6 ms·

At some point the buck stops. It might be when they are failing college classes. It might be when they can’t get into grad school. Or it might be their first jo

At some point the buck stops. It might be when they are failing college classes. It might be when they can’t get into grad school. Or it might be their first job interview, or their first job. Eventually someone who can’t read or add simple numbers just can’t succeed at a professional level. Schools can claim whatever they want, water down grades, eliminate standardized tests. Eventually reality hits. Once you send an email and it’s grammatically moronic and full of typos, the jig is up.

programmer_dude 4y ago
GPT chat to the rescue!
- WalterBright 4y ago
  One way to tell if it's an AI chatbot is if it doesn't make any spelling or grammatical errors.
  - echelon 4y ago
    For now. Don't give them any clues, Walter. Or put them in the same room as the email spammers.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      I'm getting AI chatbot spam phone calls regularly now. I can distinguish them immediately. But I know they're going to get a lot better, fast.
      - tony69 4y ago
        This is easily solvable by requiring an ID to obtain a phone number.. and any additional phone number is taxed or something of the sort.
  - programmer_dude 4y ago
    TIL I am an AI chatbot. :)
WalterBright 4y ago
Not really. One of the local elementary schools put out a sandwich board every day that announced to the line of SUVs "Please Pull Foreword". I don't think anyone ever noticed.
- lgessler 4y ago
  Or nobody ever cared, since forming an opinion of someone or an organization solely based on whether they can reproduce standardized spellings is myopic at best.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Having an egregious misspelling on a prominent sign in letters 8 inches high that every student sees going into the building every day reflects what on the school? That the school does not care about education. After all, if I find a misspelling on a headline on one of my web pages, I fix it. Wouldn't you?
    - lgessler 4y ago
      It is true that it will make one's passage through society easier if they are able to reproduce standardized spellings. Insofar as this sign is a signal that teachers are failing to equip students for life in that way, sure, it's concerning. Spelling is different from other domains of education like mathematics, however: an explanation of "correct spelling" is not to be found in natural law, but rather in a Katamari ball of historical contingencies of chance, intervention, and everything in between. (Why'd we keep the _-ough_ in words like _through_? What if the Simplified Spelling Board had succeeded in its aims and totally reformed English spellings? What if Scots, not the English, had had linguistic dominion over the United States? Etc.) Moreover, in large part because "correct spelling" is derived from one very peculiar and privileged variety of English that not everyone speaks, your ease of access to correct spelling is going to be facilitated or hindered by facts about your SES, race, and ethnicity. This is why I don't really care when I see a spelling error anywhere, unless genuine confusion results, or stakes are high enough that adherence to a rigid standard must be maintained. In many ways, nothing is gained from imparting it to a small child compared to something like basic arithmetic. And moreover, in some contexts I think it's not unfair to call an evaluative insistence on standardized spelling a vehicle for linguistic and therefore ethnic chauvinism. I understand your original reaction--having proper spelling is a display of fitness to teach, in the same way that, say, having won some Kaggle tournaments is a display of fitness to do data science. But spelling is a rather peculiar thing to insist on, and I'd have been much more interested if the teachers had been writing out multiplication tables on sandwich boards. Spelling is sociologically thorny, and there are bigger fish to fry.
sanxiyn 4y ago
> Once you send an email and it's grammatically moronic and full of typos, the jig is up. No? That's what QuillBot is for, and QuillBot, like, exists. It's already the world we live in. Anyone for whom English is a foreign language, anyone with sense anyway, already is using QuillBot before sending an email.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  Well, based on the amount of elementary grammar and spelling mistakes that we see in social media sites, people are not learning anything from these tools. And even a grammatically correct email might be confusing, etc.
  - sanxiyn 4y ago
    That's mostly because people don't care about their social media posts. What I am saying is that it is demonstrably the case, that writing with stupid grammar and spelling mistakes is not a problem for working professionally. Tools exist that can fix it adequately, and people actually use them.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      I found out, when I started using spell checkers, that my spelling isn't as good as I thought it was. Embarrassing.
awaythrow321 4y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Ztynovovk 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - the_third_wave 4y ago
    [flagged]
- acapybara 4y ago
  Only solution: exit the industry and don't look back. We need to create & capture our own value.
wrp 4y ago
> At some point the buck stops. I'd like to think so, but I'm getting the sense that maybe not. I've been observing businesses having to be incredibly tolerant of the poor performance of new hires, I guess because they can't find better. In academia, it's been getting harder for decades to hold to past standards.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  Then the buck stops with the business failing.
jjav 4y ago
> At some point the buck stops. I want to think that but I'm old enough to observe that often it doesn't. If someone has connections or some other unfair advantage, they can go through life succeeding higher and higher without any competence.
LatteLazy 4y ago
If the buck doesn't stop with me, then I really don't care where or when it stops. This is the key issue with free markets and why they fail totally at anything long term, complex or socially important (like healthcare and education). And that is assuming there even if a buck. Plenty of people are entirely happy to destroy their kids future as long as they can pretend they didn't know (or that it hasn't actually happened). That's true for education. LA parents are happy with low test scores as long as they can get low taxes and high grades to point at if anyone starts asking questions. The same is true nation wide and internationally in the anglo-sphere west at least. If one citizen cannot read or add up, that is a problem for them. If no one can, that's a problem for society/government/employers etc.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > This is the key issue with free markets and why they fail totally at anything long term, complex or socially important (like healthcare and education). Healthcare is very heavily interfered with by the government. Public education is totally the government. Isn't it amusing that those are the poster examples for "failure" of the free market? Let's take the software industry. It is nearly completely unregulated. It's been a resounding success.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    Yes, that's sort of my point? We tried private healthcare, it failed and the government had to step in. The same for education. The idea of using the free market for education is already defunct because education isn't software development. It's much harder to measure success or failure.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      > We tried private healthcare, it failed and the government had to step in It didn't fail. Healthcare was cheap, plentiful, and advanced until the government stepped in. > The same for education How/when did it fail?
Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
For some there will be wave and wave of excuses and "someone elses fault" deflections, but in essence I think you have it spot on.
ElevenLathe 4y ago
Where are you working? I've been working in BigCorps for ~10 years and the usual standard is that most people are functionally illiterate and only the accountants can add and subtract fluently. Never once have I written an email with content (as opposed to just "let's meet to discuss" or "you can follow my progress in JIRA-4001") where the other person doesn't ignore the email and reply with their own request for a meeting. Only the most basic literacy is now required in most corporate environments.
- vegetablepotpie 4y ago
  I have to say I agree. My corporate environment does not reward competence. It’s much more valuable to be approachable and likable. You don’t need literacy to do that. I work in a large engineering company. I don’t think we’re necessarily contradicting the parents post though. You need some people with some amount of competence to get work done. If it’s more valuable for individuals to play political games instead of delivering value, and the people who deliver value are ostracized, the team, or organization will fail. If the organization is one of those too big to fail companies, of which our country has many, the buck will stop at our nation being over taken.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    I am a little more charitable and just think that literacy is just literally not very useful the way most companies work. These people would not have been useful white collar workers in 1950 but it isn't 1950 anymore. Yes, they would probably be better served if they (and I -- though just the drafting of long emails is often useful for me, even if the recipients never read them) had the option of asynchronous communication, but they can get business goals done anyway. It's apparently not that big of a deal
    - JimBright 4y ago
      How you present yourself to others will always matter. Others may not say something to you directly about it if you dress poorly, or have bad grammar, or cannot do basic math, but the skilled WILL laugh at you quietly. It's human nature to mock incompetence. You cannot legislate or morality police it away. And in corporate America, you will be passed over for promotions and plum assignments. The only "professional" career where obvious ineptitude is publicly rewarded is politics.

