What ChatGPT reveals about the collapse of support for higher education
crookedtimber.org
crookedtimber.org
" When you are growing and everyone trusts you, you can do no wrong, and your mistakes shrink into nothing on their own."
" When you begin to shrink and your reputation sours, you can do no right, your wrongs balloon catastrophically and your rights slowly shrink into nothing like your wrongs used to"
Academia I'm sure provides tons of stuff, but once you sour your reputation and you pop your balloon, it's very very hard to recover from it. We've gone from a world where the average person trusts institutions to a world where the average person doesn't.
Even I don't trust anything coming out of any large institution anymore. If I look up news, and I see CNN and MSNBC and any of those big networks, I keep scrolling until I find someone showing me the raw event with no commentary.
If I search some review I scroll past all of the official review sites and find some random nobody who appears to be expressing their own experiences.
Why?
Because I don't trust anything bigger than an individual. Doctors hide themselves behind hospitals with a million accountant sent number punchers who are incentivized to screw you over.
Companies pull the journalists into their wings so that the journalists are beholden random advertisers, and can write whatever they want without much risk to their own credibility.
I'm confident academia is falling to very similar issues. These institutions take responsibility and spread it thin like butter over toast, and when you do that everything and that institution needs to be considered not credible.
All of these opinions of academia probably come from the behavior of a small fraction of bad actors who get popularized in the news, but because those bad actors aren't named and shamed as individuals, the institution takes the blame and all of the good things that come out of it are no longer worthy of trust.
Learn to differentiate between facts and editorials/opinions.
Alternative media isn't very good at presenting basic facts correctly, something institutions still do well and can only spin so far. Alternative media outright lies about facts.
This doesn’t mean I read “alternative media” but being slightly better than a cesspool doesn’t mean I want to use them.
Any media outlet which did even the bare minimum of research would have known it was a lie: contact the brother, the hospital, the coroner's office (seeking only a date confirmation), let alone actually having done any real investigation whatsoever into the claims. But they didn't. Politicians, including the president (who all would have had 100% certainty that he was not killed) then continued to actively lie to the public and exploit his death for political gain, even including having a formal ceremony at the Capital Rotunda that's been traditionally reserved for individuals such as Rosa Parks and RBG.
When it was finally revealed to be a lie, where was the reckoning? An exploited media anxious to discover how and why they were misled, and hold those responsible accountable? For that matter what of holding the politicians accountable for their own behavior? They were actively and maliciously lying and propagandizing a man's death on a national level.
Instead, the media tried to shift the story to the strokes being caused by pepper spray - which was also another completely fabricated lie with no basis in reality. Then when the chief medical examiner refused to play ball, they just buried the story. There was 0 interest in the truth from the beginning to end. And here you are saying the big media is good at presenting basic facts and can only spin so far. This is not a swipe at you, but rather emphasizing how they're able to really get away with this.
After the results were finally published, the information got out and was covered on media outlets (such as the WSJ etc) ..
You're looking for perfection in an atmosphere that is genuinely a fog of war and cherry picking 1 example. the point is that statistically speaking your better off with instituitonal media over alternative media.
Institutions will still lead to the right answer over a long time scale Compared to whatever other non-institutional media you look at.
Obviously, in any case consider many sources, weight them appropriately, consider recency of the data, and synthesize knowledge according to bayesian principles.
If you still disagree, what non-institutional sources do you prefer, and what do you think their track record is compared to instituional media, and will I be able to find examples even worse for them than the one you linked.
And the idea the media was misled, instead of a participant in misleading, is rather belied by their lack of their concern about such 'deception.' Were this a case where they were genuinely misled, this would have been grounds for a defacto inquisition. Instead not only did they seem completely unconcerned about that, they actively tried to keep pretending he was killed - even when it became clear he was not.
They never pursued, in the slightest, why they just lied to the American people for months. Sites, such as YouTube, which claim to care about disinformation still host hundreds of videos pretending he was killed. And it's not a cherry picked example. The media has been rife with lies as of late. The issue is that this is one where there's no way to do what you're trying to do, and argue for some sort of plausible deniability.
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. the real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day.
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time: whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.
General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will &c &c. but no details can be relied on. I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. he who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."
