piltdownman

You're basically describing the established pedagogical field of Problem Based Learning, which is around as long as personal computing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem-based_learning

In PBL the teacher adopts a constructivist approach - supporting, guiding, and monitoring the learning process as opposed to delivering a defined curriculum via lectures or seminars.

Agentic AI is arguably a better fit for this as it can scale infinitely to monitor student progress, offer timely feedback on design choices, and adjust difficulty dynamically based on how the student interacts with the problem.

Your main contention is one I'd broadly agree with - that use of Agentic AI for tutoring abdicates intellectual agency, allowing the AI to perform the critical synthesis and analysis that the student should be doing themselves for learning to occur.

The solution, however, is clear: guardrail the AI to promote core pedagogical principles rather than replace learner cognition by mandating things like instructional friction and the strategic fading of AI support as students build competence.

As explored in the paper I link below, by balancing proactive scaffolding with necessary and beneficial cognitive challenges, AI can preserve the productive struggle essential to effective learning.

https://arxiv.org/html/2606.04543v1

(A final thought: have a look at the current field of companies who specialise in turning training materials into engaging interactive experiences for the likes of Compliance and Security training. This is a corporate field now being automated and democratised for use by the average student in Academic pursuits in an on-demand fashion. Appropriate AI tutoring is basically the same concept.)

A calculator is a tool that replaced the slide-rule or Abacus - no one contended the Abacus replaced teaching or teachers. Ditto an iPad which is effectively just a fancy calculator in this context.

Similarly Youtube didn't replace teachers - it afforded remote learning and correspondence courses a new medium for transmission, recording, and playback of teaching.

More to the point none of those were trained on a corpus containing the history of human pedagogy, were capable of inference, or of generating dynamic learning resources based on best-practice models with inherent self-correction and pedagogical reinforcement mechanisms.

That's not true in the EU anyway.

Under EU Commission Regulation (EU) 2019/2023, washing machines sold in the European Union must include a mandatory standardized program called "Eco 40-60".

The whole point is to enforce strict legal limits on maximum water and electricity consumption per cycle based on the machine's rated capacity. This it the reason they tend to run for hours - it uses less water and energy than a standard cotton cycle by having longer soak times and using less electricity to heat the water.

In 1995 it took 94 litres of water and 350 kWh/a for a cycle in the average EU washing machine. These measures, amongst others, reduced that to 36 l/cycle and 96 kWh/a in 2020 and an expected 30 l/cycle by 2030.

https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/...

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

Much respect for the prompt response, humility, and frank disclosure.

Anecdotally from an Irish dermatologist - the majority of her clients under 30 are holiday sunburn casualties from either Iberian waterparks or activities like snorkeling/skin-diving in SEA. The ones over 30 are basically all farmers.

She has her entire family wearing SPF20 24/365, constantly reminding me 'it's the overcast days that actually do the long-term damage'.

The Peruvian Andes has the most extreme UV index in the world due to being 10,000ft+ above sea level and on the most susceptible line of latitude. That being said, even with the atmospheric deficit, the max peak recorded by ground and local meteorological observations was 18. Can't seem to find a citation for 2x Sydneys max (14/15).

Indeed looking at Oceania; Sydney, Perth, and Auckland all hit 14/15 regularly in the Summer months. Auckland in particular has ~40% more UV than comparable northern latitudes.

Given the genetics and immigration is heavily skewed in favour of the British and Irish diaspora, it's about 3x the UV Index of what the UK and Ireland see. Dunno where 10x came from.

The likes of Sir Walter Scott, Peter Ackroyd, Stephen King, Tim Ferris, Robert Greene, Tucker Max, Catherine Asaro, Neil Gaiman, Charlaine Harris, Nancy Holder etc... all rely heavily on research assistants in various capacities including proofreading.

Honest question - where does an Author like the above place in your authenticity framework?

Meta go one further and literally spell it out with an equivalent example of advertising for an equivalent event in their own published guidelines on Slide - in this case a 'Civil Rights Exhibition' - as eligible to run in the EU.

https://efa-net.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/META_EU_Update...

This was either an automated filter set to 'anti-woke' or some childish attempt at malicious compliance, or both. Thousands of such plays are advertised on numerous platforms across Europe every year without incident or comment.

Completely wrong.

As per Meta's own guidelines, they simply require increased authenticity and transparency to run social issue ads that seek to influence public opinion through discussion, debate or advocacy for or against important topics, like health and civil and social rights.

