Obviously, it is difficult to ‘create new knowledge’.
Asking this of every apprentice, every novice, is a fool's errand. Of course the errant undergraduate consorts with the essay-writing robot. His *actual* intelligence is telling him that he knows nothing - correctly - in which recognition is his actual wisdom, and in which he is of course transhistorically the ally of Socrates. And, it is telling him as well that if what the task asks is ‘artificial’, why not fight fire with fire? In other words, where there is a circus, send in the clowns.
The so-called “production of knowledge” as a *proof of potential*, at the very outset of a career of learning, is a farce. There is nothing new under the sun. When it comes to the outsize armies of undergraduates our civilization is now producing, in the ‘satanic mills’ of ‘elite overproduction’ (Blake meets Turchin) - the order of the day should lastingly be:
an *encounter* with existing knowledge
( … the proper term of study for which is a lifetime. - Plato)
and:
an openness to this being a “transformative experience” (L. A. Paul)
Education is a sapiential psychotechnology for metanoia.
(“What did you call me?”)
Education is conversion to truth.
Education is preparation for participation in conversation.
For some large swathes of intellectual history (and not necessarily in its most recondite, navel-gazing outskirts, but rather in certain of its richest pockets of productivity and conviviality), the done thing for making a contribution was to produce a commentary on a well-known and widely accredited canonical, standard work. Often this took the endearingly self-effacing form of simply taking on the nom de plume of the *original author*, so that there are examples of *generations* of development all being lovingly attributed to an authorship with a *single name*. Or, if not this, then at least homage as rite-of-passage. Shall we listen to you? First let’s see what you have to say about the existing sentences of Lombard.
So where is “plagiarism” here? Compare this culture of deference, humility, and respect for the vastness of what has come before (versus the smallness of oneself), with one of its contemporary alternatives: the culture of “publish or perish”, a.k.a. flogging the dead horse. Or, criticism rather than commentary, a.k.a. looking it in the mouth.
Of course history is real, unprecedented things occur, even in the minds of scholars, and in addition to timeless search there is certainly timely re-search, as a valid exercise. I acknowledge creativity and its value. I say not that the production of new knowledge is impossible, but that it is uncommon. Authentic erudition is a scarce resource.
It is in this environment of largely unattainable benchmarks, this paradigm of novelty, and most of all this triumph of the deliverables (as opposed to scholarship on the model of a Quaker meeting: stay silent and recollect until such time as you are authentically moved to speak something valuable from the heart, a “message from the spirit”) that the current conversation surrounding plagiarism takes place. I am less interested in the careers of individuals than in the culture of mindboggling ‘productivity’ (papers written never to be cited), the “tyranny of metrics” (Muller), the “reign of quantity” (Guenon) - *clearly* leading to a drop in quality, a scraping of the barrel’s bottom, a gnawing the dry bones of the buffalo of ideas, and a kind of snake-eating-its-own tail critical frenzy to be the first to draw up new charges for old culprits, long asleep in their graves, or else, in a different mode, to find out new ways to skin a cat evermore. With funding annually renewed. ( … by bartleby the grantwriter, who would, in truth, ‘prefer not to’… )
The enterprise of the university is *by no means* bankrupt, however much the incumbents have or have not lost their way. The universe of the unknown remains in the same infinite proportion to our knowledge as it has always, perennially been. Saith Schrödinger (yes, he of the cat):
For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours?
And so, the project of self-understanding (gnothi seauton, which was just auto-corrected to ‘gnocchi season’, which is about as apt a ‘commentary’ on our culture as is perhaps needed…) continues apace, wherever it might. And so far I have not touched much on ‘Science’ but glancingly - but assuredly there too, mountains of understanding remain to be climbed. Although, here is the astronomer Robert Jastrow:
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
This must necessarily be followed by:
"The fundamental questions of theology have been passionately considered for at least three thousand years. It is not only insufferable arrogance to think that one can begin theologizing in sovereign disregard of this history; it is also extremely uneconomical. It seems rather a waste of time to spend, say, five years working out a position, only to find that it has already been done by a Syrian monk in the fifth century. The very least that a knowledge of religious traditions has to offer is a catalogue of heresies for possible home use..."
