[FRIAM] more bullsh¡t

Fri Jan 6 05:18:40 EST 2023

Your use of chatGTP, Pieter, is to my mind a very interesting thread.

There was a columnist for the New York Times many years ago, named William Safire.  I don’t even remember now what he wrote about, but he was known, and was significant to me, for being an example of “a good writer”.

Safire wrote something (column?  book?  article?) with the theme that, if one would write creatively, one should first do several years galley-rowing as an editor somewhere.  People who have an impulse to write “creatively” imagine all kinds of innovation in language that will be just dramatic and wonderful.  Editors, who have had to deal with those imaginations in the writings of others, know that most such ideas are awful and need to be beaten out of the writer if he or she is ever to become good.  So Safire’s thesis was that you really need to do this, for a number of years and a large number of other people’s pieces, to squeeze the nonsense out of you and develop a solid understanding of your language.  Kind of like, in books on French cooking, the author says “why did we have to spend the first year cooking mixed vegetables in mayonnaise over and over again; I don’t even like mixed vegetables in mayonnaise.  To which the answer, of course, is that one develops what the French term “method”: experience with uniform sizing of each ingredient, correct relative sizing across ingredients, time of introduction to heat, and on and on, so that one gets control and has everything cooked to the intended degree reliably.  Only then has one gained the tools to create.

I have run Safire’s thesis by some writers I know to see what happened; my notable memories are the ones who hate it and think it is completely wrong.

But to Glen’s point that we should think of literary AI the way we think of pocket calculators (another thing I was not allowed to have in school; my parents thought it would make me stupid).  ChatGTP can be sort of the William Safire level of basic method in language, not intending or intended to create anything, but somehow, as you say, to find a kind of solid and central expression for things.  One might even think of the appropriate training schedule for a tool meant to do just that, which could be a bit different from the ad hoc training that is probably first-gen of these tools.

Eric

> On Jan 6, 2023, at 12:59 AM, Pieter Steenekamp <pieters at randcontrols.co.za> wrote:
> 
> As a native of South Africa, I have personally witnessed the shortcomings of both our public primary and secondary education systems and the financial barriers that prevent many from accessing private schools. In response, I have dedicated the past year to establishing a private institution that is not only affordable, but also committed to providing a high-quality education. In reflecting on what constitutes a truly valuable education, I have come to the conclusion that the most essential outcome is not the acquisition of academic skills, but rather the development of strong relationships - both with oneself and with the outside world. While it is not possible to directly teach children how to cultivate such relationships, it is possible to create an environment in which they can learn and grow through unsupervised interactions with their peers.
> 
> Full disclosure: I have not kissed  Blarney Stone and my ability to write (or speak for that matter) eloquently is just awful. I've written a paragraph and then I asked chatGPT, who have kissed the Blamey Stone, to rephrase it more eloquently. The above paragraph reflects exactly what I wish to say, but is just expressed so much better.
> 
> On Fri, 6 Jan 2023 at 00:39, glen <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
> AI, Teaching, and "Our Willingness to Give Bullshit a Pass"
> https://dailynous.com/2023/01/05/ai-teaching-and-our-willingness-to-give-bullshit-a-pass/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fdailynous.com%2f2023%2f01%2f05%2fai-teaching-and-our-willingness-to-give-bullshit-a-pass%2f&c=E,1,WHKkhx-F6VtAb7Uzs4i2CJ4V-wM6HU566Hr7SjVK_PVCM4iLBtg-uC90pNH4VOqk-qKP9pEv-jkEuTZASVMEIMa603ieYvVi8uRqX2w7TFfY&typo=1>
> 
> The first time I heard this argument was from these guys:
> 
> https://www.audible.com/pd/Pill-Pod-104-AI-the-New-Crisis-of-Humanities-Education-Podcast/B0BPQ77Z8P <https://www.audible.com/pd/Pill-Pod-104-AI-the-New-Crisis-of-Humanities-Education-Podcast/B0BPQ77Z8P>
> 
> My phrasing of the idea being that tools like ChatGPT are analogous to calculators, allowing the computer to do what it's good at and freeing humans up to do what we're good at. Why require students to learn bullshit rhetorical styling when we can teach them to think about the *substance* ... a lesson many of us learned from Knuth's TeX a long time ago. The trick is that tools like ChatGPT are built around the bullshit-generation use case. What we need are tools built around the bullshit-detection use case.
> 
> With branch prediction, we could implant a little device just under the eardrum that listened to someone's speech acts for a tiny fraction, predict where it was going, and call bullshit or "pay attention" for some interval. The bullshitters' rhetoric would never even reach your audio perception devices. ... like trigger warnings for all of us sensitive snowflakes who can't bear to look on images of Mohammed <https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/01/05/hamline-university-assailed-for-firing-professor-who-showed-images-of-muhammads-face/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwhyevolutionistrue.com%2f2023%2f01%2f05%2fhamline-university-assailed-for-firing-professor-who-showed-images-of-muhammads-face%2f&c=E,1,bwmwYt4o7Qd9zZNvZoqOcAN3ATYO7nS64GXGtrvDwy9RfZebm92-10VsEQyFEmiNgVEIlUxSm-fylKxh-Qz_a_MoFV5V6aN2qj1l7D_vU7cVtmb0J8wGk-FI&typo=1>>.
> 
> Those of us who've kissed the Blarney Stone, unfortunately, would spend our lives talking to brick walls.
> 
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
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