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AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder

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Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder

#151

Post by aleph_minus_one »

bluGill wrote: post #144
gdubs wrote: post #141

There's a deeper educational problem that's been decades in the making which is that students are trained to see school and work as a series of never ending goals to achieve. The ultimate one is to 'get a job'. Well, now nobody can really even say what jobs will be available in 5 to 10 years with high confidence. Except maybe the trades – and we mostly cut those programs out of schools a long time ago. If college stu…

Nobody ever could say with confidence what jobs will pe available. those who know the basics and flexible can find something.

> those who know the basics and flexible can find something.

I'm not so sure about that: I have a feeling that at least the current trend in quite some jobs is that they are looking for two kinds of people:

1. beginners who know the basics and are cheap

2. deep experts; these are paid well

What is in-between gets more and more hollowed out.

Thus the people who follow your advice will mostly stay in the "cheap" pool - I wouldn't consider this to be desirable.

Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder

#152

Post by cafp12 »

tsunamifury wrote: post #150
gdubs wrote: post #141

There's a deeper educational problem that's been decades in the making which is that students are trained to see school and work as a series of never ending goals to achieve. The ultimate one is to 'get a job'. Well, now nobody can really even say what jobs will be available in 5 to 10 years with high confidence. Except maybe the trades – and we mostly cut those programs out of schools a long time ago. If college stu…

Trades would collapse if even 10% of the population switched to them. What does no one get about this?

This is a good point and also why are people so certain that superhuman capable robots aren't right around the corner.

Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder

#153

Post by mantas »

mootothemax wrote: post #30
mantas wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’d be bad if there was no alternative. But different people can get different assignments and that’s ok. Complaining about this is like me complaining about people drinking milk since I’m lactose intolerant.

> It’d be bad if there was no alternative. But different people can get different assignments and that’s ok. While there are possibly noble goals behind your suggestion, in practise this puts anyone outside the mainstream in the category of “other,” people to be managed separately. I’ll leave to your imagination how much work is often put into supporting these “other” assignments and how up-to-date they’re kept va th…

> If this is genuinely your approach, you are being part of the problem; if taking a step back to reassess feels like too much work, I’d encourage you to explore why it feels that way, what emotions is this bringing up internally?

How am I part of the problem? Do you mean I should make a fuss if I get limited options? Or have emotions towards what... My genetical makeup? All in all, I've zero emotions about my lactose intolerance. Being mindful about what I eat is just natural for me. Just like for other people with food allergies/intolerances.

> in practise this puts anyone outside the mainstream in the category of “other,” people to be managed separately

Is your goal to get everyone down to the same level by removing all learning material that may be inaccessible to somebody?

Should people just stop consuming anything with lactose to make it more universal for people like me? But then a friend of mine will ask to stop eating fish. Someone else will take away chocolate. At the end of the day all of us will be much worse off.

Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder

#154

Post by Tycho »

nluken wrote: post #143
Tycho wrote: post #107

I would love to be a literature student today. Consume the classics in audiobook form while flâneuring or gaming. Red team every essay with ChatGPT. Become a top tier Genius.com contributor for poetry. Listen to all the online lectures from Oxford, Yale etc. Effortlessly pick up where past critics have left off because the AI can summarise all contributions on any topic. Find every reference to support your thesis in…

> Consume the classics in audiobook form while flâneuring or gaming I can't tell if you're serious or not, but this would be like saying you've "watched" a movie because you had it on your second monitor while you were playing counter strike. There's a fundamental difference in hearing a book read to you and actually listening and engaging with the audio on a meaningful level. The latter requires focus, and you're no…

I’ve listened plenty of audiobooks while driving or walking, why would I not be able to do the same while playing GTA?

The reason to do this is that just sitting in a chair ploughing through books gets very unappealing after a while. And there’s a lot of books to get through.

Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder

#155

Post by mtillman »

tsunamifury wrote: post #150
gdubs wrote: post #141

There's a deeper educational problem that's been decades in the making which is that students are trained to see school and work as a series of never ending goals to achieve. The ultimate one is to 'get a job'. Well, now nobody can really even say what jobs will be available in 5 to 10 years with high confidence. Except maybe the trades – and we mostly cut those programs out of schools a long time ago. If college stu…

Trades would collapse if even 10% of the population switched to them. What does no one get about this?

I’m convinced plumbing would pay better than programming in certain neighborhoods right now now.

Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder

#156

Post by aleph_minus_one »

gdubs wrote: post #141

There's a deeper educational problem that's been decades in the making which is that students are trained to see school and work as a series of never ending goals to achieve. The ultimate one is to 'get a job'. Well, now nobody can really even say what jobs will be available in 5 to 10 years with high confidence. Except maybe the trades – and we mostly cut those programs out of schools a long time ago. If college stu…

> Well, now nobody can really even say what jobs will be available in 5 to 10 years with high confidence.

I am very sure that those jobs that have been existing for a long time will continue existing for a long time (and no: even if some disruption occurs, these jobs won't suddenly disappear, but will rather phased out slowly; you thus have sufficient time to make a decent plan for you).

In other words: in my opinion one can predict rather well many jobs that will be available in 5 to 10 years.

The "inconvenient" truth rather is that many high-paying jobs in the new economy sector don't satisfy this criterion of "existing for a long time". So by this criterion you might miss out some hard to predict high-earning opportunities. Thus, if you are the kind of person who tends to easily become envious if your friends suddenly experience a windfall, such a job perhaps won't make you happy.

Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder

#157

Post by Workaccount2 »

mtillman wrote: post #155
tsunamifury wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trades would collapse if even 10% of the population switched to them. What does no one get about this?

I’m convinced plumbing would pay better than programming in certain neighborhoods right now now.

Plumbers never realized that they should be selling service plans and leasing toilets to people.

Software's golden goose is not letting people own things.

Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder

#158

Post by shermantanktop »

gitfan86 wrote: post #147

For every Quinton Tarantino there are dozens of people who could make amazing films but never had the opportunity for a wide variety of reasons that now mostly go away.

And for each of those dozens, there are now millions of untalented people who can generate terrible films with a few clicks. How does a Tarantino, or even one of your new talents, ever get discovered?

The friction is a feature, not a bug.

Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder

#159

Post by lapcat »

simonw wrote: post #3

The first comment on that article caught my attention: > I am a grad student in the philosophy department at SFSU and teach critical thinking. This semester I pivoted my entire class toward a course design that feels more like running an obstacle course with AI than engaging with Plato. And my students are into it. It would be interesting to take a class of students and set them an assignment to come up with assignme…

That comment struck me as odd if only because Plato is not commonly part of the standard critical thinking curriculum. Introduction to philosophy or history of philosophy yes, but critical thinking no.

This is not to say that Plato didn't think critically. Of course he did, as do all (or most) philosophers. I'm just talking about university courses and textbooks.

Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder

#160

Post by verisimi »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #59
verisimi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The history we have inevitably passes through bottlenecks. Much is left out, edited away, embellished. We have no idea what happened over 500 years ago, but the idea of a brilliant scholar translating the Greek texts on behalf of the Medicis, shouldn't simply be accepted as stated. If you are running the world (like the Medicis did) history would be a lever of control. It seems inevitable that the stories should be d…

> I can't see how ai will help us the endeavour of trying to get a better handle on what happened in the past. Well, AI democratizes the power of translation (and interrogating texts). Before only a few specialists could go directly to the source. Now anyone can try to make sense of it.

We don't get to the source. Have you ever personally seen any historical sources? Eg the sources for classical writings or the Bible? At best you get high resolution imagery provided by suspicious folks such as RB Toth.

If the source is corrupt - as I suggest and as is possible because the Medicis provided/sanctioned their version - all you have is interpretation based on flawed data. Endless production of information (by ai) based on flawed sources (this is our history) only serves to increase the haystack rather than helping you to converge on truth.

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