programmer_dude 4y ago

GPT chat to the rescue!

WalterBright 4y ago
One way to tell if it's an AI chatbot is if it doesn't make any spelling or grammatical errors.
- echelon 4y ago
  For now. Don't give them any clues, Walter. Or put them in the same room as the email spammers.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    I'm getting AI chatbot spam phone calls regularly now. I can distinguish them immediately. But I know they're going to get a lot better, fast.
    - tony69 4y ago
      This is easily solvable by requiring an ID to obtain a phone number.. and any additional phone number is taxed or something of the sort.
- programmer_dude 4y ago
  TIL I am an AI chatbot. :)

WalterBright 4y ago

Not really. One of the local elementary schools put out a sandwich board every day that announced to the line of SUVs "Please Pull Foreword". I don't think anyone ever noticed.

lgessler 4y ago
Or nobody ever cared, since forming an opinion of someone or an organization solely based on whether they can reproduce standardized spellings is myopic at best.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Having an egregious misspelling on a prominent sign in letters 8 inches high that every student sees going into the building every day reflects what on the school? That the school does not care about education. After all, if I find a misspelling on a headline on one of my web pages, I fix it. Wouldn't you?
  - lgessler 4y ago
    It is true that it will make one's passage through society easier if they are able to reproduce standardized spellings. Insofar as this sign is a signal that teachers are failing to equip students for life in that way, sure, it's concerning. Spelling is different from other domains of education like mathematics, however: an explanation of "correct spelling" is not to be found in natural law, but rather in a Katamari ball of historical contingencies of chance, intervention, and everything in between. (Why'd we keep the _-ough_ in words like _through_? What if the Simplified Spelling Board had succeeded in its aims and totally reformed English spellings? What if Scots, not the English, had had linguistic dominion over the United States? Etc.) Moreover, in large part because "correct spelling" is derived from one very peculiar and privileged variety of English that not everyone speaks, your ease of access to correct spelling is going to be facilitated or hindered by facts about your SES, race, and ethnicity. This is why I don't really care when I see a spelling error anywhere, unless genuine confusion results, or stakes are high enough that adherence to a rigid standard must be maintained. In many ways, nothing is gained from imparting it to a small child compared to something like basic arithmetic. And moreover, in some contexts I think it's not unfair to call an evaluative insistence on standardized spelling a vehicle for linguistic and therefore ethnic chauvinism. I understand your original reaction--having proper spelling is a display of fitness to teach, in the same way that, say, having won some Kaggle tournaments is a display of fitness to do data science. But spelling is a rather peculiar thing to insist on, and I'd have been much more interested if the teachers had been writing out multiplication tables on sandwich boards. Spelling is sociologically thorny, and there are bigger fish to fry.

