4 ms·

I haven't dug into the gritty details of the article and the testing, but it's easily conceivable that "read" means Shakespeare, "Write" means fiction, and math

I haven't dug into the gritty details of the article and the testing, but it's easily conceivable that "read" means Shakespeare, "Write" means fiction, and math means ... well actually pretty much all math is important :lol: As a marginal choice I'd rather every kid know how to write a good opinion piece on current events, or a technical document closer to RFCs, than writing some fiction. Of course, even better if we fund and train them to do both.

npunt 8mo ago
I think you vastly underestimate the importance of fiction. Fiction may be the best canvas for creative and abstract thought, the place where possibility is explored and the 'what' and 'why' is established, without being mired in details. Before we invented things, we thought of things to invent, and in those moments we were writing fiction. Technical writing is 'how', and that's being absolutely consumed by AI. When AIs can build anything, the question of what we should build and why is the most important.
- maerF0x0 8mo ago
  Fair about fiction... I just don't feel the same way about outdated fiction..
  - npunt 8mo ago
    Yeah there’s balances to be struck. Tho I would push back a bit on the notion of great works being outdated. Think of them more as having survived the gauntlet of time, crushing generation after generation of newer writing with their undeniable superiority, emerging as the strongest and most adaptable ideas & stories that couldn’t be stopped even by the churn of centuries of change in language, culture, ideologies, wars and more. Eg Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein will eat alive nearly anything written today, it accurately critiques a future it never saw like a laser beam cutting across time. Few if any works today possess such original and enduring foresight. This is especially true as a generation of people are now getting deskilled by AI. Even if we have the writers capable of such feats, we likely lack the audience for those works because that requires a societal sophistication we may have lost. And so those works may never be adequately appreciated to let them ever break out of this little moment in time.

npunt 8mo ago

I think you vastly underestimate the importance of fiction. Fiction may be the best canvas for creative and abstract thought, the place where possibility is explored and the 'what' and 'why' is established, without being mired in details. Before we invented things, we thought of things to invent, and in those moments we were writing fiction. Technical writing is 'how', and that's being absolutely consumed by AI. When AIs can build anything, the question of what we should build and why is the most important.

maerF0x0 8mo ago
Fair about fiction... I just don't feel the same way about outdated fiction..
- npunt 8mo ago
  Yeah there’s balances to be struck. Tho I would push back a bit on the notion of great works being outdated. Think of them more as having survived the gauntlet of time, crushing generation after generation of newer writing with their undeniable superiority, emerging as the strongest and most adaptable ideas & stories that couldn’t be stopped even by the churn of centuries of change in language, culture, ideologies, wars and more. Eg Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein will eat alive nearly anything written today, it accurately critiques a future it never saw like a laser beam cutting across time. Few if any works today possess such original and enduring foresight. This is especially true as a generation of people are now getting deskilled by AI. Even if we have the writers capable of such feats, we likely lack the audience for those works because that requires a societal sophistication we may have lost. And so those works may never be adequately appreciated to let them ever break out of this little moment in time.