Thomas Jefferson, 1807 [1]
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20 years ago this quote would have been quite hyperbolic. Now it's certainly scathing, but it's also completely appropriate and rationale. The current apparent chaos, deception, and disorder we are now entering into is not some novel and unprecedented era. The brief era of peace, trust, and general "sanity" that we "all" grew up in was the novel and unprecedented era. And so as we return to the past, the wisdom of that era becomes more meaningful than ever.
Welcome to the past, my friend!
https://www.founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-...
To take a safe and neutral example, consider quantum computing. It's obtained a vast amount of headlines that consume substantial time and mental energy to assimilate. Yet years after those headlines? The largest number we've factorized using "pure" quantum computing (as opposed to drastically reducing the search space using tricks like cherry picking numbers optimized for rapid solving by Fermat factorization) is 21. Yes, 7 * 3. All of the mental energy, interest, excitement, and general 'consumption' one might have dedicated to quantum computing over the past has largely been a waste of time, energy, effort, and interest.
In cases where people become much more emotionally or mentally invested in the news, it's largely just quite sad. Even more so because the news regularly works to manipulate and exploit people's emotions, as in the case of Sicknick. And they're quite good at it!
Ciao (chow is what you eat).
And while I have become extremely skeptical of the competence of our government and agencies, I can safely assure you they are more than competent enough to at least determine whether somebody was murdered at the Capitol on a given day, or not.
Parent said they look for source material, not alternative media
That strategy has been tainted for a while. Lots of seemingly legitimate comments from nobodies on social media like Reddit are actually from old accounts bought by companies, especially for product reviews (this is an explicit strategy by certain marketers). Even many enthusiastic product recommendations from YouTubers are influenced by sponsorships (oftentimes, even if they disclose that they were paid to make the sponsorship, they then say that they "genuinely" support the product even if it turns out to be defective).
The best way to evaluate a review is more based on examining the content of the review (instead of skipping to the conclusion), rather than who the person is. A person's small blog with in-depth reviews is often very reliable. YouTubers with in-depth reviews (rather than quick product recommendations) are also reliable. Certain review sites are also likely reliable (Wirecutter is okay, though sometimes their recommendations are biased towards ease-of-use rather than getting the best result from a product), but it's best to look at what the reviews actually say (as I agree that other popular review sites are influenced by undisclosed sponsorships).
Journalists argue that too much context makes for grueling reading but it's too powerful of a tool to wield selectively.
Here's a raw event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJuyn0WAYNI
There are a small handful of significant characteristics to notice about the raw event to prove to others you are a sentient human using actively using your music cognition.
Here's a hint: disco chord. (Another hint: the answer isn't merely, "hey, I hear the disco chord now!")
If you can hear the event and articulate it's significance, great!
But if you cannot do that with something as ineffectual as pop music, ask yourself: what could you possibly achieve with raw data and no commentary in a domain with high stakes like epidemiology (for example)?
Edit: typo, clarifications
we've never been in a world where the average person trusts institutions
you're in a tiny usa bubble
established institutions in most of the world are openly corrupt, nepotistic, and kleptocratic, and they always have been, so average people trust their families and traditions, not institutions
people in the usa are not average people
> Notice that it goes off the rails in its answer because it wrote me that in 2023!
This is not a mistake. If the bot is trained with data only up to 2021, then for the bot 2022 is in the future, no matter when you ask, in 2022, 2023 or in 2030.
Maybe a doctorate in PoliSci doesn't really translate to a deep understanding of AI. I'll take the author's opinions on technology with the same gravitas in which they might take my own political opinions.
ChatGPT: Today's date is January 14th, 2023
ChatGPT clearly knows the current date and year.
That part wouldn't be any different with a human. If you locked a person in a cave in 2021, and released him in 2023, he could know that it was 2023 (at least after you told him) without knowing (e.g.) who won the World Series in 2022.
I don’t know if this is because of boilerplate formulations about the cutoff date that aren’t true ChatGPT output, or rather because ChatGPT has a poor understanding of time, as examples shared in previous HN threads have demonstrated.
That's kind of subtle.
However, the answer could be more useful. When you actually ask it “Is Biden president?”, ChatGPT answers “As of my knowledge cutoff in 2021, Joe Biden is the president of the United States, after being inaugurated on January 20, 2021.” So why didn’t it give that information for the first question?
