I'd rather read the prompt • Hacker News Board

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#401

Post by jama211 » Mon, May 05, 2025, 2:21 AM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #113

topkai22 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the things we teach in school aren’t just for the direct knowledge or skill. We largely don’t need to do arithmetic any more, but gaining the skill at doing it really improves our ability to deal with symbolic manipulation and abstraction. I remember another parent ranting about their 3rd grade kids “stupid homework” since it had kids learning different ways of summing numbers. I took a look at the homework a…

Then your friend spent 20 years not needing math skills. If someone spent years doing something useless to them for two decades, we wouldn’t call them efficient. But for some bizarre reason, we celebrate it as a point of honor in academia. One counter argument to yours is that when you do need the skills, you can learn them later. It’s arguably easier than it has been at any point in human history. In that context, w…

They said they dusted off the skills - as in they were glad to have them. This reads a bit aggressive and judgey tbh

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#402

Post by fallinditch » Mon, May 05, 2025, 2:21 AM UTC

qingcharles wrote: post #363

fallinditch wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been obvious since ChatGPT blew up in early 2023 that educators had to rethink how they educate. I agree that this situation that the author outlines is unsatisfactory but it's mostly the fault of the education system (and by extension the post author). With a class writing exercise like the author describes, of course the students are going to use an LLM, they would be stupid not to if their classmates are usin…

I'll leave this link here in case you feel like being depressed today: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1hun3e4/my_little_...

It seems to me that the little sister is acting rationally. Yes it's a bit lazy but then: when was the last time you used a calculator for a calculation that you could have done in your head? Do you actually need to be able to do mental arithmetic, do you actually really need to be able to work out what 24 + 7 is in your head?

I don't know what the answer is. I'm old school, if it was up to me I'd bring back slide rules and log tables, because that's such a visual and tactile way of getting to know mathematics and numbers.

It's interesting to consider how AI is affecting humans' cognition skills. Is it going to make us stupid or free us up to use our mental capacities for higher level activities? Or both?

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#403

Post by jama211 » Mon, May 05, 2025, 2:23 AM UTC

qustrolabe wrote: post #129

It's actually doesn't matter. I hated this hassle of writing various texts while studying so much. Like does it really matter whether student would generate this text or just go google and copy paste some paragraphs from somewhere? And don't even hope for them to genuinely write all that stuff themselves because it's a huge waste of time even for those who actually cares and interested in the subject.

Yup, people like to get high and mighty but they’ve obviously forgotten how much of school was pointless assignments designed so the teacher could tick off the boxes to their employer that they’d done something rather than having any interest in that assignment actually inspiring learning. Students aren’t stupid, they spot this behaviour a mile off and simply respond in kind.

Make better assignments.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#404

Post by scarface_74 » Mon, May 05, 2025, 2:24 AM UTC

zeroq wrote: post #255

sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

You're missing trees for forest. When I was a kid and got an assignement for writing an essey about "why good forces prevailed in Lords of the Rings" as a gate check to see if I actually read the novel I had three choices: (a) read the novel and write the essey myself (b) find an already written essey - not an easy task in pre-internet era but we had books with esseys on most common topics you could "copy-paste" - an…

In the pre-Internet era there were Cliff Notes.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#405

Post by schwartzworld » Mon, May 05, 2025, 2:26 AM UTC

jrmg wrote: post #265

soerxpso wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think I'm there for the degree. If I wanted to learn and engage with material, I could save $60,000 and do that online for free, probably more efficiently. The purpose of a class writing exercise is to get the university to give me the degree, which I cannot do by actually learning the material (…

The work this degree will credential you for is so is so disconnected from the areas of study in your degree program - presumably in the same field as the job - that the majority of the things you might learn would not be valuable? I can’t imagine this in my own life. I use concrete things and ways of thinking and working I learned in my CS degree _all the time_.

I honestly don’t know anybody who does what they went to undergrad for, unless that undergrad was preparation for a higher credential (premed/prelaw).

