4 ms·

Generated: If one examines textual theory, one is faced with a choice: either reject Marxism or conclude that the raison d’etre of the reader is deconstruction

by setra 10y ago

Generated: If one examines textual theory, one is faced with a choice: either reject Marxism or conclude that the raison d’etre of the reader is deconstruction. It could be said that the subject is interpolated into a postsemantic nationalism that includes language as a paradox. Lyotard uses the term ‘Marxism’ to denote the failure of neoconceptualist class.

Erik816 10y ago
Pretty sure you could get at least a passing grade from an average humanities course by just copying and pasting sentences like this, depending on the school. I say that as a philosophy/political science grad.
- andrepd 10y ago
  People often say that sort of thing, but I wonder if those claims were ever rigorously tested. Did someone ever try to test what kind of grades they got at humanities courses with made up gibberish answers like this?
  - mcphilip 10y ago
    Depends on the skill level of the grader, I suppose, but phrases like "postsemantic nationalism" are a red flag to me as an armchair philosopher with some knowledge of the history of postmodernist thought.
    - oceante 10y ago
      A trivial google search will weed out these papers. They wouldn't make it past even the least skilled graders at any institution I'm familiar with... and if they did I think it would be the student who was really harmed, not the field.
    - CalChris 10y ago
      I just love that phrase postsemantic nationalism. So I Googled it and found one legit hit and I can't really tell if it's legit. http://blacky2poe.w.interiowo.pl/realismandneost/theabsurdityofn.html http://blacky2poe.w.interiowo.pl/realismandneost/theabsurdit... But it reminds me of what in chess is called a computer move, something which is contrary to the way even super-gm's think but nevertheless a good move.
  - rokosbasilisk 10y ago
    I can confirm somewhat. I used a markov chain generator for a couple of 101 level english classes, with filters to adapt for my personal style like word choice restriction. I also gave a few passes manually to correct and cleanup things that were too ridiculous.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 10y ago
    Well, the Sokal Affair [1] is famous for getting just such a paper accepted at a peer-reviewed postmodernist academic journal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
  - FabHK 10y ago
    You're familiar with the Sokal hoax [1]? Physicist Alan Sokal got a non-sensical paper [2] with the wonderful title Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity accepted and published in the journal Social Text. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair [2] http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/trans...
    - andrepd 10y ago
      I'm familiar with one instance of such a hoax being successful, yes. I'm not quite convinced it is feasible on a large scale, and that the world of humanities/liberal arts research is so ridiculous as this kinds of anecdotes paint it. I'd be curious to see this is the case.
- SkyMarshal 10y ago
  Possibly. One of the pretexts of postmodernism is that no privileged reading of a text exists, not even the author's. Thus the reader of a text can interpret it in any way that is internally consistent with the rest of postmodernism's rules and norms. So it doesn't really matter what you intend it to say, as long as the grader can and does interpret something consistent from it.
  - jnicholasp 10y ago
    > So it doesn't really matter what you intend it to say, as long as the grader can and does interpret something consistent from it. Which, for any sufficiently complex and ambiguous sentence, any motivated reader will always be able to do. I won't speculate on how large a percentage it is, but some percentage of these papers are straight up Rorschach ink blots, even if the authors themselves believed they were writing something coherent and intelligible.
oceante 10y ago
Except it's not generated. A simple google search [1] reveals there's at least one paper out there that contains a structurally identical phrase [2]. The "Dada Engine" just takes real papers and substitutes nouns and pronouns. A similar strategy could probably be used on most any academic paper. But it does appeal to those who would never attempt to read these papers in the first place. [1]https://www.google.com/search?q=If+one+examines+textual+theory%2C+one+is+faced+with+a+choice%3A+either+reject+Marxism+or+conclude+that+the+raison+d%E2%80%99etre+of+the+reader+is+deconstruction.&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=If+one+examines+textual+theo... [2] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj4mYLPrv7QAhUE8CYKHcNsAHgQFggtMAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpapers.ssrn.com%2Fsol3%2FDelivery.cfm%3Fabstractid%3D2501450&usg=AFQjCNEPKHoP7xiAM-5QwPmywteUB4WCQg https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
- jsnathan 10y ago
  Pretty sure those are all generated. Seems to be a trend of people reposting these throughout the Internet without explanation.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  > The "Dada Engine" just takes real papers and substitutes nouns and pronouns. A similar strategy could probably be used on most any academic paper. I dare you to do this on e.g. a Physics paper. This doesn't mean badly written Physics papers don't exist, but unless it's an awful paper or you aren't familiar with that field, the statistics and data analysis should stand on it's own. So you always have this fallback. Of course they aren't infallible either, but it's one extra BS detection layer. For social science, extra BS detection could be had via reference checking. Unfortunately, this is effort and tedious, in part because almost all papers are long-winded and hard to read. So instead, form/style/reputation of cited authors/buzz-words is used. All of these are easy to fake. I don't know what the solution is. I've seen in Philosophy, students would mark text with logic symbols. Then, you can see a bit more easily if "therefore" really means something follows. Maybe that kind of rigorousness is needed, in an explicit form? But you're right in that it's mostly laziness, and the random generators don't hold up to too much scrutiny. It's more that it's a mirror, a way of pointing out the shortcomings of the field. Which is why it's funny.
CalChris 10y ago
It got a B+! https://www.gradeflex.com/graded/5856d8d3de6a2008572d2baf https://www.gradeflex.com/graded/5856d8d3de6a2008572d2baf
EdiX 10y ago
This makes more sense to me than all I have read of Lacan.