And so you see, among other things, that often a simple acquaintance with what has been said before is what is necessary and sufficient for insight. The last quote is Peter Berger’s, in A Rumor of Angels, and it is one of my favorites. I need not add much.
The one thing I'm finding iffy about AI is its ability to come up with "virgin" ideas, or synthesize new knowledge out of unbroken ground.
The example I love to use is that AI can write a Beatlesesque song, but would never have considered to put that long chord at the end of "A Day In The Life" if Messrs. Lennon and McCartney hadn't done it first.
In the space of 4 years we’ve gone from barely intelligible gibberish from AI to “well they can’t actually write original Beatles songs”. Neither can 99.9999% of humans.
I don't disagree, but being a superhuman aggregator and manipulator of existing intelligence isn't the same from coming up with new ideas from "nothing" or "nearly nothing".
What will be a big leap is if AI can come up with novel, non-derivative ideas on its own that aren't merely "existing ideas having sex".
Jacquard's Web, the beginning of statistics, and metrification, greased the downward slope of relying on superficial batched performative evaluation for crowd-management exercise. Authority, and authorities' choices. GTG's Mindboggling 'productivity.' "As per YouTube's Paul Vanderklay, "watchers" increasingly relying on non-human reports.
Takes me back to John 7:24, "righteous judgment" vs. blind invariable rules. It may be necessary to familiarize ourselves with the distinguishing characteristics of each, since no immediate escape from pervasive A I seems possible.
As Nicholas Carr said the other day "Armed with generative AI, a B student can produce A work while turning into a C student" https://substack.com/inbox/post/163771392
I believe I was one of your correspondents for the above. It's wonderful to hear your thoughts on this. Im going to purloin 'Quantity Kills', two words that say it all. Also, thank you for the book recommendation (The Tyranny of Metrics). This kind of thing has always felt wrong and dehumanising to me, so I'm sure I'll find it of (morbid) interest. That is, when I finally finish The Matter with Things, you've given me further incentive to reach chapters 15-18.
Your line “Wherever we drive out life, the machine has its next foothold” calls to mind one of my favorite passages of Zhuangzi:
"I've heard my teacher say, where there are machines, there are bound to be machine worries; where there are machine worries, there are bound to be machine hearts. With a machine heart in your breast, you've spoiled what was pure and simple; and without the pure and simple, the life of the spirit knows no rest. Where the life of the spirit knows no rest, the Way will cease to buoy you up. It's not that I don't know about your machine - I would be ashamed to use it!"
As you noted, before chatbots higher education had already become a transaction. This is evident in the great adherence to the plandemic narrative by the “highly educated” population. Critical thinking all but disappeared and moral sell-out was rampant as most people relied on left brain thinking to see them through. Truth and morality are traded for a perceived end goal of comfort and status. Wide cultural narrative has dissolved and the 20% laments the others’ incoherence. What to do but stay clear and watch.
What can one do at this point but “stay clear and watch” as a planned, coordinated organized democide of the human race takes place.
Even after homicidal poisons were injected into nearly 5 billion arms and the injected are numbly observing their nearest and dearest dropping like flies, they experience no moral imperative to speak out over what has been done to them.
And what has been done to them is the irreversible corruption of the genome of over 70% of homo sapiens sapiens.
The multi-pricked have lost the capacity for moral outrage. They have seemingly forfeited their souls for acceptance into the Cult of the Compliant.
Despite the disease and death that surrounds and overwhelms them, they are still so exceedingly proud of their OBEDIENCE to government and media diktats.
Those who speak the truth and who do speak out on behalf of the murdered, maimed and mutilated are condemned as lunatics, conspiracy theorists and every other possible insult impugning one’s character.
