CountryBreakfast

It's true. But I am sick to my stomach listening to conservatives taking the high road and feeling sorry for him. Why don't people want to destroy their enemies suddenly? It's like they loved him the whole time and all their death threats were just in good partisan fun. I don't want the left to end up in such a humiliating position that we can't wish harm and pain on this man. Not because it is salvation but because dignity is at stake and I want revenge for his life of crimes of I can't get justice.

I hear them all repeated by professionals and academics constantly. It's so exhausting.

Someone smiling at me while giving me the most dehumanizing, dismissive advice imaginable... I bet this person uses the term "nuerospicy" but refrains from saying the r-word.

Joe's pain is necessary and meaningful.

It's not hard in the slightest. It's embarrassing to have to read this insanity. There is no amount of suffering this man should be shielded from and humanity gains nothing by lamenting his torment.

Stop making a fool of yourself. He should be dead. He should have been dead decades ago.

AI would be used for the advancement of humanity

I think this is a bit overplayed. It's the same argument as focusing on its potential utility over how it's actually used. Sure under absolutely perfect conditions, the details of which are unknown yet assumed, AI could become more useful. So what? Such conditions will never arise from "progress." We already had the kind of education that is most effective and most grounded long before anyone gave a damn about progress.

Further, idk why people treat education as some monolith. I suspect it is because of the School as a technology being so effective at determining and managing "correct" epistemologies and so the medium is the message or something. Certainly there are problems, but the truth is many educaters and academics already know all of this. They know the problems at schools and universities and many even have some practices that bare fruit regardless. No one knows these issues better. We must dispel this notion of teachers as fools lost in their own ass and students as infallible and lacking any responsibility for their education. We paint students as incompetent children when we blame anything and everything but somehow exempt the decisions they make. Sure there is very important context to this, but in any education system students have to put in the work and they have to meet teachers expectations just as teachers must meet students needs. Regardless of class context, "I cheated because capitalism" still makes you a failure with useless ethics and a worthless education. Every breath I take is tyranized by capital. So what? Is this the attitude a union or party should have about education? That expecting it's members to take responsibility for their education is "idividualizing" the problem? My job is to make students successful and awaken them to understanding themselves as scholars and intellectuals that can see how power impacts their lives and shapes their identity, not give in to every excuse to justify our collective failures and justify AI use.

The problem was: I, along with many other kids at the time, felt alienated from the work – it didn’t seem absolutely necessary to know this work through and through due to how it would translate to your career path later, which if you don’t have any idea what you wanted to do after school or no use for math above basic arithmetic, most people were fine just using a calculator and I know many people today who still can’t do basic calculations on the fly like counting their money or tipping percentages.

Yes solving math problems is masterbatory and can feel ungrounded in anything you do. So is practicing a musical instrument, or any other number of things that very well may be worth doing. But also there is just a lack of perspective among students due to lacking guidance through metacognition. It's not impossible to teach in a way that highlights how and why what you teach is needed or important. Students often have to be broken out of their neoliberal assumptions that if something won't guarantee them a career that education has no value and can't be grounded in anything. The whole world is seemingly against ethic studies and paints it as useless, and of course students often believe it before their first thoughts on the matter.

But what does this have to do with anything? Using AI doesn't fill the gap, it doesn't ground students, it does not add any meaning or practically to your studies. It only intensifies these things.

In my experience this was more common 10+ years ago than it is today. Memorizing things temporarily can only get you so far. The problem is that grade inflation means you need to make an A or A+ or you just don't get it at all. Getting a B means you are very mediocre and getting a C means you need to retake the course or explore a different field imo. If you are only really able to articulate that you understand 80% then you only know enough to be wrong in new creative ways.

I'm worried enough about good students falling into a state department trap, but these mediocre students will destroy us all one day.

I don't differentiate cheating from avoiding learning. Students get caught and fess up all the time, so it's possibly even more pervasive than I believe.

I teach things like global political economy and ethnic studies. If a sizable portion of students are using generative AI to fudge their way through these topics, then we couldn't be more fucked. We can only get more fascist from here.

And AI just compounds on other issues, like our political climate where people basically piss their pants because heaven forbid someone ask you to read 30 pages about enslavement. Not only do they not want to read but they are fairly often very racist and anti-intellectual. How do you address that when everything you can ask them to do to improve their engagement can be fudged?

Id say that is the primary issue. But even so, AI is basically making education a shitshow. I know people go on about it's utility, but it's only added misery to the parts of my life I care about most. Billionaires aren't making my students cheat at the end of the day.

For a long time when I worked in restaurants and the boss would start blasting us with "faster!!!" we just all go "working hard, working hard" with no added enthusiasm or energy.

It has too much function to take it as a dismissive reply... unless it's obvious.

For work I use it all the time to confirm I got an email. I can see how it may ruffle feathers, but my other colleagues don't even confirm they got the message. Using the thumbs up also helps me organize what I need to do because half it is just in emails I gave a thumbs up to.

If I just replied 👍 to this post, I can see how that would be bullshit but that's not how Im using it.

Its kinda like saying "sir" or "ma'am." Some people are too good for it imo and some people may have good reasons to feel uneasy about it, but to me it is respectful to use it as long as you aren't clearly a shit head.