Meta literally spell it out with an equivalent example of advertising for an equivalent event - in this case a 'Civil Rights Exhibition' - on Slide 6 as eligible to run in the EU.

https://efa-net.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/META_EU_Update...

Completely wrong.

As per Meta's own guidelines, they simply require increased authenticity and transparency to run social issue ads that seek to influence public opinion through discussion, debate or advocacy for or against important topics, like health and civil and social rights.

Meta literally spell it out with an equivalent example of advertising for an equivalent event - in this case a 'Civil Rights Exhibition' - on Slide 6 as eligible to run in the EU.

https://efa-net.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/META_EU_Update...

Like they've famously obeyed GDPR?

Meta aren't 'forced' to do anything other than treat the fines imposed by their lack of adherence to the laws of the territories they operate in as a BAU cost. Meta's profits run roughly the same as the GDP of Paraguay ($60.46 billion in 2025) - i.e. that Country's total value added by an economy through wages, profits, and taxes. Their revenue is on track to exceed the Ukrainian GDP next year.

This year Meta will pay up to $16.7bn to settle landmark US legal actions as result of not obeying US law, reporting $2.4 billion in legal fees in Q2 alone.

The sum total of the EU fines issued (read: appealed and not collected) likely won't even exceed Metas legal fees for the 2026 calendar year; i.e.:

* April 2025 - €200m (DMA "consent or pay" advertising model)

* November 2024 - €797.72m (Antitrust re:Facebook Marketplace)

* September 2024 - €90m (Storage of user passwords in plaintext)

* May 2023 - €1.2b (Unlawful EU-U.S. user data transfers)

* January 2023 - €390m (Forcing personalized ads via terms of service)

* December 2022 - €251m (2018 data breach and system design lapses)

* November 2022 - €265 (Inadequate protection against data scraping)

* September 2022 - €405m (Instagram children's privacy)

This comes less than a year after Google privately tried to convince the Irish Government to lead a pushback against data protection laws at European Union level, having been warned regarding their processing of users’ location data unlawfully and unfairly through three of its features.

https://www.irishtimes.com/technology/big-tech/2025/10/30/da...

Is there a viable solution for YouTube on a Google TV nowadays? They've started doing 60 second ads which are absolutely egregious.

Lol at 'winning' a GDPR case against Google on a technical point. My first thought was 'Oh Sweet Summer Child' and realising that Max Schrems and NOYB aren't as well known as I originally thought.

https://noyb.eu/en https://schre.ms/

Under “conduct requirements” imposed by the CMA in June, UK websites are able to activate an opt-out to stop Google from scraping their content to power search features such as AI overviews - very similar conceptually to the news law passed in Australia.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-56163550

When you find the Technocratic City on a Hill let me know

// To counter those phenomena of filthy manipulation we need an educated society

At a macro level, the 'educated society' _are_ the manipulators.

// So, the only way out of the general problem you mention is Education

With the curriculum derived from who and what? 'Do Your Own Research' is the clarion-call of the prejudice-affirming ersatz-autodidact online.

Byuu and McMaster decapped all the SNES ones with amazing write-ups a number of years ago.

> Whatever you do, you have to do it properly. Of course guardrails that are defeatist and that impact on fundamental rights are unacceptable.

Agreed.

> Not really: visit the room where the Mona Lisa is and avoid the unwanted rooms. It is not sensible to impede access to the Mona Lisa because of the "knockoff spiderman" exhibits and performers.

The problem is the access is already impeded - the unsolicited actor in this case manifesting via UI/UX dark patterns, SEO, keyword manipulation, targeted advertising and so forth.

> The people voted wrong so we must censor or put a gate in front of social media. Next year, we'll simply retire voting entirely because we just can't trust people to make the right choice. This is democracy TM.

You must be confused. I'm referring to the 13 Russian indicted nationals and three Russian entities charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with the 2016 United States national elections; specifically their illegal use of social media "to sow political discord, including actions that supported the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump and disparaged his opponent, Hillary Clinton."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russi...

This is of course an aside from the other electoral interference scandal that resulted in the liquidation of Cambridge Analytica and a $5 billion fine for Facebook.

> Of course if I asked you who you voted for or why you would probably say that you made the right choice based on solid evidence but the people who did not vote like you, no way, they were just hoodwinked or tricked. Condescending much?

I'm not an American Citizen so can't vote, but that's irrelevant to the overall point regarding political literacy and comprehension amongst the greater American public.