In short, the jabbed are determined to commit slow motion suicide and they will allow nothing to impede that outcome. They won’t end up in hell. Hell has arrived here on Earth to drag them down into the abyss.
I want no part of it. I have resolved to have no part of them. Instead, I choose life.
Humanity has permanently bifurcated. Purebloods and the transfected are now two different species…literally so.
We must stay clear, watch from a distance and make plans for a separate future - one devoid of murderous psychopaths.
I think that most people that took jabs are not dropping dead, but are succumbing to illness syndromes that they don’t correlate with the jabs. Or they’re not conceiving, their kids are less vigorous than optimal, sickly… yet they rabidly continue to “believe” in the professional goodness of government, medical cartel and media, even public “education”! So unfortunately it seems that Belief is the capturing mechanism. Many people that I respect such as CAF are advocating for a resurgence of Christianity to offset destructive misplaced belief, yet would that not be a throwback into previous subjugation and more war war war?! This new air-age of Aquarius seems like a cosmic reset into internalized critical thinking and awareness of the infinite. A big challenge to be sure and an impossible choice for so many who sell out themselves and one another. Religion did not invent the Golden Rule- it is simply a choice any human can embrace. But will they? Stay clear and watch.
Writing papers is in itself a rote, brain rotting exercise in university.
Many who wrote great papers back in my day were not always good at understanding their topics. They just choose something the professors like and repeat it back to them in different words. I'm sure you've seen the same with peer review, where those who repeat the beliefs of the assesors get more approvals than others.
I do agree that many who use AI, including the mass media (!!! 😂) are really lazy and don't bother to read/proof the writing. That's how crazy papers were submitted passing journals' review processes!
AI is a tool, just like a calculator. Try doing a square root by hand and you'll see how tedious and mind numbing it can be.
Same with GPS mapping programs.
In fact, I much prefer it over traditional paper maps. It has a lot more features and is much easier to handle.
Just because I use GPS doesn't mean that I'm not interested in the map itself!
If you don’t use it, you lose it. Advice that holds true for your muscles and physical skills…… and your brain. This is not the flex Lee thinks it is. Scary that using a remote brain is considered the norm by his generation.
Which is lazier? Using ChatGPT to write a college essay? Or simply copy/pasting 5418 words of somebody else's article into your blog and slapping on an introductory paragraph as if you've said something original?
Or, not thinking about what it was posted for, or what the social and psychological and personal implications might be, rather than simply posting a critical "reply"?
He wrote about as much original text as the author bothered to. Just restack the article at that point. Its the equivalent of a fucking reaction video.
Hard to say the fellow who wrote The Matter With Things is lazy ...
[not to mention two or three successive careers, The Master and His Emissary ... ]
This was likely intentional. Readers cd notice and get it, not notice and be ticked, read an article they hadn't seen ... whatever the reaction/response/result a point from one angle / another wd be made.
“The students kind of recognize that the system is broken and that there’s not really a point in doing this.”
This is the crux of the crisis. The AI crisis and job market crisis. For so long, college has bender been about “learning”, but the necessary step in getting one of the coveted “fake computer jobs” that often boast 6 figure salaries.
It was the quiet secret. Students knew it, teachers knew it and employers knew it. All that fake stuff you learnt in college was beaver going to prepare you for your fake computer job. You would learn everything you needed as you worked there.
Those silly “humanities” courses, were just a stepping stone needed to be vaulted to get that degree, that opened up a world of 6 figure salary jobs.
Now it’s all out there. All those schools, courses and jobs. All fake.
That's absolutely right. The integrity of education itself has long been corrupted. Learning for learning's sake? Forget it! This is what the marketisation of education has led to. It's what the shallow, cynical capitalist waters we swim in have led to. People are giving away their humanity because they know at some deep level that what makes life as a human being meaningful has gone. I feel as though I am watching humanity falling off a cliff.
