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Writing is as much about organizing your thoughts and learning how to build an argument as it is about putting words on the page. It is about learning how to th

by Gimpei 3y ago

Writing is as much about organizing your thoughts and learning how to build an argument as it is about putting words on the page. It is about learning how to think. If students rely on an LLM, they will never get a chance to practice this essential skill, and, in my opinion, will be a lot dumber as a result.

analog31 3y ago
My thoughts are along similar lines: People learn to think, to inquire, to persuade, etc. We don't know precisely how. Maybe it's correlated to education, but even the strength of a causal link is debatable. I certainly don't oppose reforming contemporary education, but at the same time, letting it be replaced by something else by default because that thing has exponentially more engagement power invokes Chesterton's Fence. I'm not sure we even know what we're giving up.
- mbakke 3y ago
  Education has been in dire need for reform a long time. The writing was on the wall even with the advent of the Internet. We now have supercomputers in our pockets and hyperintelligent assistants at our fingertips. Chesterton could certainly not predict the exponential growth in access to tooling and knowledge. And we're only at the start of the curve. In my opinion we should go back to absolute basics. Forget grades. Focus on health, language, critical thinking, tool usage, and creativity. Skills that are intrinsic to humans. Make sure education is fun with lots of play. The main advantage humans have over computers is empathy and creativity. I'm not sure AI will ever "get it". Provide each student to the extent possible a path to follow their own curiosity and talents. Advanced maths, programming, writing, chemistry, physics, etc available for those interested, even at a young age. But the baseline education should focus on learning the absolute minimum to survive and otherwise maximize fun, creativity, and empathy.
  - theprivacydad 3y ago
    GPT4 can already convincingly analyse and explain why a drawn comic is funny or ironic. It's really unbelievable when you see it do that.
matt_j 3y ago
For me, and I assume others, the act of writing is an important part of the learning process. Writing on paper even more-so than typing on a keyboard. Writing forces me to organize my thoughts, summarize, elaborate, reference other parts of the text, iterate until the pure essence is clear, remove redundancies, and this cements the concepts in my mind. Merely reading, or worse, hearing, or worse copy/pasting something is only the first part of learning. It's similar with programming but I would take it even further. I never really understand complicated code until I've written tests and run the debugger and been very close to it. An AI chat bot is a powerful tool, but if you just use it to generate assignments you won't learn much. Inevitably it will be used both well and poorly and the results will be mixed.
- nottheengineer 3y ago
  > Writing on paper even more-so than typing on a keyboard. How do you get to that conclusion? I find that if I have a text editor, I can write my thoughts down and then visually put them in order or encase them in a more general concept with ease, which I couldn't do when writing on paper.
  - jholman 3y ago
    It's worth noting that they were speaking about their personal experience in that paragraph. So probably for them, the "how do you get to that conclusion" is "trial and error". But I've noticed that many many many people report the same effect, that there's something about pen-and-paper writing that's more effective for thought-lubrication. I resisted for a long time, but now I too am a convert to this school of thought. Similarly almost everyone notices the downside: it's easier to reorder, reorganize, cross-link, etc, those thoughts, in a text editor (to say nothing of more sophisticated software tools). Some people have systems for doing complicated things with paper that they say mitigates this downside, but I am not currently one of them. I guess it's possible that your brain just doesn't have this pattern in it. (That is, the pattern of finding pen-and-paper more effective for getting the thoughts to flow.) I mean, for all I know, maybe the huge silent majority doesn't have this pattern.
teucris 3y ago
> Writing is as much about organizing your thoughts and learning how to build an argument as it is about putting words on the page. If you cannot organize your thoughts, explain your reasoning, etc. then you’re not going to get very far leveraging an LLM. Sure, it’ll spit out a book report, but unless you can explain — in well-structured writing - what you’re looking for, you’re not going to get what you need for the vast majority of writing assignments.
hyperthesis 3y ago
Essays are often about organizing other's thoughts, from references and other source material, and your own thesis based on that. Organizing and arguing your own thought would be a good test. I think an assisting tool could still be reasonable - choosing between different organizations. Though it's unclear how to assess for original thought - the only such "essays" I know of are PhD theses. People said similar about log tables and slide rules. And they were right - something was lost (e.g. the sense of nearby solutions). Yet here we are.
tangjurine 3y ago
I think writing for yourself is very different than writing for school or for someone else. I suffered through writing classes for years and it made me hate writing. It was only when I started journaling that I started liking it, and liking that I got better at it. Is it worth making students better at writing if it means as adults they'll not want to write again?
jussy 3y ago
Chatgpt and writing are a match made in heaven though. Think of it like a faster lower latency more insightful spell checker.

