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An Iowa school district is using ChatGPT to decide which books to ban
- tstrimple 3y agoWell this is a dark fucking timeline. No surprise the source. Expect the shocked pikachu faces and claims of being oppressed when these people get their beloved bible banned for being obscene using their own metrics.
- remarkEon 3y agoNo book is being "banned" here. Here's a list of the books that are allegedly "banned", linked in the article[1]. They're all widely available. You know a book has been "banned" when its price goes to $3000+ and you have to buy it online using a pseudonym or on the darkweb. If a school makes a choice about which books to include in a library or a curriculum, that is their choice (or their loss, I suppose). Insofar as this relates to ChatGPT, it seems to be behaving as designed and answering the questions the administrators are asking it. [1]https://www.thegazette.com/k/19-books-pulled-from-mason-city-school-libraries/ https://www.thegazette.com/k/19-books-pulled-from-mason-city...
- iudqnolq 3y agoEveryone knows exactly what the title means, and it's a perfectly reasonable use of the English language. "School district bans book" obviously has an implied "(from schools)" afterwards.
- remarkEon 3y ago"Remove" would be a more appropriate verb, because the actual implication is that the books in question are "removed" from either the school library or a curriculum (or both). Are there restrictions on, say, carrying the text around in your book bag on school property? On having a digital copy on your device? No? Then it's not a ban.
- scotty79 3y agoBan means to remove and not let back in. I don't suppose their school library would accept the charitable donations of the books they just removed.
- remarkEon 3y agoProbably not, but that's still not a ban, it's an controlled inventory list. You can carry those charitable donations around on your person to your heart's content.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoNo, librarians curate their collections, they do not indiscriminately cram the shelves full of anything anyone gives them. Take a look at the processing of donations; most books are discarded, especially today when books are deprecated. Libraries withdrawing books aren't banning them. If a school had banned a book, then the students would be prohibited from reading it. A student can read whatever he/she wants during free time, at home, whatever. I would imagine that if a teacher assigned a "free choice" book report that a student could even report on a so-called banned book. The point of withdrawing books from schools and libraries is because they do not fit in the curriculum. Library shelves and curricula have finite space for materials. You can only teach N books per year, and so your school's curriculum decides which N books that's going to be, year over year. The point of using the word "ban" in headlines is because it is sensationalistic and it angers people and makes them click on that headline and react with outrage that anyone would be exercising such reprehensible censorship. By using the word "ban" they take the focus away from the action or the content of the book and place it on perceived injustice. Even if I disagree with that book's contents, I can be outraged! How do we even know the content and theme of that book, because we didn't even read it! To read all these headlines coming out, you would think that we are living in Fahrenheit 451 and that firemen are coming out to torch a big "bonfire of the vanities" style of deprecated textbooks and shitty novels. It's hilarious.
- t0mas88 3y ago> If a school makes a choice about which books to include in a library or a curriculum, that is their choice (or their loss, I suppose). It's not the school's choice, there is a law that requires the school to do this. These laws are written to further polarise society and gain some votes. Unfortunately it works...
- remarkEon 3y agoOkay. If people vote for this, what's the problem?
- scotty79 3y agoThe stupidity of it? Of people vote for brexit or nazis or slavery is it fine just because they voted?
- supazek 3y ago>brexit They influenced voters! Those bastards!
- jabradoodle 3y agoYes, with lies. Look up "We send the EU £350m a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead" as one of the major examples.
- remarkEon 3y agoAll lies are lies, but some lies are more lie-y than others.
- remarkEon 3y agoSurely you can see the difference between voting for a set of books to be/not to be in a school curriculum/library (through your elected representation) and Nazis ... right?
- 0xE1337DAD 3y agoWeird. A few of these were mandatory reading when I was in school
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoI shall now use a book to decide which LLMs to ban
- 1letterunixname 3y agoTAOCP 0b10:48h:0x07 Thoust shallnt use negative prompts if thoust can use clevering of positive ones. Thy only exception is when llamas appearest without having been asked first thusly. And Joseph spake against the infidels, it was good, and the build was green. Exit code 0. Amen.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoIntellectual curiosity in the spirt of classic liberalism is fading with the perpetually shifting sands of ephemeral, amnesic, digital pseudo-knowledge and mirror image closed-minded orthodoxy of each side in the culture wars. Ginsberg and Nabokov will disappear from America since the religious right is hell-bent on banning anything remotely controversial, the new left is now banning whatever they don't agree with, and most students' parents are too busy and uninvolved to push back against moral panics, ignorance, or indolence. The end result is like the fun level of modern kids' parks: so "safe" they're absolutely boring.
- flangola7 3y agoThe false "both sides are the same!" narrative is not productive or accurate.
- anon373839 3y agoI really don’t see the difference here. Both sides are true believers advancing their vision of How Things Should Be.
- janalsncm 3y agoYes, that’s how politics has always been and always will be. People get into politics to advance their vision for making things better. The question is how those visions differ. If the difference still isn’t clear, keep in mind there is only one party that consistently opposes giving food to hungry children.
- anon373839 3y agoI find this is a fairly typical comment. Though it acknowledges that there are differences of opinion and belief, it then tries to sidestep the philosophical quandary by simply claiming victory by default. (“My side is the only one that could have any legitimacy - see?”)
- flangola7 3y ago
- nialse 3y agoThe ChatGPT part seems like a decoy, the issue might instead be the processes of compiling the master lists. Who decides which books should, and should not, be assessed? By which standards? Seems like a lot of leeway for arbitrary decisions.