Chat GPT reveals that academia has fallen short of the trend as follows.
" When you are growing and everyone trusts you, you can do no wrong, and your mistakes shrink into nothing on their own."
" When you begin to shrink and your reputation sours, you can do no right, your wrongs balloon catastrophically and your rights slowly shrink into nothing like your wrongs used to"
Academia I'm sure provides tons of stuff, but once you sour your reputation and you pop your balloon, it's very very hard to recover from it. We've gone from a world where the average person trusts institutions to a world where the average person doesn't.
Even I don't trust anything coming out of any large institution anymore. If I look up news, and I see CNN and MSNBC and any of those big networks, I keep scrolling until I find someone showing me the raw event with no commentary.
If I search some review I scroll past all of the official review sites and find some random nobody who appears to be expressing their own experiences.
Why?
Because I don't trust anything bigger than an individual. Doctors hide themselves behind hospitals with a million accountant sent number punchers who are incentivized to screw you over.
Companies pull the journalists into their wings so that the journalists are beholden random advertisers, and can write whatever they want without much risk to their own credibility.
I'm confident academia is falling to very similar issues. These institutions take responsibility and spread it thin like butter over toast, and when you do that everything and that institution needs to be considered not credible.
All of these opinions of academia probably come from the behavior of a small fraction of bad actors who get popularized in the news, but because those bad actors aren't named and shamed as individuals, the institution takes the blame and all of the good things that come out of it are no longer worthy of trust.
> "If I search some review I scroll past all of the official review sites and find some random nobody who appears to be expressing their own experiences."
That strategy has been tainted for a while. Lots of seemingly legitimate comments from nobodies on social media like Reddit are actually from old accounts bought by companies, especially for product reviews (this is an explicit strategy by certain marketers). Even many enthusiastic product recommendations from YouTubers are influenced by sponsorships (oftentimes, even if they disclose that they were paid to make the sponsorship, they then say that they "genuinely" support the product even if it turns out to be defective).
The best way to evaluate a review is more based on examining the content of the review (instead of skipping to the conclusion), rather than who the person is. A person's small blog with in-depth reviews is often very reliable. YouTubers with in-depth reviews (rather than quick product recommendations) are also reliable. Certain review sites are also likely reliable (Wirecutter is okay, though sometimes their recommendations are biased towards ease-of-use rather than getting the best result from a product), but it's best to look at what the reviews actually say (as I agree that other popular review sites are influenced by undisclosed sponsorships).
you say, We've gone from a world where the average person trusts institutions to a world where the average person doesn't.
we've never been in a world where the average person trusts institutions
you're in a tiny usa bubble
established institutions in most of the world are openly corrupt, nepotistic, and kleptocratic, and they always have been, so average people trust their families and traditions, not institutions
> If I look up news, and I see CNN and MSNBC and any of those big networks, I keep scrolling until I find someone showing me the raw event with no commentary.
There are a small handful of significant characteristics to notice about the raw event to prove to others you are a sentient human using actively using your music cognition.
Here's a hint: disco chord. (Another hint: the answer isn't merely, "hey, I hear the disco chord now!")
If you can hear the event and articulate it's significance, great!
But if you cannot do that with something as ineffectual as pop music, ask yourself: what could you possibly achieve with raw data and no commentary in a domain with high stakes like epidemiology (for example)?
> Even I don't trust anything coming out of any large institutions anymore
Learn to differentiate between facts and editorials/opinions.
Alternative media isn't very good at presenting basic facts correctly, something institutions still do well and can only spin so far. Alternative media outright lies about facts.
And what is your take on Brian Sicknick [1]? He's the officer who died following the January 6th riots. [1] All big media sites ran an identical story. He was not only killed, but he was bludgeoned to death, in the head, by a rioter wielding a fire hydrant. Quite the visceral and disturbing imagery. The problem is that it was not true, at all. Not only was he not killed by rioters - the medical examiner would later testify that he was completely physically unharmed as a consequence of the riots. He didn't even die on January 6th, and was texting his brother that evening. He died the next day following a series of strokes, from a preexisting clot in his brain.
