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If you'd told people 50 years ago that "literacy" would decline to the level of the reddit poster's style of writing, with poor sentence structure and words in

If you'd told people 50 years ago that "literacy" would decline to the level of the reddit poster's style of writing, with poor sentence structure and words in ALL CAPS, they'd be pretty shocked. Now it's just normal communication. Older people are shocked that young people can't do long division, or easily add a column of numbers mentally. I'm not saying LLMs won't negatively influence the next generation, but the next generation has always been the first to use and abuse new technology and we are all still alive and (most) bridges and airplanes stay up and maybe we will even put people on the moon again some day.

ben_w 2y ago
Point, but also 50 years ago, all-caps would have been one of only two available ways to emphasise text, the other being underlines. Typewriters weren't able to do much else. At least, not the ones you could easily get. Aired 1993, February 25: https://youtu.be/nN9wNvEnn-Q?si=eqUWiZTxYach3db-&t=975 https://youtu.be/nN9wNvEnn-Q?si=eqUWiZTxYach3db-&t=975
- robocat 2y ago
  > one of only two available ways Three ways: many could also type in red: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B009KXXSOI https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B009KXXSOI (showing a red/black ribbon). 7:05 shows the lever for a Brother typewriter in this video and a bit before that shows a different lever for heavyness (although I don't know if that would do bold): https://youtube.com/watch?v=d_dTu6T87Cg&t=6m50s https://youtube.com/watch?v=d_dTu6T87Cg&t=6m50s And AFAIR you could somewhat do bold by overtyping a few times (backspace, retype, repeat) or by hitting keys harder. Plus many early home computers only had UPPERCASE (e.g. initial Apple ][) and were monochrome (so inverse was often a highlight thing instead of using colour).
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Huh, interesting. I don't think we ever had multi-colour ribbons on the typewriters I played with as a kid. (It would have been the late 80s in the UK, I have no idea how representative my experiences were).
danenania 2y ago
Yes, agreed. Actually the very existence of the problem described in the original post is an indication that the work being assigned is ultimately useless. If the teacher can't reliably distinguish between a student's answer and an AI answer then what's the point of giving that assignment? Kids with street smarts or a hacker mentality are always going to figure out the easiest path from A to B, and it's arguable if we should even be discouraging that—it's quite an important skill in real life. We're at a major transition point and I don't envy teachers who need to figure out ways to adjust to it, but giving the same exact assignments clearly isn't going to cut it. They should instead try to come up with assignments where an AI may be a helpful assistant but isn't able to complete 100% of the task to a high standard. Then evaluate the result regardless of how the student got there. Presentations, discussion-based evaluation, and projects with a physical component are all examples. I remember when I was a kid, some teachers would assign research papers and then tell us we weren't allowed to use the internet; we needed to go to the school library and use physical books instead. This holy war of teachers vs. chatgpt is likely going to seem similar in hindsight.
djeastm 2y ago
>If you'd told people 50 years ago that "literacy" would decline to the level of the reddit poster's style of writing, with poor sentence structure and words in ALL CAPS, they'd be pretty shocked. Now it's just normal communication. I would argue that the people who would have written like 50 years ago just never had the opportunity or audience that people do today. Except maybe in a Letter to the Editor of a newspaper or something. So many more people are expressing themselves in public than ever were able to 50 years ago so I think it just seems that people have become less literate than they were. So many YouTube comments and Facebook posts that never would have occurred 50 years ago. It's a democratization of the broadcasting of expression more than literacy decline.
- hb53821 2y ago
  Maybe. But we also have historical personal communication and journal entries to judge by, and they’re rarely, if ever, written in this style.
tayo42 2y ago
I think your taking internet posts a little to seriously

ben_w 2y ago

Point, but also 50 years ago, all-caps would have been one of only two available ways to emphasise text, the other being underlines. Typewriters weren't able to do much else. At least, not the ones you could easily get. Aired 1993, February 25: https://youtu.be/nN9wNvEnn-Q?si=eqUWiZTxYach3db-&t=975 https://youtu.be/nN9wNvEnn-Q?si=eqUWiZTxYach3db-&t=975

robocat 2y ago
> one of only two available ways Three ways: many could also type in red: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B009KXXSOI https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B009KXXSOI (showing a red/black ribbon). 7:05 shows the lever for a Brother typewriter in this video and a bit before that shows a different lever for heavyness (although I don't know if that would do bold): https://youtube.com/watch?v=d_dTu6T87Cg&t=6m50s https://youtube.com/watch?v=d_dTu6T87Cg&t=6m50s And AFAIR you could somewhat do bold by overtyping a few times (backspace, retype, repeat) or by hitting keys harder. Plus many early home computers only had UPPERCASE (e.g. initial Apple ][) and were monochrome (so inverse was often a highlight thing instead of using colour).
- ben_w 2y ago
  Huh, interesting. I don't think we ever had multi-colour ribbons on the typewriters I played with as a kid. (It would have been the late 80s in the UK, I have no idea how representative my experiences were).

danenania 2y ago

Yes, agreed. Actually the very existence of the problem described in the original post is an indication that the work being assigned is ultimately useless. If the teacher can't reliably distinguish between a student's answer and an AI answer then what's the point of giving that assignment? Kids with street smarts or a hacker mentality are always going to figure out the easiest path from A to B, and it's arguable if we should even be discouraging that—it's quite an important skill in real life. We're at a major transition point and I don't envy teachers who need to figure out ways to adjust to it, but giving the same exact assignments clearly isn't going to cut it. They should instead try to come up with assignments where an AI may be a helpful assistant but isn't able to complete 100% of the task to a high standard. Then evaluate the result regardless of how the student got there. Presentations, discussion-based evaluation, and projects with a physical component are all examples. I remember when I was a kid, some teachers would assign research papers and then tell us we weren't allowed to use the internet; we needed to go to the school library and use physical books instead. This holy war of teachers vs. chatgpt is likely going to seem similar in hindsight.

djeastm 2y ago

>If you'd told people 50 years ago that "literacy" would decline to the level of the reddit poster's style of writing, with poor sentence structure and words in ALL CAPS, they'd be pretty shocked. Now it's just normal communication. I would argue that the people who would have written like 50 years ago just never had the opportunity or audience that people do today. Except maybe in a Letter to the Editor of a newspaper or something. So many more people are expressing themselves in public than ever were able to 50 years ago so I think it just seems that people have become less literate than they were. So many YouTube comments and Facebook posts that never would have occurred 50 years ago. It's a democratization of the broadcasting of expression more than literacy decline.

hb53821 2y ago
Maybe. But we also have historical personal communication and journal entries to judge by, and they’re rarely, if ever, written in this style.

tayo42 2y ago

I think your taking internet posts a little to seriously