sanxiyn 4y ago

> Once you send an email and it's grammatically moronic and full of typos, the jig is up. No? That's what QuillBot is for, and QuillBot, like, exists. It's already the world we live in. Anyone for whom English is a foreign language, anyone with sense anyway, already is using QuillBot before sending an email.

raverbashing 4y ago
Well, based on the amount of elementary grammar and spelling mistakes that we see in social media sites, people are not learning anything from these tools. And even a grammatically correct email might be confusing, etc.
- sanxiyn 4y ago
  That's mostly because people don't care about their social media posts. What I am saying is that it is demonstrably the case, that writing with stupid grammar and spelling mistakes is not a problem for working professionally. Tools exist that can fix it adequately, and people actually use them.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    I found out, when I started using spell checkers, that my spelling isn't as good as I thought it was. Embarrassing.

awaythrow321 4y ago

[flagged]

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Ztynovovk 4y ago
[flagged]
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  [flagged]
acapybara 4y ago
Only solution: exit the industry and don't look back. We need to create & capture our own value.

wrp 4y ago

> At some point the buck stops. I'd like to think so, but I'm getting the sense that maybe not. I've been observing businesses having to be incredibly tolerant of the poor performance of new hires, I guess because they can't find better. In academia, it's been getting harder for decades to hold to past standards.

antisthenes 4y ago
Then the buck stops with the business failing.

jjav 4y ago

> At some point the buck stops. I want to think that but I'm old enough to observe that often it doesn't. If someone has connections or some other unfair advantage, they can go through life succeeding higher and higher without any competence.

LatteLazy 4y ago

If the buck doesn't stop with me, then I really don't care where or when it stops. This is the key issue with free markets and why they fail totally at anything long term, complex or socially important (like healthcare and education). And that is assuming there even if a buck. Plenty of people are entirely happy to destroy their kids future as long as they can pretend they didn't know (or that it hasn't actually happened). That's true for education. LA parents are happy with low test scores as long as they can get low taxes and high grades to point at if anyone starts asking questions. The same is true nation wide and internationally in the anglo-sphere west at least. If one citizen cannot read or add up, that is a problem for them. If no one can, that's a problem for society/government/employers etc.

WalterBright 4y ago
> This is the key issue with free markets and why they fail totally at anything long term, complex or socially important (like healthcare and education). Healthcare is very heavily interfered with by the government. Public education is totally the government. Isn't it amusing that those are the poster examples for "failure" of the free market? Let's take the software industry. It is nearly completely unregulated. It's been a resounding success.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  Yes, that's sort of my point? We tried private healthcare, it failed and the government had to step in. The same for education. The idea of using the free market for education is already defunct because education isn't software development. It's much harder to measure success or failure.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > We tried private healthcare, it failed and the government had to step in It didn't fail. Healthcare was cheap, plentiful, and advanced until the government stepped in. > The same for education How/when did it fail?

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago

For some there will be wave and wave of excuses and "someone elses fault" deflections, but in essence I think you have it spot on.

ElevenLathe 4y ago

Where are you working? I've been working in BigCorps for ~10 years and the usual standard is that most people are functionally illiterate and only the accountants can add and subtract fluently. Never once have I written an email with content (as opposed to just "let's meet to discuss" or "you can follow my progress in JIRA-4001") where the other person doesn't ignore the email and reply with their own request for a meeting. Only the most basic literacy is now required in most corporate environments.

vegetablepotpie 4y ago
I have to say I agree. My corporate environment does not reward competence. It’s much more valuable to be approachable and likable. You don’t need literacy to do that. I work in a large engineering company. I don’t think we’re necessarily contradicting the parents post though. You need some people with some amount of competence to get work done. If it’s more valuable for individuals to play political games instead of delivering value, and the people who deliver value are ostracized, the team, or organization will fail. If the organization is one of those too big to fail companies, of which our country has many, the buck will stop at our nation being over taken.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  I am a little more charitable and just think that literacy is just literally not very useful the way most companies work. These people would not have been useful white collar workers in 1950 but it isn't 1950 anymore. Yes, they would probably be better served if they (and I -- though just the drafting of long emails is often useful for me, even if the recipients never read them) had the option of asynchronous communication, but they can get business goals done anyway. It's apparently not that big of a deal
  - JimBright 4y ago
    How you present yourself to others will always matter. Others may not say something to you directly about it if you dress poorly, or have bad grammar, or cannot do basic math, but the skilled WILL laugh at you quietly. It's human nature to mock incompetence. You cannot legislate or morality police it away. And in corporate America, you will be passed over for promotions and plum assignments. The only "professional" career where obvious ineptitude is publicly rewarded is politics.