Any media outlet which did even the bare minimum of research would have known it was a lie: contact the brother, the hospital, the coroner's office (seeking only a date confirmation), let alone actually having done any real investigation whatsoever into the claims. But they didn't. Politicians, including the president (who all would have had 100% certainty that he was not killed) then continued to actively lie to the public and exploit his death for political gain, even including having a formal ceremony at the Capital Rotunda that's been traditionally reserved for individuals such as Rosa Parks and RBG.
When it was finally revealed to be a lie, where was the reckoning? An exploited media anxious to discover how and why they were misled, and hold those responsible accountable? For that matter what of holding the politicians accountable for their own behavior? They were actively and maliciously lying and propagandizing a man's death on a national level.
Instead, the media tried to shift the story to the strokes being caused by pepper spray - which was also another completely fabricated lie with no basis in reality. Then when the chief medical examiner refused to play ball, they just buried the story. There was 0 interest in the truth from the beginning to end. And here you are saying the big media is good at presenting basic facts and can only spin so far. This is not a swipe at you, but rather emphasizing how they're able to really get away with this.
media was led astray by law-enforcement officials and delay from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
After the results were finally published, the information got out and was covered on media outlets (such as the WSJ etc) ..
You're looking for perfection in an atmosphere that is genuinely a fog of war and cherry picking 1 example. the point is that statistically speaking your better off with instituitonal media over alternative media.
Institutions will still lead to the right answer over a long time scale Compared to whatever other non-institutional media you look at.
Obviously, in any case consider many sources, weight them appropriately, consider recency of the data, and synthesize knowledge according to bayesian principles.
If you still disagree, what non-institutional sources do you prefer, and what do you think their track record is compared to instituional media, and will I be able to find examples even worse for them than the one you linked.
There was no 'fog of war', as this went on for months. The ceremony I spoke of happened nearly a month after his death, on February 3rd. I'm not looking for perfection - merely some vague concern for the truth over agenda, and I'm not finding it.
And the idea the media was misled, instead of a participant in misleading, is rather belied by their lack of their concern about such 'deception.' Were this a case where they were genuinely misled, this would have been grounds for a defacto inquisition. Instead not only did they seem completely unconcerned about that, they actively tried to keep pretending he was killed - even when it became clear he was not.
They never pursued, in the slightest, why they just lied to the American people for months. Sites, such as YouTube, which claim to care about disinformation still host hundreds of videos pretending he was killed. And it's not a cherry picked example. The media has been rife with lies as of late. The issue is that this is one where there's no way to do what you're trying to do, and argue for some sort of plausible deniability.
"To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted so as to be most useful, I should answer ‘by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.’ yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. it is a melancholy truth that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it’s benefits, than is done by it’s abandoned prostitution to falsehood.
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. the real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day.
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time: whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.
General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will &c &c. but no details can be relied on. I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. he who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."
Thomas Jefferson, 1807 [1]
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20 years ago this quote would have been quite hyperbolic. Now it's certainly scathing, but it's also completely appropriate and rationale. The current apparent chaos, deception, and disorder we are now entering into is not some novel and unprecedented era. The brief era of peace, trust, and general "sanity" that we "all" grew up in was the novel and unprecedented era. And so as we return to the past, the wisdom of that era becomes more meaningful than ever.
so your answer is you have no answer. very well. quick to demonize any/all, but not even interested in a solution. have fun being the eternal critic. chow.
I'd encourage you to read the quote, it's incredibly insightful. If you'd like cliff notes in our world of 140 characters - the news is largely irrelevant. The details, if not inconsequential, are largely unreliable. By contrast the big picture of events that truly matters will get to you whether you read the news or not.
