(Successor site to CoPhilosophy, 2011-2020)
A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond... "The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'"-William James
Thoughts on education: I think sometimes education has become a quest for certification of the ability to memorize information or organize material, unfortunately. If education is there merely to show that we have learned to organize and regurgitate information, universities will eventually become obsolete. I believe higher education is integral to expanding minds. Especially for those of us that came from smaller towns, the experience you get just from meeting people is tremendous. Education should teach us how to think, not JUST memorize and organize material. Memorization of facts is necessary especially when it comes to certain disciplines, like medicine.
Thoughts on “technology”: As Kaag said, use, not abuse the new technology. The way we learned to use writing to further knowledge, not entirely to replace memorization, even though we did lose some oral traditions. Memories are fallible; having a written record preserves information. I believe the preservation of facts is important.
Thoughts on my own writing: Reminding myself of Kaag’s statement, “could this have been written by ANYone”, if my answer is yes, I need to put more of me into the writing.
Regarding the loss of non-fiction and art: Unfortunately, if we are not able to convince people of the value of the struggle, we may lose some artistic expression. Art often comes from the struggle. If we choose the easy route, the pain free answers, without the struggle, will it spark the same creativity?
Final thoughts on an audience question that struck me: Regarding LLMs altering interpersonal communication, I have a pet peeve of people speaking with authority on topics they have no expertise in and are sometimes very ignorant of. LLMs do not “have a bell” or “go silent” when more data is needed before coming to a conclusion, they are conversational and are always providing an answer. When it comes to interpersonal communication, will we become accustomed to asking a question and then having the expectation of getting an immediate answer? And conversely being asked a question, are we going to push ourselves to provide an answer with authority that we don’t have? This seems like it will definitely affect how we communicate with people, either through our impatience with a response that is not immediate or with feeling pressure to act as experts on a topic without the expertise to back it up in order to give that immediate response.
I greatly enjoyed the Lyceum.
ReplyDeleteThoughts on education: I think sometimes education has become a quest for certification of the ability to memorize information or organize material, unfortunately. If education is there merely to show that we have learned to organize and regurgitate information, universities will eventually become obsolete. I believe higher education is integral to expanding minds. Especially for those of us that came from smaller towns, the experience you get just from meeting people is tremendous. Education should teach us how to think, not JUST memorize and organize material. Memorization of facts is necessary especially when it comes to certain disciplines, like medicine.
Thoughts on “technology”: As Kaag said, use, not abuse the new technology. The way we learned to use writing to further knowledge, not entirely to replace memorization, even though we did lose some oral traditions. Memories are fallible; having a written record preserves information. I believe the preservation of facts is important.
Thoughts on my own writing: Reminding myself of Kaag’s statement, “could this have been written by ANYone”, if my answer is yes, I need to put more of me into the writing.
Regarding the loss of non-fiction and art: Unfortunately, if we are not able to convince people of the value of the struggle, we may lose some artistic expression. Art often comes from the struggle. If we choose the easy route, the pain free answers, without the struggle, will it spark the same creativity?
Final thoughts on an audience question that struck me: Regarding LLMs altering interpersonal communication, I have a pet peeve of people speaking with authority on topics they have no expertise in and are sometimes very ignorant of. LLMs do not “have a bell” or “go silent” when more data is needed before coming to a conclusion, they are conversational and are always providing an answer. When it comes to interpersonal communication, will we become accustomed to asking a question and then having the expectation of getting an immediate answer? And conversely being asked a question, are we going to push ourselves to provide an answer with authority that we don’t have? This seems like it will definitely affect how we communicate with people, either through our impatience with a response that is not immediate or with feeling pressure to act as experts on a topic without the expertise to back it up in order to give that immediate response.