I am a teacher and willing to admit this. There are some true believers...but as a student and now an educator of nearly 20 years...this is true. My undergrad could have fit on a postcard with bullet points. Aside from three or four classes, both my masters programs could have fit on a single sheet of paper. I am lucky to teach in a very hands on domain. But I've watched special needs accommodations designed for disabled students, become standard fair because it is clearly a game, and we want every student included so we can get the metrics up. "All of our students are above average and the grade books prove it!" It is a game. We turned it into a nonsense show.
It's all fun and games until the machine stops. Things aren't going to be pretty a generation from now on the down slope of Hubbard's oil depletion curve when no one knows how to do anything and our aging infrastructure is routinely breaking down. Idiocracy here we come.
"The metric system, you probably know, is the system by which the majority of the world measures things. Just as it is perfectly all right to eat a banana or two, it is perfectly all right to be interested in measuring things. Klaus could remember a time, when he was about eight years old, when he had measured the width of all the doorways in the Baudelaire mansion when he was bored one rainy afternoon. But rain or shine, all Mrs. Bass wanted to do was measure things and write down the measurements on the chalkboard. Each morning, she would walk into Room Two carrying a bag full of ordinary objects-a frying pan, a picture frame, the skeleton of a cat-and place an object on each student’s desk. “Measure!” Mrs. Bass would shout, and everybody would take out their rulers and measure whatever it was that their teacher had put on their desks. They would call out the measurements to Mrs. Bass, who would write them on the board and then have everybody switch objects."
The story in the article puts me in mind of something I dashed off early last year -
which seems like a lifetime ago, in the terms of this topic, eh!
I'll just reproduce it w/in this comment box, why not:
(& i've read the tyranny of metrics, with interest,
& also the reign of quantity ... )
https://gautamtejasganeshan.substack.com/p/on-plagiarism
--
Obviously, it is difficult to ‘create new knowledge’.
Asking this of every apprentice, every novice, is a fool's errand. Of course the errant undergraduate consorts with the essay-writing robot. His *actual* intelligence is telling him that he knows nothing - correctly - in which recognition is his actual wisdom, and in which he is of course transhistorically the ally of Socrates. And, it is telling him as well that if what the task asks is ‘artificial’, why not fight fire with fire? In other words, where there is a circus, send in the clowns.
The so-called “production of knowledge” as a *proof of potential*, at the very outset of a career of learning, is a farce. There is nothing new under the sun. When it comes to the outsize armies of undergraduates our civilization is now producing, in the ‘satanic mills’ of ‘elite overproduction’ (Blake meets Turchin) - the order of the day should lastingly be:
an *encounter* with existing knowledge
( … the proper term of study for which is a lifetime. - Plato)
and:
an openness to this being a “transformative experience” (L. A. Paul)
Education is a sapiential psychotechnology for metanoia.
(“What did you call me?”)
Education is conversion to truth.
Education is preparation for participation in conversation.
For some large swathes of intellectual history (and not necessarily in its most recondite, navel-gazing outskirts, but rather in certain of its richest pockets of productivity and conviviality), the done thing for making a contribution was to produce a commentary on a well-known and widely accredited canonical, standard work. Often this took the endearingly self-effacing form of simply taking on the nom de plume of the *original author*, so that there are examples of *generations* of development all being lovingly attributed to an authorship with a *single name*. Or, if not this, then at least homage as rite-of-passage. Shall we listen to you? First let’s see what you have to say about the existing sentences of Lombard.
So where is “plagiarism” here? Compare this culture of deference, humility, and respect for the vastness of what has come before (versus the smallness of oneself), with one of its contemporary alternatives: the culture of “publish or perish”, a.k.a. flogging the dead horse. Or, criticism rather than commentary, a.k.a. looking it in the mouth.
Of course history is real, unprecedented things occur, even in the minds of scholars, and in addition to timeless search there is certainly timely re-search, as a valid exercise. I acknowledge creativity and its value. I say not that the production of new knowledge is impossible, but that it is uncommon. Authentic erudition is a scarce resource.