To take a safe and neutral example, consider quantum computing. It's obtained a vast amount of headlines that consume substantial time and mental energy to assimilate. Yet years after those headlines? The largest number we've factorized using "pure" quantum computing (as opposed to drastically reducing the search space using tricks like cherry picking numbers optimized for rapid solving by Fermat factorization) is 21. Yes, 7 * 3. All of the mental energy, interest, excitement, and general 'consumption' one might have dedicated to quantum computing over the past has largely been a waste of time, energy, effort, and interest.
In cases where people become much more emotionally or mentally invested in the news, it's largely just quite sad. Even more so because the news regularly works to manipulate and exploit people's emotions, as in the case of Sicknick. And they're quite good at it!
What political gain did Pence and Trump get from honouring his death with such a ceremony though? Not saying there was none, but it's not an obviously strong motive. Seems more like a simple case of someone getting the wrong story and nobody thought to doubt/verify it even at the highest levels. FWIW I'd never heard anything about it until just now (but I'm not in the US).
It was Biden/Harris. As for the exploitation of his death, search YouTube for something like 'officer killed in capitol riots.' For a company that claims to care about misinformation, they're perfectly happy having hundreds videos, full of misinformation, actively exploiting this issue to this day.
And while I have become extremely skeptical of the competence of our government and agencies, I can safely assure you they are more than competent enough to at least determine whether somebody was murdered at the Capitol on a given day, or not.
It explicitly said in the wikipedia article "The following weekend, Trump ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at all federal buildings, grounds, and vessels for three days".
Biden didn't assume office until the 20th.
Flags being flown at half-staff is a pretty normal event, not a rare honor. The ceremony was held on February 2nd. The picture chosen for the Wiki article entry is from that ceremony.
Perhaps, but there seems little reason to suppose had Trump/Pence still been in office the decision would have been any different. Just seems you're reading more into the story than is justified.
For me, it’s not that I can’t differentiate, but that it’s tiresome. Major news sources frequently blend fact and opinion so it’s extra effort to read their material rather than to just read the source directly.
This doesn’t mean I read “alternative media” but being slightly better than a cesspool doesn’t mean I want to use them.
I think traditional media manipulates by selectively omitting context. Let's say a police officer died of a heart attack during January 6th, it would be presented as "capital police officer dies during the riots". While technically true, different people would interpret this as murder or accident.
Journalists argue that too much context makes for grueling reading but it's too powerful of a tool to wield selectively.
I think everyone and everything will be targeted by spammers, not because they are hated, but because such spammers are universal and will always target any open gap that exists.
There might be targeted attacks, but I believe that if there was drive for such attacks, they'd already be in play without Chat GPT.
> when I asked it who was “President in 2022,” it responded (inter alia) with “My training data only goes up until 2021, so I am not able to provide information about events that have not yet occurred.”
> Notice that it goes off the rails in its answer because it wrote me that in 2023!
This is not a mistake. If the bot is trained with data only up to 2021, then for the bot 2022 is in the future, no matter when you ask, in 2022, 2023 or in 2030.
It needn't be real time though, and arguably better if it weren't. But I'd expect to see the training data updated at least daily at some time in the future.
The entire article is positively dripping with the sort of self-important puffery so often shown by academics. He's clearly looking for gotchas in a system that he absolutely doesn't understand and of course he also doesn't miss an opportunity to take a dig at educators in America and their sub-standard institutions.
Maybe a doctorate in PoliSci doesn't really translate to a deep understanding of AI. I'll take the author's opinions on technology with the same gravitas in which they might take my own political opinions.
Perhaps, but that's an entirely different thing from having items from 2022-2023 in its training data.
That part wouldn't be any different with a human. If you locked a person in a cave in 2021, and released him in 2023, he could know that it was 2023 (at least after you told him) without knowing (e.g.) who won the World Series in 2022.
The criticism wasn’t that ChatGPT doesn’t know stuff from 2022, it was that ChatGPT is stating that it can’t tell you because it hasn’t happened yet.