by Gimpei 3y ago

analog31 3y ago

My thoughts are along similar lines: People learn to think, to inquire, to persuade, etc. We don't know precisely how. Maybe it's correlated to education, but even the strength of a causal link is debatable. I certainly don't oppose reforming contemporary education, but at the same time, letting it be replaced by something else by default because that thing has exponentially more engagement power invokes Chesterton's Fence. I'm not sure we even know what we're giving up.

mbakke 3y ago
Education has been in dire need for reform a long time. The writing was on the wall even with the advent of the Internet. We now have supercomputers in our pockets and hyperintelligent assistants at our fingertips. Chesterton could certainly not predict the exponential growth in access to tooling and knowledge. And we're only at the start of the curve. In my opinion we should go back to absolute basics. Forget grades. Focus on health, language, critical thinking, tool usage, and creativity. Skills that are intrinsic to humans. Make sure education is fun with lots of play. The main advantage humans have over computers is empathy and creativity. I'm not sure AI will ever "get it". Provide each student to the extent possible a path to follow their own curiosity and talents. Advanced maths, programming, writing, chemistry, physics, etc available for those interested, even at a young age. But the baseline education should focus on learning the absolute minimum to survive and otherwise maximize fun, creativity, and empathy.
- theprivacydad 3y ago
  GPT4 can already convincingly analyse and explain why a drawn comic is funny or ironic. It's really unbelievable when you see it do that.

matt_j 3y ago

For me, and I assume others, the act of writing is an important part of the learning process. Writing on paper even more-so than typing on a keyboard. Writing forces me to organize my thoughts, summarize, elaborate, reference other parts of the text, iterate until the pure essence is clear, remove redundancies, and this cements the concepts in my mind. Merely reading, or worse, hearing, or worse copy/pasting something is only the first part of learning. It's similar with programming but I would take it even further. I never really understand complicated code until I've written tests and run the debugger and been very close to it. An AI chat bot is a powerful tool, but if you just use it to generate assignments you won't learn much. Inevitably it will be used both well and poorly and the results will be mixed.

nottheengineer 3y ago
> Writing on paper even more-so than typing on a keyboard. How do you get to that conclusion? I find that if I have a text editor, I can write my thoughts down and then visually put them in order or encase them in a more general concept with ease, which I couldn't do when writing on paper.
- jholman 3y ago
  It's worth noting that they were speaking about their personal experience in that paragraph. So probably for them, the "how do you get to that conclusion" is "trial and error". But I've noticed that many many many people report the same effect, that there's something about pen-and-paper writing that's more effective for thought-lubrication. I resisted for a long time, but now I too am a convert to this school of thought. Similarly almost everyone notices the downside: it's easier to reorder, reorganize, cross-link, etc, those thoughts, in a text editor (to say nothing of more sophisticated software tools). Some people have systems for doing complicated things with paper that they say mitigates this downside, but I am not currently one of them. I guess it's possible that your brain just doesn't have this pattern in it. (That is, the pattern of finding pen-and-paper more effective for getting the thoughts to flow.) I mean, for all I know, maybe the huge silent majority doesn't have this pattern.

teucris 3y ago

> Writing is as much about organizing your thoughts and learning how to build an argument as it is about putting words on the page. If you cannot organize your thoughts, explain your reasoning, etc. then you’re not going to get very far leveraging an LLM. Sure, it’ll spit out a book report, but unless you can explain — in well-structured writing - what you’re looking for, you’re not going to get what you need for the vast majority of writing assignments.

hyperthesis 3y ago

Essays are often about organizing other's thoughts, from references and other source material, and your own thesis based on that. Organizing and arguing your own thought would be a good test. I think an assisting tool could still be reasonable - choosing between different organizations. Though it's unclear how to assess for original thought - the only such "essays" I know of are PhD theses. People said similar about log tables and slide rules. And they were right - something was lost (e.g. the sense of nearby solutions). Yet here we are.

tangjurine 3y ago

I think writing for yourself is very different than writing for school or for someone else. I suffered through writing classes for years and it made me hate writing. It was only when I started journaling that I started liking it, and liking that I got better at it. Is it worth making students better at writing if it means as adults they'll not want to write again?

jussy 3y ago

Chatgpt and writing are a match made in heaven though. Think of it like a faster lower latency more insightful spell checker.