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#406

Post by empthought » Mon, May 05, 2025, 2:27 AM UTC

jama211 wrote: post #395

roxolotl wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why it’s unlikely these systems will effectively replace software development. By the time you’ve specified the novel system you want to build well enough in English such that you get exactly the system you want you might as well have written the code.

Well… you’re forgetting the part where you can cut out the middleman. Currently a leader has to ask an engineer to build a system, and has to communicate effectively with the engineer until all of the novel details have been ironed out in the specification, and _y_ the engineer builds it. In a world where the LLM can do the building, the engineer is no longer required.

You just turned your leader into an engineer, is all.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#407

Post by dcre » Mon, May 05, 2025, 2:27 AM UTC

necovek wrote: post #112

tptacek wrote: post #41

I have a lot of sympathy for the author's position but I may have missed the point in the article where he explained why clarity of writing and genuineness of human expression was so vital to a robotics class. It's one thing for an instructor to appreciate those things; another for them to confound their own didactic purpose with them. This point seems obvious enough that I feel like I must have missed something. As…

I think they summed it up well in the section "Why do we write, anyway?" — they nowhere claimed it was vital for students' success in a robotic class. On the contrary as they title a subsection there with "If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing *badly*" (emphasis mine) — so what they are looking for is to peer into the author's mind and their original thoughts. The implication there is that this is acceptable to pass…

A couple of examples from influential open source developers: Adam Wathan (Tailwind) agreeing with Mitchell Hashimoto that LLMs are making them more productive. "in their area of expertise" is not obvious from this post alone, but I am pretty confident from the way they talk about it that they are not exclusively using LLMs on side projects where they're inexpert.

https://x.com/adamwathan/status/1911845073286803923

Armin Ronacher also talks about using LLMs quite a bit, but I don't have as good of an example from his tweets of him straightforwardly saying "yes, they are useful to me!"

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#408

Post by scarface_74 » Mon, May 05, 2025, 2:29 AM UTC

fallinditch wrote: post #402

qingcharles wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll leave this link here in case you feel like being depressed today: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1hun3e4/my_little_...

It seems to me that the little sister is acting rationally. Yes it's a bit lazy but then: when was the last time you used a calculator for a calculation that you could have done in your head? Do you actually need to be able to do mental arithmetic, do you actually really need to be able to work out what 24 + 7 is in your head? I don't know what the answer is. I'm old school, if it was up to me I'd bring back slide ru…

Even with a calculator and more so with ChatGPT, you still need to know whether an answer passes the sniff test.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#409

Post by godelski » Mon, May 05, 2025, 2:31 AM UTC

soerxpso wrote: post #253

sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think I'm there for the degree. If I wanted to learn and engage with material, I could save $60,000 and do that online for free, probably more efficiently. The purpose of a class writing exercise is to get the university to give me the degree, which I cannot do by actually learning the material (…

  > I'm there for the degree

Would you hire someone without a degree?

When you're in a position to hire or influence hiring, will you consider those without degrees?

I ask because I hear this sentiment a lot but we still have a system becoming more reliant on degrees. The universities may be the gatekeepers of those degrees but they're not the ones gatekeeping the jobs. They have no influence there. They were not the ones who decided degree = credentials. I ask because many people eventually grow in their jobs to a point where they have significant influence over hiring. So when that time comes will you perpetuate the system you criticize or push against it? Truthfully, this is a thing that can be done with little to no risk to your own employment.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#410

Post by sgustard » Mon, May 05, 2025, 2:31 AM UTC

MengerSponge wrote: post #387

bumby wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is part of a more general cultural shift. Back in the 1960s, the majority of students said the primary motivation for going to college was to develop a philosophy of life, and a minority said the main goal was to be very financially successful. Somewhere around the 1980s this started to shift and the proportions are now inverted. * according to the UCLA CIRP freshman survey

We (America) made university educations super expensive. Causality is complicated, but it probably started as an effort to destroy the anti-war movement in the 70's.

"Most financial experts attribute he sudden increases that started in the 1970s with an influx of federal funding designed to make college more affordable."

https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year