I don’t know if this is because of boilerplate formulations about the cutoff date that aren’t true ChatGPT output, or rather because ChatGPT has a poor understanding of time, as examples shared in previous HN threads have demonstrated.
A more straightforward answer would have been “My training data only goes up until 2021, so I don’t know who is president in 2022.”
However, the answer could be more useful. When you actually ask it “Is Biden president?”, ChatGPT answers “As of my knowledge cutoff in 2021, Joe Biden is the president of the United States, after being inaugurated on January 20, 2021.” So why didn’t it give that information for the first question?
It is a valid criticism that ChatGPT is very inconsistent and often misleading in its representation of what information it is in principle able to provide.
Then a straightforward answer would be something along the lines of “Biden, assuming he didn’t die or was incapacitated since <date>, which is the last date I have data on.”
"But it is to be hoped that if ChatGPT triggers us into tackling how we can remove our willingness to give bullshit a pass — even for the wrong reason (combating the the threat of massive plagiarism) — then it may help us improve higher education."
That's a useful problem to tackle. ChatGPT is good at well-written blithering. This shines a spotlight on the fact that society, and academia, tolerates well-written blithering. A sizable percentage of what appears on op-ed pages and in "thinky" magazines of all political persuasions looks like ChatGPT output.
The humanities, as a field, now have to address that. Text on factual subjects which is not grounded to facts or a valid model is junk. That's recognized for technical writing. A "how to" article or a repair manual that tells you to do things that won't work is junk. That's not a criterion that's historically been applied in the humanities.
Now it has to be.
This isn't the end of the world. There was a time when good penmanship was a indicator of content quality. (Look up "Chancellery cursive") Then came typewriters. After that, spelling was considered a useful indicator. Then came spell check, followed by grammar checkers. Those traditional indicators are now dead. Lack of such errors merely indicates that someone has the right tools.
Good automated blithering generators may force a style of writing more like classical newspaper reporting. Who, What, When, Where, Why, under the byline of the reporter who was there. Or like Wikipedia, with "cite needed" all over. That's not a bad thing.
Now we need automated tools to criticize blithering. Ones that check sources and verify that the sources say what was quoted. Automated provenance verification. Checking for false confirmation via multiple routes from the same source.
Opinion presented as fact.
This could be healthy for political discourse. I look forward to seeing speeches marked up by automated checking systems. Perhaps in real time.
ChatGPT bullshits, because almost all humanities are occupied by bullshitters. Best example from this blog post itself: “It is difficult to say whether these events show that the humanities have been “infiltrated by bullshitters,” as this would depend on one’s definition of “bullshitters” and one’s perspective on the events in question. However, it is clear that these events sparked significant debate and discussion about the nature of knowledge, truth, and intellectual standards within the academic community.”
Ask any student/professor in Humanities on, say X. The obvious response is: it depends on how you define X. Darwin doesn't define what species is in his "On the origin of species". Even today, we don't have a definition of species--of course, there are many definitions, but not all agree to one definition.
One doesn't need a definition to start doing research. However, in humanities, definitions have become fetishes. That's what ChatGPT demonstrates in her examples.
What do you mean by "definitions have become fetishes?" What are some examples?
Noticing that most words are ambiguous isn't a bug. It's a commonplace observation that you can repair and move on from. There are a zillion online debates that get started because people interpret words differently (or even adversarially) and don't clarify. It's good to be able to avoid falling into that trap.
In in interactive context, you might ask your conversation partner what they mean by X (if you can't infer it from context). Otherwise, you might pick a definition that seems useful and go with it.
In legal contracts, definitions are not only necessary, but also protect both parties. That's why definitions are added in contracts.
There are definiendum (a term that needs to be defined) and definiens (that does the defining). Definiendum =df definiens
What do these definitions do? Replace a symbol (or a string) with a sentence or set of sentences. How do these help settle disputes?