It is a valid criticism that ChatGPT is very inconsistent and often misleading in its representation of what information it is in principle able to provide.
That's a useful problem to tackle. ChatGPT is good at well-written blithering. This shines a spotlight on the fact that society, and academia, tolerates well-written blithering. A sizable percentage of what appears on op-ed pages and in "thinky" magazines of all political persuasions looks like ChatGPT output.
The humanities, as a field, now have to address that. Text on factual subjects which is not grounded to facts or a valid model is junk. That's recognized for technical writing. A "how to" article or a repair manual that tells you to do things that won't work is junk. That's not a criterion that's historically been applied in the humanities.
Now it has to be.
This isn't the end of the world. There was a time when good penmanship was a indicator of content quality. (Look up "Chancellery cursive") Then came typewriters. After that, spelling was considered a useful indicator. Then came spell check, followed by grammar checkers. Those traditional indicators are now dead. Lack of such errors merely indicates that someone has the right tools.
Good automated blithering generators may force a style of writing more like classical newspaper reporting. Who, What, When, Where, Why, under the byline of the reporter who was there. Or like Wikipedia, with "cite needed" all over. That's not a bad thing.
Now we need automated tools to criticize blithering. Ones that check sources and verify that the sources say what was quoted. Automated provenance verification. Checking for false confirmation via multiple routes from the same source. Opinion presented as fact.
This could be healthy for political discourse. I look forward to seeing speeches marked up by automated checking systems. Perhaps in real time.
Ask any student/professor in Humanities on, say X. The obvious response is: it depends on how you define X. Darwin doesn't define what species is in his "On the origin of species". Even today, we don't have a definition of species--of course, there are many definitions, but not all agree to one definition.
One doesn't need a definition to start doing research. However, in humanities, definitions have become fetishes. That's what ChatGPT demonstrates in her examples.
Noticing that most words are ambiguous isn't a bug. It's a commonplace observation that you can repair and move on from. There are a zillion online debates that get started because people interpret words differently (or even adversarially) and don't clarify. It's good to be able to avoid falling into that trap.
In in interactive context, you might ask your conversation partner what they mean by X (if you can't infer it from context). Otherwise, you might pick a definition that seems useful and go with it.
There are definiendum (a term that needs to be defined) and definiens (that does the defining). Definiendum =df definiens
What do these definitions do? Replace a symbol (or a string) with a sentence or set of sentences. How do these help settle disputes?
Let us imagine a scenario: Some Y says that there are no native religions in Africa, except Christianity, Islam and Judaism, because Y defends this based on his theory of religion. Another guy say: Ah, whether native religions exist in Africa depends on your definition of 'religion'. In that case, Y will say: 'religion' =df what does not exist in Africa. Now one can see all absurdities about definitions. One needs a theory about what religion is (in the world) to settle whether native religions exist in Africa/India. Instead of coming up with theories with testable consequences, one engages in definitional quibbles and plausibility arguments.
Now look at plausibility arguments. If someone can argue for P, others can equally argue for ~P (not P). How to pick between P and ~P? Based on people's voting? This is another reason to have theories (as we see in Natural sciences). Now you can see journalists, professors who assign students to write arguments, and students trained by such professors.
For example, his series on the fall of Rome [1]. It's certainly possible to get into silly disputes about what counts as the "Roman empire" and what it means for it to "fall" but he uses this as a starting point to talk about what evidence we have about actually happened. Different historians define things differently depending on their perspectives, but you just accept and deal with that.
Similarly, I could see someone wanting to talk about religion to make some definitions just to be clearer what they're talking about, but then you go on to talk about what people actually do.
Hmm. This feels true outside of universities as well.
We interviewed students at a very expensive local university to do some writing for my startup. We were stunned at the number of them who couldn't string together a 5 paragraph essay that was (1) spelled correctly (!!!!), (2) grammatically correct; and (3) contained coherent, logical thoughts. iirc we interviewed 5, and 3 failed on 2 or more of the previous points.
It appears to be possible to be an undergrad at Santa Clara, presumably with passing grades, while being... not exactly illiterate, but essentially so.