It is in this environment of largely unattainable benchmarks, this paradigm of novelty, and most of all this triumph of the deliverables (as opposed to scholarship on the model of a Quaker meeting: stay silent and recollect until such time as you are authentically moved to speak something valuable from the heart, a “message from the spirit”) that the current conversation surrounding plagiarism takes place. I am less interested in the careers of individuals than in the culture of mindboggling ‘productivity’ (papers written never to be cited), the “tyranny of metrics” (Muller), the “reign of quantity” (Guenon) - *clearly* leading to a drop in quality, a scraping of the barrel’s bottom, a gnawing the dry bones of the buffalo of ideas, and a kind of snake-eating-its-own tail critical frenzy to be the first to draw up new charges for old culprits, long asleep in their graves, or else, in a different mode, to find out new ways to skin a cat evermore. With funding annually renewed. ( … by bartleby the grantwriter, who would, in truth, ‘prefer not to’… )
The enterprise of the university is *by no means* bankrupt, however much the incumbents have or have not lost their way. The universe of the unknown remains in the same infinite proportion to our knowledge as it has always, perennially been. Saith Schrödinger (yes, he of the cat):
For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours?
And so, the project of self-understanding (gnothi seauton, which was just auto-corrected to ‘gnocchi season’, which is about as apt a ‘commentary’ on our culture as is perhaps needed…) continues apace, wherever it might. And so far I have not touched much on ‘Science’ but glancingly - but assuredly there too, mountains of understanding remain to be climbed. Although, here is the astronomer Robert Jastrow:
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
This must necessarily be followed by:
"The fundamental questions of theology have been passionately considered for at least three thousand years. It is not only insufferable arrogance to think that one can begin theologizing in sovereign disregard of this history; it is also extremely uneconomical. It seems rather a waste of time to spend, say, five years working out a position, only to find that it has already been done by a Syrian monk in the fifth century. The very least that a knowledge of religious traditions has to offer is a catalogue of heresies for possible home use..."
And so you see, among other things, that often a simple acquaintance with what has been said before is what is necessary and sufficient for insight. The last quote is Peter Berger’s, in A Rumor of Angels, and it is one of my favorites. I need not add much.
--
yeah it's about dodging the step of being a seer as long as it is required
could be due to the fact that "being a seer" suddenly becomes "pejorative" - when it's not
ah... performance... "total quality"
The one thing I'm finding iffy about AI is its ability to come up with "virgin" ideas, or synthesize new knowledge out of unbroken ground.
The example I love to use is that AI can write a Beatlesesque song, but would never have considered to put that long chord at the end of "A Day In The Life" if Messrs. Lennon and McCartney hadn't done it first.
In the space of 4 years we’ve gone from barely intelligible gibberish from AI to “well they can’t actually write original Beatles songs”. Neither can 99.9999% of humans.
I don't disagree, but being a superhuman aggregator and manipulator of existing intelligence isn't the same from coming up with new ideas from "nothing" or "nearly nothing".
What will be a big leap is if AI can come up with novel, non-derivative ideas on its own that aren't merely "existing ideas having sex".
Jacquard's Web, the beginning of statistics, and metrification, greased the downward slope of relying on superficial batched performative evaluation for crowd-management exercise. Authority, and authorities' choices. GTG's Mindboggling 'productivity.' "As per YouTube's Paul Vanderklay, "watchers" increasingly relying on non-human reports.
Takes me back to John 7:24, "righteous judgment" vs. blind invariable rules. It may be necessary to familiarize ourselves with the distinguishing characteristics of each, since no immediate escape from pervasive A I seems possible.
As Nicholas Carr said the other day "Armed with generative AI, a B student can produce A work while turning into a C student" https://substack.com/inbox/post/163771392
I believe I was one of your correspondents for the above. It's wonderful to hear your thoughts on this. Im going to purloin 'Quantity Kills', two words that say it all. Also, thank you for the book recommendation (The Tyranny of Metrics). This kind of thing has always felt wrong and dehumanising to me, so I'm sure I'll find it of (morbid) interest. That is, when I finally finish The Matter with Things, you've given me further incentive to reach chapters 15-18.
