Conversation

QC
@QiaochuYuan
GPT-3 is literally a bullshit engine. it does not have a concept of words as referring to things; it plays games with words *only*, pure syntax, no semantics. literally the thing it is optimizing for when it produces text can be condensed to "put words here that sound good"
7
50
307
QC
@QiaochuYuan
if GPT-3 can answer the essay questions you've assigned as homework then you've learned that your essay questions were optimized for producing bullshit, in the specific sense of words that sound good but are indifferent to their own truth or falsehood
7
97
434
QC
@QiaochuYuan
spending a decade training students to orient towards writing as mainly about bullshit is not the profound education in the humanities some people want it to be. any actual writing ability i have now i trained on MSN messenger, livejournal, forums, social media
1
17
196
QC
@QiaochuYuan
@sashachapin
only has a job as a writing coach because school has so thoroughly destroyed so many people's relationships to writing. people who have entire books in them live in fear of Doing The Homework Wrong
Quote Tweet
Sasha Chapin
@sashachapin
·
Replying to @QiaochuYuan
I’ve worked with at least three people who are Pulitzer level talents just quietly wondering whether they should disturb the universe
1
7
136
QC
@QiaochuYuan
writing in lowercase is magic because it doesn't activate the Uppercase Context. Uppercase is for School and Work; in other words, it's writing someone else is forcing you to do. lowercase writing is *consensual*
Image
Image
Quote Tweet
rob hardy
@ungatedcreative
·
i wrote a thing it's about how writing in lowercase has done magical, inexplicable things for my creative output ungated.media/article/lowerc
Show this thread
6
38
205
QC
@QiaochuYuan
in this way i, for one, welcome our machine overlords. if GPT-4 destroys the essay, or the concept of homework entirely, i will cheer and applaud raucously. we do not need them and we never did
2
18
186
Alex Gregory
@alsnotepad
By the logic of this thread, there's no point in teaching children basic maths either. Assignments can be valuable because they help students *practice* skills they are not *yet* able to do in a way that brings new value.
2
2
Andy Matuschak
@andy_matuschak
Yes, you're right. I won't speak for QC, but my complaint about the essay is that it *pretends* to be a venue for authentic intellectual engagement (what do you really think about this literature?) while cynically existing for practice. It's the false pretense I don't like.
1
5
Alex Gregory
@alsnotepad
Genuine q: What would it look like to set an essay task that was unambiguously for genuine engagement? Or unambiguously for practice?
1