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I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

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Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#71

Post by thfuran »

helboi4 wrote: post #20
golergka wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your opinion on calculators? Update: I meant to compare calculators to something like a slide ruler for logarithms. I'm not from US and I tend to forget that some people use calculators to take 20% of 500.

I will occasionally do long multiplication in my minds eye just to make sure I can lol. Anything more complicated than that, most people will not be doing anyway. University students however, almost universally do need to write sometimes. Similarly if I had decided to do something maths heavy at uni I would be expected to be able to do some pretty complex maths without a calculator first, even if I don't need to do t…

>Similarly if I had decided to do something maths heavy at uni I would be expected to be able to do some pretty complex maths without a calculator first, even if I don't need to do that all the time

I got an engineering degree and don't remember ever being required to do math without a calculator. Of course, some things are easier if you don't need to bust out a calculator for everything.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#72

Post by SoftTalker »

Version467 wrote: post #27
kennethrc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "cannot navigate"? I've been driving for decades, but where I live traffic is everywhere so I don't go more than a few miles without using Waze and its real-time traffic monitoring.

I can confidently say that a car would be useless to me without gps. I can navigate the small town (10k people) I grew up in, but that’s it. I wouldn’t try to navigate the city I live in now (~350k people) in a car, beyond the street I live on. If I had to and knew gps was broken (hypothetically), then I’d try to reschedule, instead of attempting to navigate with signs and a paper map. I could probably work with prin…

GPS is super-convenient when you're in an unfamiliar area. I sometimes catch myself thinking how did we ever get along without it. But we did. You just looked at a map before you set off, noted street names and turns, and paid attention. You would do the same thing and manage pretty well if you had to.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#73

Post by nicolas_t »

Version467 wrote: post #27
kennethrc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "cannot navigate"? I've been driving for decades, but where I live traffic is everywhere so I don't go more than a few miles without using Waze and its real-time traffic monitoring.

I can confidently say that a car would be useless to me without gps. I can navigate the small town (10k people) I grew up in, but that’s it. I wouldn’t try to navigate the city I live in now (~350k people) in a car, beyond the street I live on. If I had to and knew gps was broken (hypothetically), then I’d try to reschedule, instead of attempting to navigate with signs and a paper map. I could probably work with prin…

You don't ever walk in your city without gps? Wouldn't you know the streets after a while?

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#74

Post by chx »

adamc wrote: post #39

I read this and it struck a chord. A decade or more ago, a friend of mine teaching English in a major state university told me that he was getting lots of students who couldn't seem to read a novel. They could read the words on the page, but they couldn't focus enough to really understand it. My experience is that writing things out always improves my understanding of the subject. It's similar to forcing yourself to…

How many dystopian scifi did we read where the majority of the populace can no longer read or write they just press icons?

If we add "the result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed" as Hannah Arendt put it, the consequences are indeed catastrophic.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#75

Post by teaearlgraycold »

realce wrote: post #25
Der_Einzige wrote: post #11

[flagged]

With this progress, what will be the point of being in any upper percentile at all? Everyone will be in it if they have access to the LLM wizard. We're outsourcing our sovereignty to a machine blob in a black box, the blob will do the thinking for all of those children. edit: for the authoritarian tyrants that they are (mass reflexive downvotes) Your response is to rely on opaque knowledge agents produced by the larg…

It won’t be a competitive advantage against other humans. But it will improve our species’ ability to communicate and learn.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#76

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

malfist wrote: post #24
adamc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can already see it in people who cannot navigate their automobile without google maps or some equivalent.

I don't really see that as a bad thing. Einstein famously didn't memorize phone numbers because you could look it up in book. Quick external lookups are a huge productivity boost since you don't have to spend all the time memorizing something.

That’s a good description of my programming.

I use the documentation panel of the inspector in Xcode, all the time, and write my code to generate this documentation.

I’m too grizzled to care much about being sneered at by insecure folks. I am able to get the job done; quickly, and of extremely high quality.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#78

Post by adamc »

lucianbr wrote: post #66
adamc wrote: post #39

I read this and it struck a chord. A decade or more ago, a friend of mine teaching English in a major state university told me that he was getting lots of students who couldn't seem to read a novel. They could read the words on the page, but they couldn't focus enough to really understand it. My experience is that writing things out always improves my understanding of the subject. It's similar to forcing yourself to…

> If the result of chatgpt is even more kids skating through life without really picking up these skills... it may have tragic consequences. Learning to think well is the single most important thing I got from education. Do teachers have no role here? "If many kids make a certain choice, there will be big trouble". Maybe teach them to do better? Is the role of educator reduced to giving assignements and grading them…

Most teachers have large classes. Their ability to monitor each kid and prevent them from using chatgpt or similar tools may be limited.

I come from a family with many teachers. The harsh reality is that teachers can provide a conducive environment, but they just don't have enough time per kid to make nearly the impact that people expect, which is why your home environment is so critical.

Teachers don't really teach. They create an environment to help you teach yourself. They can provide lessons, but you always have to do the work of internalizing it. Watching youtube videos is not the same as struggling to write programs. Etc.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#79

Post by awesomeMilou »

realce wrote: post #25
Der_Einzige wrote: post #11

[flagged]

With this progress, what will be the point of being in any upper percentile at all? Everyone will be in it if they have access to the LLM wizard. We're outsourcing our sovereignty to a machine blob in a black box, the blob will do the thinking for all of those children. edit: for the authoritarian tyrants that they are (mass reflexive downvotes) Your response is to rely on opaque knowledge agents produced by the larg…

> Everyone will be in it if they have access to the LLM wizard.

You're arguing that everyone might be good at sports if they had a personal trainer. How is this not a good thing? If you take these models only by the base value they provide, you might be able to eliminate private tutoring from the equation and make performance of students more comparable.

I am far from happy that these models originate from shady for-profit corporations with dubious incentives, but a state actor could just as well train a model for support in education.

> Your response is to rely on opaque knowledge agents produced by the largest and shadiest corporations that humanity has ever known.

This is ironic. My teachers organized a big week about the importance of the personal carbon footprint when I was still in high school (~2015). The personal carbon footprint is criticized for shifting blame for climate change to personal consumer behavior, rather than corporations and was subject of a big advertising campaign from BP [0].

I think you overestimate the average teacher in terms of their ability to think critically and overall skill in their respective subjects.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint#Shifting_resp...

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#80

Post by banku_brougham »

Version467 wrote: post #27
kennethrc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "cannot navigate"? I've been driving for decades, but where I live traffic is everywhere so I don't go more than a few miles without using Waze and its real-time traffic monitoring.

I can confidently say that a car would be useless to me without gps. I can navigate the small town (10k people) I grew up in, but that’s it. I wouldn’t try to navigate the city I live in now (~350k people) in a car, beyond the street I live on. If I had to and knew gps was broken (hypothetically), then I’d try to reschedule, instead of attempting to navigate with signs and a paper map. I could probably work with prin…

You are in for a fun adventure, if you have an afternoon to yourself and no particular destination. My grandmother always began our day trips that way, in her shiny Buick. Remember to stop to rest.
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