From: polcott333@gmail.com   
      
   On 7/7/2024 5:16 AM, D wrote:   
   > Found this article and thought that you might be interested. What will   
   > happen when we no longer have a shared world of facts which we can refer   
   > to?   
   >   
   >       Weird interaction with a student this week. They keep coming up   
   > with weird “facts” (“Greek is actually a combination of four other   
   > languages”) that left me baffled. I said let’s look this stuff up   
   > together, and they said OK, I’ll open a search bar, and they opened …   
   > Ch*tGPT. And I was like “this is not a search bar” and they were like   
   > “yes it is, you can search for anything in here”.   
   >   
   >      The thing that made me feel crazy is like, every kid that’s using   
   > this as a browser is getting new bespoke false “facts”. This isn’t “a   
   > widespread misconception about X that stems from how it’s taught in   
   > schools.” Each individual kid is now hooked into a Nonsense Machine.   
   >   
   >      With the “widespread misconception about X” you can start at a   
   > baseline. Like, OK, in tenth grade we talk about X thing from history,   
   > and that leaves us with some misguided concepts about X, but we can   
   > correct that as students get broader understandings of the world. But   
   > with this, each child is getting unique wrong facts they are sure are   
   > correct … because they did what we told them to do! They “looked it   
   up”!   
   > They got it from somewhere! It’s not a kid making up a belief on hearsay   
   > and assumption … it’s something they think they learned.   
   >   
   >      This kid was extremely combative with me, and I understood why. I   
   > was sitting in front of him telling him that the internet, a computer,   
   > technology, all these supposedly authoritative things … were wrong. And   
   > that I, one person, was right. He basically couldn’t believe me. He   
   > decided that I was simply a teacher who’d made a mistake. He could check   
   > it, after all! He could look it up! He could find the real facts. I   
   > obviously hadn’t done that, I was just an adult who’d decided I was   
   > smarter than him. Hence the defensiveness. Like I said: I understood.   
   >   
   >      It was so fucking rough. I did my best, but I am one person trying   
   > to work against a campaign of misinformation so vast that it fucking   
   > terrifies me. This kid is being set up for a life lived entirely inside   
   > the hall of mirrors.   
   >   
   > Transcribed from Twitter. The author took it down because of harassment,   
   > so I am not going to point to who they were. Not that I know anything   
   > about them anyway. So you have to make your own tricky call about   
   > whether and how it is relevant.   
   >   
   > https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/07/ai-students-and-epistemic-crisis.html .   
      
   This is certainly an issue.   
   The AI kind currently seems far more tame than   
   the disinformation that is bought and paid for   
   to serve the self-interests of large groups.   
      
   --   
   Copyright 2024 Olcott "Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius   
   hits a target no one else can see." Arthur Schopenhauer   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)