on a submarine, he is not hiding in a base in Antarctica or on the dark side of the Moon,” the coroner insisted: “Our study proves that he died in 1945.” Of course, not everyone shares his conviction. Over the decades, theories have circulated that the Nazi leader managed to escape the bunker and the Soviet siege and started a new life in places as remote as northern Italy, the Swiss Alps, eastern France and of course Argentina, perhaps the version that has achieved the most popularity among conspiracy theorists. Why’s that? Such conspiratorial fecundity is largely explained by the circumstances in which Hitler died and date back to 1945, practically the same day of his death. On May 1, 1945, Hamburg radio broadcast without going any further a version which is quite far from what is considered official today: the chain claimed that Hitler had fallen “fighting until his last breath” and with “the death of a hero.” Little to do with a suicide with cyanide and a gun. It didn’t take long for stories to spread about an alleged murder, a brain hemorrhage, euthanasia and of course a successful escape. The end of Fuehrer did not help extinguish those stories. As the BBC remindshistory tells us that Hitler’s body was burned and ended up in a ditch in the Chancellery garden opened by a bomb. Soviet counter-surveillance agents found his body there shortly after, on May 5. The state of Fuehrer It was such at that time that, to identify him clearly, they decided to use his jaw. During the process they had the help Käthe Heusermannwho had served as Hitler’s dentist’s assistant. The remains were moved from one point to another until in 1970 it was decided to cremate them and throw their ashes. Hitler on a walk through Galicia? At the root of the conspiracy theories surrounding the end of Hitler there is a lot of geostrategy and politics, such as explains to the BBC Luke Daly-Groves, a historian at the University of Leeds, who remembers that Stalin weakened his opponents every time he claimed that Hitler could have escaped to Spain or Argentina. “Their strategy was to associate the West with Nazism and make it appear that the British or Americans must be hiding it,” agrees Anthony Beevorauthor of ‘Berlin: the fall of 1945’. With that backdrop, one of the versions that is closest to us emerged: that the Fuehrer ended up in Galicia. What it tells us such a theory is that after simulating his suicide Hitler managed to escape from the bunker, get on board a plane in the templehof airport and fly to Barcelona, ​​from where he went to Galicia. Once in Vigo he managed to board a submarine and flee to Argentina, where he lived until 1960 and started a new life with Eva Braun. another version talks about how shortly after the episode of FührerbunkerIn May 1945, a German plane arrived in Lugo with Hitler on board. There are those who even goes further and places it in the monastery of Samos. Worthy of Hollywood… and History Channel. True, the story may seem like something out of a book Dan Brown or the script of a Hollywood thriller with uchronic overtones, but Vigo’s theory has more preaching than it may seem a priori. Good proof is that a few years ago he starred in a History Channel documentary that was based, in turn, on 700 documents declassified by the FBI shortly before. There are variants about the supposed stay of the Fuehrer in Galician lands, but it is usually pointed out that he ended up getting on a submarine with which he … Read more

One conspiracy theory says that all the instruments in the world are poorly tuned. And of course it includes the Nazis

You may not know it, but there are people convinced that you have been hearing ‘wrong’ the music. Not just you. Everyone. And not because of a matter of taste or a problem with the bands, but of how we tune the instruments. In his opinion, we have been using the wrong reference (in hertz) for decades as a result of a Machiavellian Nazi plan to distort consciences. Everything is limited to a dilemma: 432Hz or 440Hz? Of hertz, Nazis and conspiracies. At this point in the film, anyone would say that it is difficult to be amazed by conspiracy theories. And rightly so. The conspiracy theorists have years decades defending all kinds of conjectures that talk about end of the world or diabolical population control plans. If the Magufo universe has something, however, it is an infinite capacity to surprise, as demonstrated by a theory that has sounded with force in the last few years. Its premise is certainly surprising: we have been tuning our musical instruments poorly for decades and we do it this way for a Nazi plan. a little history. Before getting into conspiratorial arenas, it is necessary to remember some history. Today perhaps we are accustomed to (almost) all musicians and orchestras are tuned the same, which basically means that all the “a” notes (do, re, mi… or any other) sound the same; but it has not always been like this. James Felton of IFL Science remember that centuries ago players were in fact accustomed to local variations in tuning. What’s more, a composer could lean towards an “a” at 423 hertz and another at 422. It is not a minor nuance because the hertz indicates the speed of vibration, which in practice affects how high or low the sound that reaches us is. “If we take Germany before 1600 as an example, organ pitch is believed to have varied between a maximum of A=567 Hz for the early simple pipe organs of the Middle Ages and a minimum of 377 for the early modern German organs of around 1511,” explains Lynn Cavanagh in a paper about the matter. What if we set a standard? That is the idea that was making its way among music professionals. Why not set a single standard that guarantees that an “la” is tuned the same (in hertz) in one country as in another, meaning that the same song will sound the same no matter who or where it is performed? This effort to unify can go back at least to late 19th centurywhen the Music Commission of the Government of Italy bet for all orchestras to use a 440 Hz tuning fork. The debate was not settled, however, and it would be decades before musicians reached a consensus. Without going any further, France and Austria advocated 435 and some composer did it for 432. In 1917 the American Federation of Musicians support the italian position, in 1939 A world conference organized by the British Standards Institute made a similar recommendation and already in the 1950s an international agreement was reached so that the “A” note on pianos would be tuned to 440 Hz. The objective: that the same key would sound exactly the same whether it was pressed in Spain or in Canada, India or the United States. The decision was endorsed decades later, in the 70s. Matter settled? Not at all. And not only because there are musicians who choose to other tunings or even certain orchestras bet on solutions alternatives, such as A-436 hz. Some conspiracy lovers have found in this global commitment to 440 hertz material to feed a theory that combines the Nazis, the effect of music on our health and a delirious experiment for the mind control. There are those who even put into the equation to the Rockefellerthe Great Pyramid of Egypt, Stonehenge, the Sun and the Moon or the Sri Yantra. Curling (even more) the curl. To better understand the phenomenon, it is good to take a look at an article published in 2021 by Reuters Fact Check. In it the news agency echoes the hoax and dismantles it point by point speaking with academics. Before, he cites verbatim one of the network publications that defend the theory, a unique opportunity to learn about his argument: “Did you know that Jimi Hendrix, along with John Lennon, Bob Marley and Prince, tuned their music to a specific frequency of 432 hertz? It is known as the ‘heartbeat of the Earth’, it has important healing benefits and ancient Egyptian and Greek instruments have been found tuned to 432. However, since 1953 all music has been tuned to 440. This frequency has no scientific relationship with our universe and, in fact, causes turmoil. “The Nazis used it in World War II against their enemies to make them feel and think a certain way.” Is it an isolated theory? No. In fact, a quick Google search can find a good number of articles that they collect the theory of one way or anotherwith variations. After all, if there is one thing about conspiracy theories, it is that they are not usually standardized, just like musical tuning was centuries ago. They read statements such as that the Rockefeller Foundation promoted the 440 Hz standard as part of a supposed “war against conscience”that one of the great supporters The change was the Nazi minister Joseph Goebbels, who saw in 440 Hz a way to distort consciousness, or that tuning at 432 hertz is much better for humans because “reflects the proportions” of the Sun, the Earth and the Moon, among other things. As a test They show the patterns of water when it is vibrated with a 432 Hz sound. “They have no empirical basis”. Although there are strong supporters of those ideas and that we would all be much better off if we listened to our music tuned to 432 Hz, his statements raise the eyebrows of experts. And that at least. “There is no … Read more

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