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Education must go beyond the mere production of words

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Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#11

Post by michaelsbradley »

rdevilla wrote: post #6
quantified wrote: post #5

A lot of being Catholic is just receiving and producing words. Mass is basically an exchange of words. With a little music and a one-way flow of cash. Confession is, well, words. The profession of priesthood is basically one of words. Yes, there is day labor in some charitable activities, but those same activities are performed by non-Catholics and the irreligious as well. Better to to tie education of words and numb…

Catholic mass is arguably a form of programming in which people are hypnotized into hymnal verse/response in the hopes that by parroting the language the associated psychological changes will follow. Language is a means of programming other humans. Hypocrisy is the shadow aspect of this in which the language is parroted while the language's opposite is practiced in actuality. This kind of practice is usually regarded…

> Catholic mass is arguably a form of programming in which people are hypnotized into hymnal verse/response

Nobody can really blame you for the impression you got/get from the Novus Ordo Missae.

However, that’s not really what Mass was like for the laity for most of the past 1,000 years (much longer actually, but the history of Western Catholic liturgy is complex so I’ll leave it at that). It was mostly a context for silent mental prayer that, ideally, (1) is informed by the sanctoral/seasonal calendar, (2) prepares the worshippers to join themselves spiritually to the sacrifice offered on the altar by the priest, (3) prepares them to receive Jesus in Holy Communion.

You can experience the same today at the Traditional Latin Mass. The difference in atmosphere can be rather shocking if all you’ve ever experienced is the N.O. A lot of newcomers, who are also lifelong Catholics, relate a feeling of not knowing what to do with themselves throughout the liturgy — well, you’re supposed to cultivate your interior life, spend the 60-90 minutes actually praying instead of just rattling off verbal responses and warbling out bad hymns.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#12

Post by downboots »

rdevilla wrote: post #4

I wonder what kinds of information are worth keeping resident in human carbon wetware, and what kinds of information are better off sitting in a silicon cache somewhere in the cloud. On one extreme LLMs do 100% of your thinking, and your brain understands nothing other than how to function as a transport layer from/to the data center and other humans. On the other you have the technophobic tendencies of Anathem's avo…

> accurately represent a reality is going to become increasingly important

I personally perceive a decoupling all over the board. Not just in language. You hear terms like "wage stagnation" or "degree inflation". Just choose an area. They're all detachments from the true thing they represented.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#13

Post by lokimedes »

The concept of “absorptive capacity” our ability to gain from the information presented to us, is a key factor in education. If we humans remain agents of our own lives (which I find axiomatic) we still need education to interact with AI, to ask the right questions and to make sense of the results.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#14

Post by globnomulous »

rdevilla wrote: post #4

I wonder what kinds of information are worth keeping resident in human carbon wetware, and what kinds of information are better off sitting in a silicon cache somewhere in the cloud. On one extreme LLMs do 100% of your thinking, and your brain understands nothing other than how to function as a transport layer from/to the data center and other humans. On the other you have the technophobic tendencies of Anathem's avo…

> It's one thing to memorize arguments in favour of a position. It's another to actively defend your positions against those aggressively invested in proving you wrong. John Stuart Mill argued that only the latter activity produces the real understanding that allows an argument, or a tradition, to be renewed and kept alive across generations against constant attempts at refutation. If you are regurgitating a stance instead of actively fighting to defend one, do you really believe in what you are saying?

A person generally cannot effectively, fluently, convincingly regurgitate an argument without understanding it, and the act of memorizing a variety of different positions primes the brain to handle all of them with greater depth and adroitness. Mill greatly underestimates the power and benefits of memorization.

I think most people would agree that memorization and a standarized 'one-size-fits-all' approach are inferior to teaching methods that are (onstensibly) creative, 'active,' and individualized.

I couldn't disagree more strongly. It's a false dichotomy. All learning -- all -- starts from and depends upon memorization. Is that its only the goal? Obviously not, but memorization gets a bad rap because it's viewed, incorrectly, as contrary to or in competition with more active, creative intellectual enterprises.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#16

Post by defrost »

globnomulous wrote: post #14
rdevilla wrote: post #4

I wonder what kinds of information are worth keeping resident in human carbon wetware, and what kinds of information are better off sitting in a silicon cache somewhere in the cloud. On one extreme LLMs do 100% of your thinking, and your brain understands nothing other than how to function as a transport layer from/to the data center and other humans. On the other you have the technophobic tendencies of Anathem's avo…

> It's one thing to memorize arguments in favour of a position. It's another to actively defend your positions against those aggressively invested in proving you wrong. John Stuart Mill argued that only the latter activity produces the real understanding that allows an argument, or a tradition, to be renewed and kept alive across generations against constant attempts at refutation. If you are regurgitating a stance i…

Chess Grand Masters have large repertoires of memorised openings. They do not play rote games with no understanding.

They run variations, twists and traps, on recalled openings and duel and fool by creating and breaking expectations.

In line with a number of other activities rote core skills and reflexes are foundational but not all, they're essential to practice and to dealing with situations where they don't fit but can be bent to purpose.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#20

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

justonceokay wrote: post #3

I just spent the last week with the large number of digital nomads. The story that they sell me is that they’ve set up their life so that they can work from anywhere. Mostly this is possible because their jobs involve the manipulation of bits and the aligning of minds. Starlink, a camper van, and a webcam is the minimal setup. I don’t know if it’s just my small town mind, pure stubbornness, or something else entirely…

Starlink, a camper van, a webcam and no kids.
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