Your line “Wherever we drive out life, the machine has its next foothold” calls to mind one of my favorite passages of Zhuangzi:
"I've heard my teacher say, where there are machines, there are bound to be machine worries; where there are machine worries, there are bound to be machine hearts. With a machine heart in your breast, you've spoiled what was pure and simple; and without the pure and simple, the life of the spirit knows no rest. Where the life of the spirit knows no rest, the Way will cease to buoy you up. It's not that I don't know about your machine - I would be ashamed to use it!"
I teach physics, and have all student work take place in class. AI has no place. I think all other subjects will have to go this way.
....at least until the brain chips start....
As you noted, before chatbots higher education had already become a transaction. This is evident in the great adherence to the plandemic narrative by the “highly educated” population. Critical thinking all but disappeared and moral sell-out was rampant as most people relied on left brain thinking to see them through. Truth and morality are traded for a perceived end goal of comfort and status. Wide cultural narrative has dissolved and the 20% laments the others’ incoherence. What to do but stay clear and watch.
exactly
Tremendously insightful comment.
What can one do at this point but “stay clear and watch” as a planned, coordinated organized democide of the human race takes place.
Even after homicidal poisons were injected into nearly 5 billion arms and the injected are numbly observing their nearest and dearest dropping like flies, they experience no moral imperative to speak out over what has been done to them.
And what has been done to them is the irreversible corruption of the genome of over 70% of homo sapiens sapiens.
The multi-pricked have lost the capacity for moral outrage. They have seemingly forfeited their souls for acceptance into the Cult of the Compliant.
Despite the disease and death that surrounds and overwhelms them, they are still so exceedingly proud of their OBEDIENCE to government and media diktats.
Those who speak the truth and who do speak out on behalf of the murdered, maimed and mutilated are condemned as lunatics, conspiracy theorists and every other possible insult impugning one’s character.
In short, the jabbed are determined to commit slow motion suicide and they will allow nothing to impede that outcome. They won’t end up in hell. Hell has arrived here on Earth to drag them down into the abyss.
I want no part of it. I have resolved to have no part of them. Instead, I choose life.
Humanity has permanently bifurcated. Purebloods and the transfected are now two different species…literally so.
We must stay clear, watch from a distance and make plans for a separate future - one devoid of murderous psychopaths.
I think that most people that took jabs are not dropping dead, but are succumbing to illness syndromes that they don’t correlate with the jabs. Or they’re not conceiving, their kids are less vigorous than optimal, sickly… yet they rabidly continue to “believe” in the professional goodness of government, medical cartel and media, even public “education”! So unfortunately it seems that Belief is the capturing mechanism. Many people that I respect such as CAF are advocating for a resurgence of Christianity to offset destructive misplaced belief, yet would that not be a throwback into previous subjugation and more war war war?! This new air-age of Aquarius seems like a cosmic reset into internalized critical thinking and awareness of the infinite. A big challenge to be sure and an impossible choice for so many who sell out themselves and one another. Religion did not invent the Golden Rule- it is simply a choice any human can embrace. But will they? Stay clear and watch.
Writing papers is in itself a rote, brain rotting exercise in university.
Many who wrote great papers back in my day were not always good at understanding their topics. They just choose something the professors like and repeat it back to them in different words. I'm sure you've seen the same with peer review, where those who repeat the beliefs of the assesors get more approvals than others.
I do agree that many who use AI, including the mass media (!!! 😂) are really lazy and don't bother to read/proof the writing. That's how crazy papers were submitted passing journals' review processes!
AI is a tool, just like a calculator. Try doing a square root by hand and you'll see how tedious and mind numbing it can be.
Same with GPS mapping programs.
In fact, I much prefer it over traditional paper maps. It has a lot more features and is much easier to handle.
Just because I use GPS doesn't mean that I'm not interested in the map itself!
