Looked at #perplexity this evening, as I'd never tried it before. The key reason I like #kagi better is that Perplexity is another #AI search engine that wants me to type full sentences. How is this better? I want to type "rclone caching", not "Please tell me how rclone caching works and what my options are." Or "airpods pro latest firmware", not "What is the latest firmware version for the Apple Airpods Pro 2?" Kagi does a good job of having AI available when I want it, but still allowing me to search like a normal human being who doesn't want to type so much my fingers fall off. Me caveman. Want short search. Not want lots typing. Want search engine figure out context. Me not provide.
@fastfinge I used Perplexity for a while and found it got less efficient over time. I used to be able to just cobble together words that I wanted and it found things. Then it stopped. Not sure what they did, but I stopped using it.
@RegGuy I know they have their own index and their own finetunes apparently. What a lot of the AI folks are missing is that when you require users to ask in full sentences, you're not "freeing" them. Instead, you're forcing them to define what they want in more detail, and that very act of defining causes people to narrow down and focus, often in ways that are not helpful. I'm thinking of how a lot of the stuff in "How to ask questions the smart way?" (www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) mostly involves getting people to stop asking the wrong questions entirely. I just kind of vaguely know I wanna know stuff about "rclone caching"; when I'm doing a search like that, I'm not even quite sure what exactly I want to know, yet. Does rclone caching exist? How does it work? Are there settings? Can I turn it on and off? I'm not ready to define the questions, because I know nothing about the thing.
@fastfinge It wasn't like that right off. They broke something with requiring such refined queries. I was not aware that's what the issue was, I just stopped getting what I wanted so I stopped using it.
