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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

#81

Post by sylos »

WalterBright wrote: post #70
kaashif wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, memorization is very underrated. Memorization increases the size of the building blocks you can use. Mathematics is where I see this most clearly. Why memorize hundreds of theorems? Because then you can just cite them on the fly when doing real mathematics. If you had to re-derive everything, you'd be stuck doing undergrad level math forever.

I never memorized the trig identities, but used them so much I knew them anyway.

so you memorized them, you just didn't explicitly do it.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#82

Post by nerdsniper »

Waterluvian wrote: post #8
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…

> I wonder what kinds of information are worth keeping resident in human carbon wetware I’ve never been an arts person and I’ve been a very, very logical person, so it’s very odd to me to realize that my answer to this is: poetry. More and more these days I look for ways to both reason with and frame the world and current events. I’ve followed years and years of people putting forth logic and reason as explanations.…

Art in general, and things like massage, meaningful conversation, sex, etc. Quality human connection will be the last things that AI's will gain sufficient ability to replace.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#83

Post by globnomulous »

fn-mote wrote: post #42
globnomulous wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I once heard a lecture by a (famous) college professor who talked about the large numbers of students who failed (college) Algebra 1. His argument was: you cannot memorize algebra, you have to understand. Students who are failing in college do so because they do not understand the fundamentals, and try to memorize enough to succeed - not realizing that the effort needs to go somewhere else. Rule 1 of memorization is…

I can't argue with this professor's argument because I don't know it, but I can only say that, intuitively, this sounds like an example of the false dichotomy I described in my previous comment.

I've never met a math student who tried to pass algebra by memorizing anything. I'm not even sure what a students would memorize in an effort to pass the class.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#84

Post by Waterluvian »

nerdsniper wrote: post #82
Waterluvian wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder what kinds of information are worth keeping resident in human carbon wetware I’ve never been an arts person and I’ve been a very, very logical person, so it’s very odd to me to realize that my answer to this is: poetry. More and more these days I look for ways to both reason with and frame the world and current events. I’ve followed years and years of people putting forth logic and reason as explanations.…

Art in general, and things like massage, meaningful conversation, sex, etc. Quality human connection will be the last things that AI's will gain sufficient ability to replace.

I think Bladerunner 2049 explores what I think will be the key: for some reason authenticity matters to humans and even if the emulation is indistinguishable, people value the real thing.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#85

Post by michaelsbradley »

jdmichal wrote: post #61
michaelsbradley wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not so much a matter of Latin versus vernacular, more the way it goes as a whole. Let’s compare an average daily Mass (e.g. 8 AM on a ferial day at St. Joe’s, no music) in the Novus Ordo with a TLM Low Mass. Let’s assume that in either form it lasts about 45 minutes. In the N.O., from start to finish, the priest is in a kind of dialogue with the people, accentuated by the versus populum arrangement that has beco…

Apologies. I think there was a confusion of terms. There's only one church in my county I know of that even offers traditional mass, and it is in Latin. I admit to only having attended once, because I felt too disconnected. My only point was that, in my mind, active participation is even more so mental than physical. I'm sure you understand this from your scare quotes around the same term. I appreciate your deeper un…

> active participation is even more so mental than physical.

Totally agree, that is how it should be.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#86

Post by nemo44x »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #28

During the industrial revolution, the purpose wasn't to enlighten the masses but to make sure they could work in factories and work with complex machinery. So that meant being able to read/write, work with numbers, etc. And there as a need for engineers, mechanics, etc. that could make all this machinery work, that could work in systematic ways, etc. For the last century, a lot of jobs have shifted from making stuff…

School was, is, and will always be a filter to determine who should manage and access resources.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#87

Post by WalterBright »

sylos wrote: post #81
WalterBright wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never memorized the trig identities, but used them so much I knew them anyway.

so you memorized them, you just didn't explicitly do it.

Memorizing is an active activity. Simply remembering something you use frequently is not the same.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#88

Post by unfitted2545 »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #80
graemep wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced by that. Kids tend to learn problem solving (and other) skills if given a chance. i do not think encourage huge amounts of rote learning is an optimal, or even, useful say of doing that. My experience (with myself and my kids) has been the opposite.

Making music would suck if I hadn't spent years of (fought against every day) practice/rehearsal. We need to practice learning the tools, not just understanding we have them. So many rote things opened so many doors for me to explore later. My creativity would be way less if I hadn't spent hours listening to others music. I think it applies to less fun/interesting things as well.

Relating to music - it's actually so easy to remember a ton of words (information) if they're put into rhymes

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#89

Post by graemep »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #56
graemep wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They weren’t ashamed, they wanted their kids to have a higher quality of life. They looked around and saw themselves and most others who swung hammers to have a lower quality of life than they would have preferred for their kids compared to those in offices. Is that true? I do not know about the US, but in the UK skilled people who work with their hands out earn many who work in offices, find it easier to be self e…

It was true. Probably started tilting back the other way after 2008. There is a lag in perception though, but it’s still very much boom and bust type work. Healthcare is probably the new dependable, decent paying, blue collar work. Office work, however, lends itself to scaling, so earning potential is always more. Swinging hammers is great, but owning the business that hires the people who swings hammers is going to…

> There is a lag in perception though, but it’s still very much boom and bust type work.

Boom and bust in something like construction, true, but what about something like plumbing? its not cyclical because so much of the work is repairs and maintenance. On the other hand there are lots of white collar jobs that are cyclical.

We have had a huge strike in the UK (specifically at the largest local authority in Europe) because bin men's pay (not basic pay - it was a bit more complex) was reduced to bring them in line with teaching assistants (because of a court ruling that it was discriminatory to pay mostly male bin men more than mostly female teaching assistant).

Lots of office jobs have been badly paid compared to skilled work well before 2008. The influx of East Europeans slowed it down, but did not reverse the trend.

Re: Education must go beyond the mere production of words

#90

Post by quantified »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #24
justonceokay wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happened to shop class? Generation of parents who were ashamed of their kids having to swing a hammer for a living. See my comment below. When I started working in the trades every single person said it would be hard on my body. Some days it’s hard on my body. But I honestly would break my knee again if it meant I could be assured that I’d never have the mental anguish of pretending like I cared about a comput…

They weren’t ashamed, they wanted their kids to have a higher quality of life. They looked around and saw themselves and most others who swung hammers to have a lower quality of life than they would have preferred for their kids compared to those in offices. Everyone can swing a hammer after they get home from work if swinging the hammer is virtuous.

I went to one of the bougiest schools in the country and we had wood and metal shop. Why'd it get taken out of there? Insurance.
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