If you don’t use it, you lose it. Advice that holds true for your muscles and physical skills…… and your brain. This is not the flex Lee thinks it is. Scary that using a remote brain is considered the norm by his generation.
You posted a piece on AI cheating that mainly consisted of quotes from another publication.
Which is lazier? Using ChatGPT to write a college essay? Or simply copy/pasting 5418 words of somebody else's article into your blog and slapping on an introductory paragraph as if you've said something original?
Or, not thinking about what it was posted for, or what the social and psychological and personal implications might be, rather than simply posting a critical "reply"?
Do some original work of your own before you call someone else lazy.
He wrote about as much original text as the author bothered to. Just restack the article at that point. Its the equivalent of a fucking reaction video.
Hard to say the fellow who wrote The Matter With Things is lazy ...
[not to mention two or three successive careers, The Master and His Emissary ... ]
This was likely intentional. Readers cd notice and get it, not notice and be ticked, read an article they hadn't seen ... whatever the reaction/response/result a point from one angle / another wd be made.
“The students kind of recognize that the system is broken and that there’s not really a point in doing this.”
This is the crux of the crisis. The AI crisis and job market crisis. For so long, college has bender been about “learning”, but the necessary step in getting one of the coveted “fake computer jobs” that often boast 6 figure salaries.
It was the quiet secret. Students knew it, teachers knew it and employers knew it. All that fake stuff you learnt in college was beaver going to prepare you for your fake computer job. You would learn everything you needed as you worked there.
Those silly “humanities” courses, were just a stepping stone needed to be vaulted to get that degree, that opened up a world of 6 figure salary jobs.
Now it’s all out there. All those schools, courses and jobs. All fake.
That's absolutely right. The integrity of education itself has long been corrupted. Learning for learning's sake? Forget it! This is what the marketisation of education has led to. It's what the shallow, cynical capitalist waters we swim in have led to. People are giving away their humanity because they know at some deep level that what makes life as a human being meaningful has gone. I feel as though I am watching humanity falling off a cliff.
I am a teacher and willing to admit this. There are some true believers...but as a student and now an educator of nearly 20 years...this is true. My undergrad could have fit on a postcard with bullet points. Aside from three or four classes, both my masters programs could have fit on a single sheet of paper. I am lucky to teach in a very hands on domain. But I've watched special needs accommodations designed for disabled students, become standard fair because it is clearly a game, and we want every student included so we can get the metrics up. "All of our students are above average and the grade books prove it!" It is a game. We turned it into a nonsense show.
It's a little bit funny that your post is essentially the article from New York Mag plagiarized copypasta. And that's cool. That's cool.
What if the underlying article…which I found heartbreakingly humorous in passages relying on the interviewees’ own statements…was AI generated?
I don’t subscribe to the publication in question so I actually am grateful for its re-presentation. 😉
It's all fun and games until the machine stops. Things aren't going to be pretty a generation from now on the down slope of Hubbard's oil depletion curve when no one knows how to do anything and our aging infrastructure is routinely breaking down. Idiocracy here we come.
"The metric system, you probably know, is the system by which the majority of the world measures things. Just as it is perfectly all right to eat a banana or two, it is perfectly all right to be interested in measuring things. Klaus could remember a time, when he was about eight years old, when he had measured the width of all the doorways in the Baudelaire mansion when he was bored one rainy afternoon. But rain or shine, all Mrs. Bass wanted to do was measure things and write down the measurements on the chalkboard. Each morning, she would walk into Room Two carrying a bag full of ordinary objects-a frying pan, a picture frame, the skeleton of a cat-and place an object on each student’s desk. “Measure!” Mrs. Bass would shout, and everybody would take out their rulers and measure whatever it was that their teacher had put on their desks. They would call out the measurements to Mrs. Bass, who would write them on the board and then have everybody switch objects."
The Austere Academy, Lemony Snicket.
So then it boils down to a new definition of “cheating”???
At least my piano students can either play the Bach or can’t play the Bach. Sadly fewer and fewer of them value the ability. 🥲