At a binary level, 40% of Americans still do not believe that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election. This is not a safe fundamental basis from which to perpetuate an able democracy. More worryingly, roughly 23% of U.S. adults fully or mostly agree with core QAnon tenets, such as the idea that a secret group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles controls the government and media.

As Steve Bannon ably noted it was the press, rather than Democrats, that represented Trump's primary adversary and "the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit." As such, it would be deeply condescending, not to mention disingenuous, to not actively decry the state of media literacy in the American populace and the extent of social media disinformation they are subjected to.

>Of course it is, you are simply justifying the censorship because it suits your purpose at this present time. Protecting kids, stopping terrorism and keeping the population safe are always the same reasons given by governments on this planet to reduce the civil liberties of the population.

I really am not, as evident from my post-history. If anything I'm a free-speech absolutist in the Voltarian sense, and I have many issues with the EU on the extent and scope of this and many of their other societal initiatives. I can support the ethos and intent of such legislation without necessarily endorsing their mechanism of operation.

Put simply, I feel there is a moral and ethical necessity to ensure that the vulnerable aren't taken advantage of en masse to the detriment of their wellbeing. The world can't afford another Pizzagate scenario, particularly after the events of Jan 8th.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory https://www.foxnews.com/us/pizzagate-gunman-refuses-to-dismi...

I have no truck with moral hand-wringing masquerading as ethics. I stand by the quote often attributed to Twayne, "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it".

I simply don't conflate safeguarding the vulnerable with restricting an adult's rights, but at some point every child needs to take their parents car keys away before they inevitably cause a serious incident.

Case in point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat_Simulator

Nonwithstanding the human fascination with simulation and simulacra, Airplanes and Air Travel represent a fascinating cultural touchpoint with much insight and depth to plumb depending on what aspects you simulate.

For example, think of a history class charting flight from the Wright Brothers, through the Golden Age of Aviation, right to the present day. Even showing the drastic differences pre and post 9/11 by reference to the processes and experiences of commercial airline travel would represent a worthy pedagogical endeavour. We do a lot more to achieve a lot less in terms of making 'history come alive' currently.

Social media has influenced at least one Presidential Election and the Brexit Campaign to the point where educated adults were manipulated into voting against their own interests.

If educated adults in possession of their full critical faculties can be hoodwinked to this extent, then surely it behooves us as a society to put in some consensus based guardrails to protect our most vulnerable.

This is not an attempt to censor or otherwise diminish anyone's intellectual or cultural journey, but simply an acknowledgement of the tragedy of the (media) commons. It's the equivalent of going to see the Mona Lisa, and being forced to dodge some weirdo running around the Louvre in a knock-off Spiderman costume, screaming about men in women's sports.

Who ever wants to manipulate the user using their PII and associated metadata - Retail, Marketers, Political and Security Apparatus... the world is your dystopian oyster in that regard.

Why not? Plenty people already use a dedicated '2FA' phone for Work under BYOD policies when they don't want to install any 'work' software on their 'personal' phone.

It's LucidSpark for non-masochists. It's Parabol for power-users. It's possibly the greatest 'roll your own' tool for workshopping and blue-sky planning to hit mass-appeal without feature and subscription bloat.

Incredible reponsiveness, UI/UX, and embeddable rich media functionality. Was like Hypercard mixed with whiteboarding and an incredibly traversable canvas.

What did the Medicis or Guggengheim's do other than be rich and idle at the right time and place in history?

The contemporary prompt is a port for patronage, not a point of inflection - with a similarly ludicrous symbiotic relationship defined by impression management on both sides. Same as it ever was.

If fumbling through 'hot cross buns' on the recorder is roughly analogous to recitation of multiplication tables, then Gould playing Shostakovich can certainly be referenced as one would the Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Certainly more effort has been put into exploring the relationship between... Bach and Godel than your surmise suggests; SHRDLU, Toy of Man's Designing!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach

The difference being that the role of Engineer wasn't conceived as a layer of friction between consumers and their statutory rights to the point where a U.S. Senate subcommittee probe (Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Disaster Management) and state-level legal crackdowns were necessary to try and address what constituted systematic fraud by property/casualty insurance corporations.

https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-chairs-hearing-that-exp...

The California Department of Insurance characterized State Farm's tactics as "burying survivors in red tape at the worst moments of their lives"

https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0400-news/0100-press-releases/2...

