trashboat
@trashboat@midwest.social
- Comment on YouTube tops Disney and Netflix in TV viewing 1 week ago:
Might be a silly question, but is YouTube TV considered a part of YouTube here?
- Comment on Steam Deck / Gaming News #15 3 weeks ago:
Just finished playing Outer Wilds for the first time- definitely one of the most incredible games I’ve ever played
- Comment on Nintendo Updates Its User Agreement To Crack Down On Emulation 3 weeks ago:
Ohhh yeah still haven’t played that one, I’ve heard so many good things about it though
- Comment on Nintendo Updates Its User Agreement To Crack Down On Emulation 3 weeks ago:
I’ve only played Nintendo games on-and-off but the last truly special innovation I can remember to the Mario formula was the Super Mario Galaxy games. I can’t recall anything else like it that they’ve done recently
- Comment on Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis 3 weeks ago:
I gave patient stupid drug
- Comment on Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College 3 weeks ago:
I mean we’re talking about kids who are functionally illiterate. The system has failed to teach them this basic skill. Critical thinking about complex and nuanced topics is way beyond that!
I agree with you there, and I don’t think we’re really all that far off from each other. Writing has both synthetic (the critical thinking to which I referred) and syntactical (what I believe you’re getting at) components to it, and kids have been missing out on the synthetic component for quite a while now and are now beginning to miss more of the syntactical part as a result of AI.
Where I disagree with you is:
And the problem is they’re not going to learn the basic skills if they use AI to prevent themselves from doing any work.
Kids not doing their work didn’t start with AI. LLMs haven’t even been mainstream or otherwise publicly available for three years yet. A lot of these kids were never going to complete coursework in good faith because the curriculum is failing to engage them. Either that, or there are influences in their lives that make it altogether impossible, such as poverty or neurodivergence. In my other comment I was speaking mainly to career readiness, but the principle of meeting students where their circumstances and interests lie applies throughout their time in K-12.
A trend I’ve noticed in this issue is demonizing students (hence why I keep bringing it up). These kids had nothing to do with their parents putting iPads in front of them instead of reading to them when they were little, or having to take classes that were designed before their parents were born, or so many other observations about the structure of education that make it archaic and broken (perhaps by design, but that’s out-of-scope here). Every stakeholder around this issue should be discussing with each other the ways that school can better serve students; instead, we’ve hastily created a stigma that using AI to complete assignments that you don’t understand, don’t have time for, or simply couldn’t care less about makes you a cheater.
It is truly a wicked problem, and I believe the way that our leaders haven’t adapted education is primarily to blame. I haven’t even mentioned social media, and I think that government’s inability to regulate it has its share to blame for kids struggling in school. But as problematic as AI is, it is not the reason why this is happening, and we may have to agree to disagree on that point.
- Comment on The clueless people are out there among us 3 weeks ago:
Damn Poe’s Law
- Comment on Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College 3 weeks ago:
I may disagree with you that the ability to write alone is where the problem is. In my view, LLMs are further exposing that our education system is doing a very poor job of teaching kids to think critically. It seems to me that this discussion tends to be targeted at A) Kids who already don’t want to be at school, and B) Kids who are taking classes simply to fulfill a requirement by their district— and both are using LLMs as a way to pass a class that they either don’t care about or don’t have the energy to pass without it.
What irked me about this headline is labeling them as “cheaters,” and I got push-back for challenging that. I ask again: if public education is not engaging you as a student, what is your incentive not to use AI to write your paper? Why are we requiring kids to learn how to write annotated bibliographies when they already know that they aren’t interested in pursuing research? A lot of the stuff we’re still teaching kids doesn’t make any sense.
I believe a solution cuts both ways:
A) Find something that makes them want to think critically. Project-based learning still appears to be one of the best catalysts for making this happen, but we should be targeting it towards real-world industries, and we should be doing it more quickly. As a personal example: I didn’t need to take 4 months of biology in high school to know that I didn’t want to do it for a living. I participated in FIRST Robotics for 4 years, and that program alone gave me a better chance than any in the classroom to think critically, exercise leadership skills, and learn soft and hard skills on my way to my chosen career path. I’ve watched the program turn lights on in kids’ heads as they finally understand what they want to do for a living. It gave them purpose and something worth learning for; isn’t that what this is all about anyway?
