671–680 of 880 posts
I think I is good in two way, one is which you use if as a small helper (basic questions, auto completion...)
Two for getting started on something that you have no idea on ( not to teach you but just give you an idea of what it's and resources to learn more)
> Anecdotally, this phenomenon seems more common among English-as-a-second-language speakers That part caught my attention. As an English-as-a-second-language speaker myself, I find it so difficult to develop any form of "taste" in English the same way I have in my mother tongue. A badly written sentence in my mother tongue feels painful in a sort of physical way, while bad English usually sound OK to me, especially…
Reading good literature helps you develop that sense fairly quickly.
Interestingly, when it comes to spoken English, I can learn by imitation way faster.
I like the author's take: it isn't a value judgement on the individual using ChatGPT (or Gemini or whichever LLM you like this week), it's that the thought that went into making the prompt is, inevitably, more interesting/original/human than the output the LLM generates afterwards. In my experiments with LLMs for writing code, I find that the code is objectively garbage if my prompt is garbage. If I don't know what I…
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If students went to college only to learn, colleges wouldn't bother giving diplomas. Compare: My piano teacher doesn't give diplomas because none of her students would care, her students actually want to learn. When my piano teacher cancels class, I am disappointed because I wanted to learn. My piano teacher doesn't need to threaten me with bad grades to get me to practice outside of class (analogous to homework), be…
Consider that there is some in-between. Some college students may be genuinely interested in one particular subject, but they're required to take a bunch of other courses, and consider those to just be hurdles. I still think they're better off at least making an effort and trying to learn something, but I do think it's important to note that just because a student has no interest in one particular class, doesn't mean…
The course I'm interested in gets kinda hard, and my "just pull up an LLM" muscle is very, very strong, (and besides, I'm not used to struggling! and why should I get used to it in the classes i like?! I can't afford a C in my major!) so ... I use LLMs on my "I'm interested in it" class too and... we're back to the original argument.
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Sure, the system is broken but what's the alternative? Employers have a surplus of applicants for entry-level technical positions. They need to filter the applicant pool down to those with some level of competence and discipline. Possession of a college degree is a reasonably accurate proxy for those attributes: lots of false negatives but good enough from the employer's perspective. Ideally maybe employers ought to…
> Sure, the system is broken but what's the alternative? As I said, the only country I know where it is like that is the US.
> 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…
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This seems to be the general feeling of students right now. Academia put itself as a gateway and barrier to the middle class. Why would we be surprised when people with no interest in anything but the goal are not enthralled by the process?
> Academia put itself as a gateway How did academia do that? It doesn’t seem like universities would have the power to do that. More likely, either employers put academia as a gateway. Or even: the culture at large misunderstood what pathways existed to middle class life. Or even: pathways to middle class life became scarcer and more insecure, and the real gatekeepers (hiring managers) had no good ways to select whic…
It also recognized the GI Bill as an opportunity and also sent lobbyists for the HEA in 1965.
> 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…
"Anyone who actually struggles to solve problems and learn themselves is going to have massive advantages in the long term." Looking forward towards is, but I fear that might be wishful thinking in part. Also pre LLMs I have seen too many deep thinkers fail and pretenders succed. I don't see how LLMs can change that. Unless we all collectivly grow tired if pretenders and fakers amd value deep understanding. I just se…
There should be zero tolerance for these types of behaviors in my opinion. I see zero evidence of these behavior even being identified by most, let alone any thought on calling them out or stopping them.
You've helped me realize that folks using llms in replace of learning to write themselves are almost certainly giving up all thought of nuance on a topic and are, without realizing it, letting the llm either ignore or add nuance based on its training data and random chance.
Hopefully the pendulum will swing the other way and there's a public epiphany but given the loss of nuance over the decades I'm not betting on it
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> 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 could save $60,000 and do that online for free, probably more efficiently. Not to burst yours or anyone else's bubble, but no, probably not. The hard part of learning isn't access to content, it's discipline and dedication. School provides structure, goals, timelines, and deliverables. The value of this cannot be understated. I've heard from many people how they're going to learn programming online and then get a…
That _may_ be true for the vast majority, but it's criminal to waste the time of bright young people by putting them though hoops. I would even speculate that that they phoney goals, timelines, and deliverables in school actually damage kids.