this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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[–] scruiser@awful.systems 3 points 8 hours ago

It's like a cargo cult version of bootstrapping or monte carlo methods.

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago

Can't see how this doesn't defeat the purpose, if you have a mock data generator of sufficient fidelity you already have a well-defined mechanism to describe the data, shouldn't you be using that instead of developing a new model to capture the characteristics of the model that creates those characteristics?

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago

"synthetic data" is just signal-shaped noise in strictest terms

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] mawhrin@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

“i have a theoretical doctorate in medicine”.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

“I have approximate knowledge of many things.”

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 5 points 2 days ago

If AI slop is an insult to life itself, then this shit is an insult to knowledge. Any paper that actually uses "synthetic data" should be immediately retracted (and ideally destroyed altogether), but it'll probably take years before the poison is purged from the scientific record.

Artificial intelligence is the destruction of knowledge for profit. It has no place in any scientific endeavor. (How you managed to maintain a calm, detached tone when talking about this shit, I will never know.)