Indeed, some of the core violations could be simply mandated as part of the inviolable system guardrails of an LLM - e.g. failed to begin investigating claims within 15 days, failed to accept or deny claims within 40 days, and failed to pay accepted claims or provide written notice of the need for additional time within 30 days, as required by law.

And at the end of the day, whatever weighting issues an LLM for Insurance Claim Adjustment has, it certainly won't steal the money and run off to a Casino with it

https://www.nicb.org/news/regional-news/broward-insurance-ad...

A lot of which isn't under the purview of Dublin City Council - what you're talking about is the M50 ring, and the purview of the other 3 councils - Fingal (e.g. Swords and Malahide) South Dublin County Council (Tallaght and Clondalkin), and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council (self-explanatory).

In terms of where they're talking about, it's basically the area between the canals - i.e. Dublin City 'proper' - Smithfield/Stoneybatter, The Liberties/Coombe, Christchurch/Temple Bar, and IFSC/Grand Canal Dock. Far more walkable and inundated with history and sites of huge cultural significance even compared to Paris or Amsterdam, and a different experience completely compared to the impersonal and often dangerous nature of London for the pedestrian.

The vast majority of people working in the CBD are commuting in on the LUAS Green and Red lines, or the DART/Train into Tara/Connolly. Whatever about Dublin Bus, these are perfectly good and regular public transport options.

Well, yes. Not a huge breadth of research, but all conclusions support my statements above. Two such relevant and recent studies:

Evaluation of an Artificial Intelligence and Online Psychotherapy Initiative to Improve Access and Efficiency in an Ambulatory Psychiatric Setting https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12316677/

//The overall wait time to receive care decreased by 71.43% due to this initiative. Additionally, participants received psychological care within three weeks after completing the triage module. In 71.29% of the cases, the artificial intelligence-assisted triage program and the psychiatrist suggested the same treatment intensity and psychotherapy program. Additionally, 63.29% of participants allocated to lower-intensity treatment plans by the AI-assisted triage program did not require psychiatric consultation later.

Potential of ChatGPT in youth mental health emergency triage: Comparative analysis with clinicians

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40673126/

//This study suggests that GPT-4 models could be leveraged as a support tool in mental health telephone triage, particularly for psychiatric emergencies. Although response variability across iterations was minimal, most discrepancies in admission decisions were identified as false positives, reflecting that GPT Models may have a tendency to over-triage relative to clinician judgment. While findings are promising, further research is required to confirm clinical relevance.

A few others that may be of interest. The results from Raita et al.’s study that used a large dataset of adult ED visits revealed that four ML models outperformed the Emergency Severity Index (ESI) in forecasting outcomes of critical care and hospitalization, with higher discriminatory abilities and reduced under-triaged patients in levels three to five of ESI triage

The rest of the studies below reinforc the superiority of developed ML models over conventional triage systems - e.g. by demonstrating an AUROC of 0.991 for predicting critical outcomes in pediatric ED visitors, or another study showing LLMs surpassing the performance of the ESI and vital sign triggers

- Yilanli M, McKay I, Jackson DI, Sezgin E Large Language Models for Individualized Psychoeducational Tools for Psychosis: a cross‐sectional study. 2024.07.26.24311075. Preprint at medRxiv. 2024.

-Hwang S, Lee B: Machine learning-based prediction of critical illness in children visiting the emergency department. PLoS One. 2022, 17:e0264184. 10.1371/journal.pone.0264184

-Joseph JW, Leventhal EL, Grossestreuer AV, et al.: Deep-learning approaches to identify critically Ill patients at emergency department triage using limited information. J Am Coll Emerg Physicians Open. 2020,

-Liu Y, Gao J, Liu J, et al.: Development and validation of a practical machine-learning triage algorithm for the detection of patients in need of critical care in the emergency department. Sci Rep. 2021, 11:24044.

-Raita Y, Goto T, Faridi MK, Brown DF, Camargo CA Jr, Hasegawa K: Emergency department triage prediction of clinical outcomes using machine learning models. Crit Care. 2019,

-Wolff P, Rios SA, Grana M: Setting up standards: a methodological proposal for pediatric triage machine learning model construction based on clinical outcomes. Expert Syst Appl. 2019, 138:12.

-Ivanov O, Wolf L, Brecher D, et al.: Improving Ed emergency Severity Index acuity assignment using machine learning and clinical natural language processing. J Emerg Nurs. 2021, 47:265-278.e7.