Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them • Hacker News Board

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#111

Post by twawaaay » Tue, Feb 21, 2023, 7:35 PM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #104

twawaaay wrote: post #71

I think this is great idea. Actually, anytime somebody finds a way to engage students to think in a different way than just trying to memorise facts is a win, IMO. I think it is lamentable that students are asked to rely more and more on recalling facts at the time where it is becoming less and less important compared to critical thinking. This is lazy way to do something about structural education system issues. I c…

This is brilliant. Is it based on a real bug you found in your company's own code?

No.

I had questions in my repertoire that came from specific situations I had at work. Things like "Your application fails with a message 'There is no space left on the device' but when you check the filesystem you find there is a lot of space available. What could have caused the problem." Or a static initialiser block in Java that was executed multiple times when the application started causing a problem.

I found I was just comparing somebody elses experience to my own which is wrong. I should be trying to figure out if the person is able to do the job.

So I stopped asking those questions and instead I am selecting topics that every developer should know and constructing specific situations where the person with the knowledge of a given topic should immediately recognise what is happening.

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#112

Post by twawaaay » Tue, Feb 21, 2023, 7:44 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #95

twawaaay wrote: post #71

I think this is great idea. Actually, anytime somebody finds a way to engage students to think in a different way than just trying to memorise facts is a win, IMO. I think it is lamentable that students are asked to rely more and more on recalling facts at the time where it is becoming less and less important compared to critical thinking. This is lazy way to do something about structural education system issues. I c…

> Actually, anytime somebody finds a way to engage students to think in a different way than just trying to memorise facts is a win, IMO. I think it is lamentable that students are asked to rely more and more on recalling facts at the time where it is becoming less and less important compared to critical thinking. That's a false dichotomy (which I used to believe, too). You can't "think critically" in a vacuum. You n…

Think about it this way -- up until recently lots of people were getting by doing menial jobs. Now more and more people are getting higher education and are doing jobs that require critical thinking.

So people with less than average intelligence who would be fine doing simple mechanical jobs in the past are now forced to do office jobs just to get by.

Not only that, but people no longer can rely on just learning your job and doing it all your life. More important is your ability to be flexible and able to do things you have not done before -- and this puts more pressure on your ability to think critically.

Yes, you need to know something about everything and it is valuable to know a lot about something. But nowadays this "a lot about something" is very specialised and you will learn it doing your job.

Schools are just lazy IMO. Teachers and students are forced into standardised process which makes administration easier and makes it easier to navigate racism and discrimination issues but is very poor at allowing any free thinking or understanding in the students.

As usual, the brightest people are going to be fine and the worst are going to fail anyway. The issue is with the masses in the middle who need this bit of help.

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#113

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Feb 21, 2023, 8:45 PM UTC

danuker wrote: post #100

wprl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t tell if people just don’t understand how ChatGPT works or if there is another reason they are eager to dehumanize themselves and the rest of us along with them.

I am aware no learning is going on live during the discussion with ChatGPT, nor are the mechanisms that lead to the similar outcome even remotely similar. I also don't think humans are less human just because machines started making mistakes similar to human ones. But I do see this similarity as a reminder that machines are becoming more human in an accelerating way.

[deleted]

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#114

Post by dataexporter » Wed, Feb 22, 2023, 12:03 AM UTC

N_A_T_E wrote: post #76

twawaaay wrote: post #71

I think this is great idea. Actually, anytime somebody finds a way to engage students to think in a different way than just trying to memorise facts is a win, IMO. I think it is lamentable that students are asked to rely more and more on recalling facts at the time where it is becoming less and less important compared to critical thinking. This is lazy way to do something about structural education system issues. I c…

Perhaps this style of interview will be a great antidote to the elitecode arms war hellscape we accidentally created.

It wasn't accidentally created. It was deliberately designed that way as an alternative to IQ tests and aptitude tests.

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#115

Post by tamargal88 » Wed, Feb 22, 2023, 10:20 AM UTC

That's so funny. In general academia needs to adjust to the new reality of Chat GBT. Instead of telling students they can't use it, the assignments should be more advanced and focused on creativity. Students should be required to use Chat GBT IMO.