B) LLMs (just like calculators, the internet, and other new mainstream technologies) are not going anywhere. I hate all the corporate bullshit surrounding AI just as much as the next user on here, but LLMs still add significant value to select professions. We should be teaching all kids how to use LLMs as an extension of their brain rather than as a replacement for it, and especially rather than universally demonizing it.
- Comment on Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College 3 weeks ago:
Do we have to throw mud at “cheating” students? I’ve been hearing similar stuff about K-12 for a while with regards to looking up answers on the internet, but if the coursework is rote enough that an LLM can do it for you, then A. As a student taking gen-eds that have no obvious correlation to your degree, why wouldn’t you use it? And B. It might just be past time to change the curriculum
- Comment on End of 10 - Windows ten is ending. Microsoft wants you to buy a new computer. But what if you could make your current one fast and secure again? 4 weeks ago:
Again… So much proprietary software is the industry standard, particularly Adobe, and much of it is Linux-compatible, making it not so easy to make the switch as a freelancer
- Comment on Players Have Too Many Options to Spend $80 on a Video Game 4 weeks ago:
Honestly itch.io has plenty of free indie gems that can last me just as long as throwing $80 at a AAA game. I’d rather donate/tip after the fact for genuine well-crafted experiences
- Comment on Recommendations for "girly" games? 4 weeks ago:
Don’t know if this fits the bill for you or not but my partner occasionally falls into the clutches of the Sims on their laptop. They’ve customized their installation with lots of outfit + hairstyle mods and expansions, so you kinda get to make it your own
- Comment on Trump, in blue, sleeping at Pope Francis' funeral 5 weeks ago:
“Sleepy Joe,” huh
- Comment on xkcd #3081: PhD Timeline 5 weeks ago:
I have to believe that this factor is equally to blame
- Comment on The pipeline 5 weeks ago:
And lasers shooting out of Stalin’s eyes
- Comment on The pipeline 5 weeks ago:
I honestly prefer boneless, not that I don’t like a good bone-in wing now and again. I suppose there’s some weird masculine pride that dudes get eating bone-in wings, and eating boneless goes against that?
- Comment on Bobby won’t live long. 1 month ago:
All my slimes love Halloween sacrifices
- Comment on There’s AI Inside Windows Paint and Notepad Now 1 month ago:
Yeah I’ve only used Inkscape a little bit but I would not categorize it as a program that can quickly be picked up
- Comment on Elevated 1 month ago:
Wow I completely forgot about how hard they pushed the Got Milk campaign when I was a kid. Fucking weird in retrospect lol
- Comment on Facebook Pushes Its Llama 4 AI Model to the Right, Wants to Present “Both Sides” 1 month ago:
Interesting how college educated Americans switched sides over time
- Comment on Adobe Gets Bullied Off Bluesky 1 month ago:
I’ve always seen Blender as a 3D art tool but never as a precise 3D engineering tool. Didn’t even know Blender had CAD features
- Comment on This is Wendy's 1 month ago:
Huh, I think this is the first bot I’ve seen here
…good bot?
- Comment on Split Keyboards Are Superior And The Reason I’m The Writer I Am Today. 2 months ago:
Nice
- Comment on LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs | The free open-source Microsoft Office alternative is being downloaded by nearly 1 million users a week 2 months ago:
I’ve gradually been switching over. The UI is somewhat confusing in my experience- but the MSO UX+UI is consistently getting much, much worse as time passes
- Comment on Favourite Mario Kart game? 2 months ago:
Gotta be Wii for me for the reasons you suggested. Great atmosphere and level design
But something about playing long, grinding balloon battles on DS with 7 other people on the school bus will always stick with me
- Comment on Pinterest changes user terms so it can train AI on user data and photos, regardless of when they were posted 2 months ago:
Any FOSS alternatives to Pinterest out there?
- Comment on Come one come all, it's time to unblock !conservative@lemmy.world and bring your best memes of conservatives! 2 months ago:
I’m more of a dinosaur earth guy myself Image
- Comment on Nothing I swear!! 3 months ago:
Bone hurting juice type post
- Comment on Looks like Lemmy is climbing up to the 2023 exodus days numbers again 3 months ago:
I am not interesting
- Comment on ICE Wants to Know If You’re Posting Negative Things About It Online 3 months ago:
Fuck ICE