I know this sounds like a grandpa yelling get off my lawn, but our standards were not super high. Correct spelling, correct grammar, and a simple 5 paragraph essay with a clear thesis and supporting arguments.
The term meritocracy has often been by people who have a very clear view on what contribution and reward mean and they typically assume a closed and fair system where everyone already agreed on the meaning of those terms and on the rules on how to evaluate those things on a case by case basis.
To be honest I'm just not sure whether it is a useful term at all outside of games, sports and other controlled systems with predefined and agreed upon rules.
The other good merit function we have is one vote per person, that is how we elect national leaders, this doesn't have some of the abusive loopholes as the capitalist merit function, but instead it has other abusive properties which is why every modern country choose to do a mix of both.
To me the term meritocracy just seems too idealist and it assumes too much in relation to complex and varied systems like economy or politics.
Perhaps this system does not have a built in mechanism for empathy… that’s a stronger argument against it in my view.
Tenure or background based systems are far less desirable - wouldn’t you agree?
I think you hit the nail on the head with empathy. Empathy is contextual, subjective and real. It cannot be pinned down with rules, it’s too humane and powerful for that.
Whatever it’s flaws, here is what I like about meritocracy: it says we should honor and reward those who work hard and encourages the pursuit of merit in individuals.
In contrast, the central comment of DEI is that groups who do relatively well don’t deserve it, that their gains are ill gotten. Members of these groups who work hard should not be rewarded. In fact they deserve less than equal treatment by society.
I am confident that this latter system if followed would result in much worse outcomes, discouraging individuals to work hard. It is an ugly, negative philosophy.
We should honor the strong and hard working and successful, encourage them to share their methods with others so that they might also succeed, help the weak, and ostracize the lazy.
ChatGPT is a bullshitter in the (Frankfurt) sense of having no concern for the truth at all
Suddenly thousands of mediocre low effort papers are no longer sufficient to get a degree.
Many students will have to put in real work. Others won't graduate and have to look at trade school or alternatives.
College degrees will go back to meaning the holder has an advanced, specialized education and no longer be required for low end jobs as a bad filter.
But then college was never meant to create creative geniuses. Only efficient worker bees.
Rare and blessed be the university that isn't a business in the modern age. But show me one, and I will show you a university that isn't on the international rankings.
I've seen a rather disturbing amount of malfeasance by educators, where they award the highest grade to anyone who even moderately puts in an effort. Many educators even waving away their responsibility to accurately determine aptitude and assign grades accurately.
Grade grubbing alone has infiltrated even the most prestigious, and I find it hard to believe that the average student is that much better than their counterparts up to 70 years ago. Even the average student at these institutions. I just don't believe we can trust educators to do their job. I remember arguing back and forth with an educator who believed their only job is to 'educate', where if someone learned something, then they have done their job. I could not believe it. I'd understand if it was from a grade school perspective, but this person was teaching at a university. Another educator on HN no more than a few weeks ago in a related thread said their perspective is to not deal with the students, parents, and administration who will hound them about grades, they said something along the lines of "giving people an A will stop this, and who cares anyway? The best of the best will go on to do research, side projects, etc. anyway".
Speaking towards the article, "Humanities" absolutely deserve their reputation, even among research where they have a perpetual replication crisis, hilarious events such as Sokal and Grievance Studies affairs. If you don't want this reputation, take a hit towards funding, call out poor research, in fact don't allow poor research to even get near publication. Reject more students. It is clear standards are low, raise them, significantly. You can make mistakes, but I hardly if ever see them corrected in a timely fashion. I should not see articles where a US state is considered to be higher in terms of voter suppression compared to North Korea.
https://nautil.us/the-science-behind-blade-runners-voight_ka...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-university-fall-higher-...
I predict the death of the university in our life times.
Some people are panicking now because it’s gotten very easy to figure out that they are the actual bullshitter and they finally need to actually do their jobs properly for the first time in their lives but don’t know how to.
This new generation of AI is going to remove the slow to synthesize part
Socrates: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters...
This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit.
Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
From Plato’s ‘Phaedrus’, 360 B.C.E.
Many people find meaning from other things, like personal connections, that are removed from work that can be accelerated with tools.
Not speaking to it's truth content, but it reads like self important bullshit.