But citations did not begin their rise a standard until the 1900s. The idea that knowledge production was not valuable until that point is absurd.

Further, citations do not prevent statements from being incorrect. They are sometimes used to lend credence to bullshit.

We live all at once in a world full of citations and of epistemic chaos.

Do I want LLMs to cite sources? Absolutely. But it's not the fundamental path to value people seem to sometimes think.

Especially when your own reasons are not the slam dunk you think they are.

His abhorrent and disgusting behavior should be enough on its own.

I'm a very tech savvy individual, and as a parent who has spent hours and hours navigating the murk of disparate parental control systems, it is clear to me that what you say is only true if you commit to preventing your child from having access to anything at all.

Worst of all, children have friends!

In other words, you must lock them in a closet and deprive them of access to sunlight itself to accomplish what you say.

People are applying standards to LLMs that don't exist elsewhere. They don't exist elsewhere because they absolutely can't exist elsewhere.

It's not a technical short-coming of LLMs that they can't produce citations in every instance. Rather, it's a property of information, representation, and knowledge itself. Much of it floats far above the otherwise load bearing pillars of citations.

People contend with this constantly in every arena of life, and we have come up with very elaborate ways to offset the difficulties caused by it.

And we get along very well despite it all.

I'll also leave you with this: citations are just pointers to more sources of information. Not some ground truth. It's just another tranche that requires evaluations.

Lastly, your comment is an unfortunate bit of low-level snark and probably would have been better left unsaid.

Another way to ask this is: what value remains without them?

I'll add this as well: humans produced valuable knowledge for thousands of years without the use or standard of citations.

To be clear, I think citations are highly valuable and desirable and I very much want LLMs to cite when appropriate. However, I think the necessity of this is overstated.

Edit: what you said of experts can be said of LLMs as well.