by setra 10y ago

Erik816 10y ago

Pretty sure you could get at least a passing grade from an average humanities course by just copying and pasting sentences like this, depending on the school. I say that as a philosophy/political science grad.

andrepd 10y ago
People often say that sort of thing, but I wonder if those claims were ever rigorously tested. Did someone ever try to test what kind of grades they got at humanities courses with made up gibberish answers like this?
- mcphilip 10y ago
  Depends on the skill level of the grader, I suppose, but phrases like "postsemantic nationalism" are a red flag to me as an armchair philosopher with some knowledge of the history of postmodernist thought.
  - oceante 10y ago
    A trivial google search will weed out these papers. They wouldn't make it past even the least skilled graders at any institution I'm familiar with... and if they did I think it would be the student who was really harmed, not the field.
  - CalChris 10y ago
    I just love that phrase postsemantic nationalism. So I Googled it and found one legit hit and I can't really tell if it's legit. http://blacky2poe.w.interiowo.pl/realismandneost/theabsurdityofn.html http://blacky2poe.w.interiowo.pl/realismandneost/theabsurdit... But it reminds me of what in chess is called a computer move, something which is contrary to the way even super-gm's think but nevertheless a good move.
- rokosbasilisk 10y ago
  I can confirm somewhat. I used a markov chain generator for a couple of 101 level english classes, with filters to adapt for my personal style like word choice restriction. I also gave a few passes manually to correct and cleanup things that were too ridiculous.
- SAI_Peregrinus 10y ago
  Well, the Sokal Affair [1] is famous for getting just such a paper accepted at a peer-reviewed postmodernist academic journal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
- FabHK 10y ago
  You're familiar with the Sokal hoax [1]? Physicist Alan Sokal got a non-sensical paper [2] with the wonderful title Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity accepted and published in the journal Social Text. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair [2] http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/trans...
  - andrepd 10y ago
    I'm familiar with one instance of such a hoax being successful, yes. I'm not quite convinced it is feasible on a large scale, and that the world of humanities/liberal arts research is so ridiculous as this kinds of anecdotes paint it. I'd be curious to see this is the case.
SkyMarshal 10y ago
Possibly. One of the pretexts of postmodernism is that no privileged reading of a text exists, not even the author's. Thus the reader of a text can interpret it in any way that is internally consistent with the rest of postmodernism's rules and norms. So it doesn't really matter what you intend it to say, as long as the grader can and does interpret something consistent from it.
- jnicholasp 10y ago
  > So it doesn't really matter what you intend it to say, as long as the grader can and does interpret something consistent from it. Which, for any sufficiently complex and ambiguous sentence, any motivated reader will always be able to do. I won't speculate on how large a percentage it is, but some percentage of these papers are straight up Rorschach ink blots, even if the authors themselves believed they were writing something coherent and intelligible.

oceante 10y ago

Except it's not generated. A simple google search [1] reveals there's at least one paper out there that contains a structurally identical phrase [2]. The "Dada Engine" just takes real papers and substitutes nouns and pronouns. A similar strategy could probably be used on most any academic paper. But it does appeal to those who would never attempt to read these papers in the first place. [1]https://www.google.com/search?q=If+one+examines+textual+theory%2C+one+is+faced+with+a+choice%3A+either+reject+Marxism+or+conclude+that+the+raison+d%E2%80%99etre+of+the+reader+is+deconstruction.&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=If+one+examines+textual+theo... [2] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj4mYLPrv7QAhUE8CYKHcNsAHgQFggtMAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpapers.ssrn.com%2Fsol3%2FDelivery.cfm%3Fabstractid%3D2501450&usg=AFQjCNEPKHoP7xiAM-5QwPmywteUB4WCQg https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

jsnathan 10y ago
Pretty sure those are all generated. Seems to be a trend of people reposting these throughout the Internet without explanation.
guitarbill 10y ago
> The "Dada Engine" just takes real papers and substitutes nouns and pronouns. A similar strategy could probably be used on most any academic paper. I dare you to do this on e.g. a Physics paper. This doesn't mean badly written Physics papers don't exist, but unless it's an awful paper or you aren't familiar with that field, the statistics and data analysis should stand on it's own. So you always have this fallback. Of course they aren't infallible either, but it's one extra BS detection layer. For social science, extra BS detection could be had via reference checking. Unfortunately, this is effort and tedious, in part because almost all papers are long-winded and hard to read. So instead, form/style/reputation of cited authors/buzz-words is used. All of these are easy to fake. I don't know what the solution is. I've seen in Philosophy, students would mark text with logic symbols. Then, you can see a bit more easily if "therefore" really means something follows. Maybe that kind of rigorousness is needed, in an explicit form? But you're right in that it's mostly laziness, and the random generators don't hold up to too much scrutiny. It's more that it's a mirror, a way of pointing out the shortcomings of the field. Which is why it's funny.

CalChris 10y ago

It got a B+! https://www.gradeflex.com/graded/5856d8d3de6a2008572d2baf https://www.gradeflex.com/graded/5856d8d3de6a2008572d2baf

EdiX 10y ago

This makes more sense to me than all I have read of Lacan.