I'm still looking for a good reason to believe critical thinking and intelligence are taking a dive. It's so very easy to claim the kids aren't all right. But I wish someone would check. An interview with the gpt cheaters? A survey checking that those brilliant essays aren't from people using better prompts? Let's hear from the kids! Everyone knows nobody asked us when we were being turned into ungrammatical zombies by spell check/grammar check/texting/video content/ipads/the calculator.

Lots I disagree with in this article, but I agree with the message.

On another note, I found this section very funny:

Disgraced cryptocurrency swindler Sam Bankman-Fried, for example, once told an interviewer the following, thereby helpfully outing himself as an idiot.

“I would never read a book…I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.”

Extend his prison sentence.

Lots I disagree with in this article, but I agree with the message.

On another note, I found this section very funny:

Disgraced cryptocurrency swindler Sam Bankman-Fried, for example, once told an interviewer the following, thereby helpfully outing himself as an idiot.

“I would never read a book…I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.”

Extend his prison sentence.

Once again I'll say, I'm perfectly fine with the death of the essay as viable school homework.

In my experience, teachers graded only on grammar and formatting. Teaching - and more to the point, grading - effective writing skills is harder than nitpicking punctuation, spelling and font choices, so guess what happens more often?

You want school to mean anything, you're going to have to switch to verbal or demonstrable skills instead of paperwork. Which society probably needs to do anyway.

I'm still looking for a good reason to believe critical thinking and intelligence are taking a dive. It's so very easy to claim the kids aren't all right. But I wish someone would check. An interview with the gpt cheaters? A survey checking that those brilliant essays aren't from people using better prompts? Let's hear from the kids! Everyone knows nobody asked us when we were being turned into ungrammatical zombies by spell check/grammar check/texting/video content/ipads/the calculator.

IMO, kids use ChatGPT because they are aware enough to understand that the degree is what really matters in our society, so putting in the effort to understand the material when they could put in way less effort and still pass is a waste of effort.

We all understand what the goal of school should be, but that learning doesn't really align with the arbitrary measurements we use to track learning.

Relevant article
https://web.archive.org/web/20250314201213/https://www.ft.com/content/a8016c64-63b7-458b-a371-e0e1c54a13fc

Admittedly the downward trend began sometime in the 2012s so it predates LLMs.

Critical thinking is on the downturn, but, interestingly, it's by date, not birthdate. It happens with exposure to social media algorithms and llm's, more than anything else.

The living death of our humanity is a monumental testament yo neuroplasticity and our ability to keep changing deep into old age.

Its a really inspiring kind of horror.