Let us imagine a scenario: Some Y says that there are no native religions in Africa, except Christianity, Islam and Judaism, because Y defends this based on his theory of religion. Another guy say: Ah, whether native religions exist in Africa depends on your definition of 'religion'. In that case, Y will say: 'religion' =df what does not exist in Africa. Now one can see all absurdities about definitions. One needs a theory about what religion is (in the world) to settle whether native religions exist in Africa/India. Instead of coming up with theories with testable consequences, one engages in definitional quibbles and plausibility arguments.
Now look at plausibility arguments. If someone can argue for P, others can equally argue for ~P (not P). How to pick between P and ~P? Based on people's voting? This is another reason to have theories (as we see in Natural sciences). Now you can see journalists, professors who assign students to write arguments, and students trained by such professors.
I recommend reading Bret Devereaux for examples of deft handling of definitional issues in history.
For example, his series on the fall of Rome [1]. It's certainly possible to get into silly disputes about what counts as the "Roman empire" and what it means for it to "fall" but he uses this as a starting point to talk about what evidence we have about actually happened. Different historians define things differently depending on their perspectives, but you just accept and deal with that.
Similarly, I could see someone wanting to talk about religion to make some definitions just to be clearer what they're talking about, but then you go on to talk about what people actually do.
> The corporate and political climbers are on to the fact that producing grammatically correct bullshit is apparently often sufficient to pass too many of our introductory courses.
Hmm. This feels true outside of universities as well.
We interviewed students at a very expensive local university to do some writing for my startup. We were stunned at the number of them who couldn't string together a 5 paragraph essay that was (1) spelled correctly (!!!!), (2) grammatically correct; and (3) contained coherent, logical thoughts. iirc we interviewed 5, and 3 failed on 2 or more of the previous points.
It appears to be possible to be an undergrad at Santa Clara, presumably with passing grades, while being... not exactly illiterate, but essentially so.
I know this sounds like a grandpa yelling get off my lawn, but our standards were not super high. Correct spelling, correct grammar, and a simple 5 paragraph essay with a clear thesis and supporting arguments.
The argument here is that society holds the humanities in contempt because their students aren't held to any meaningful standards --> aren't taught to do anything useful. I think that is dated, but was the sense ~10 years ago. Today, they are seen as an active threat to society by many, with their one main contribution being promotion of intersectionality / DEI / attack on freedom of speech & meritocracy.
You point out that it’s hard to measure merit at times. OK, but you haven’t argued that means our noisy signals of merit should be ignored.
Whatever it’s flaws, here is what I like about meritocracy: it says we should honor and reward those who work hard and encourages the pursuit of merit in individuals.
In contrast, the central comment of DEI is that groups who do relatively well don’t deserve it, that their gains are ill gotten. Members of these groups who work hard should not be rewarded. In fact they deserve less than equal treatment by society.
I am confident that this latter system if followed would result in much worse outcomes, discouraging individuals to work hard. It is an ugly, negative philosophy.
We should honor the strong and hard working and successful, encourage them to share their methods with others so that they might also succeed, help the weak, and ostracize the lazy.
Well said. But with the nuances you added we’ve moved away from meritocracy to a more sensible, less binary framework. You added solidarity, common sense and tough love.
In my experience it is very subjective and generally contextual what either side of that equation means.
The term meritocracy has often been by people who have a very clear view on what contribution and reward mean and they typically assume a closed and fair system where everyone already agreed on the meaning of those terms and on the rules on how to evaluate those things on a case by case basis.
To be honest I'm just not sure whether it is a useful term at all outside of games, sports and other controlled systems with predefined and agreed upon rules.
Any sufficiently complex economic system has loopholes, can be gamed, can be subjectively perceived as unfair. This in itself should not disqualify it, since all systems are imperfect.
Perhaps this system does not have a built in mechanism for empathy… that’s a stronger argument against it in my view.
Tenure or background based systems are far less desirable - wouldn’t you agree?
I think you hit the nail on the head with empathy. Empathy is contextual, subjective and real. It cannot be pinned down with rules, it’s too humane and powerful for that.
Under capitalism everyone decides what to reward, even the poorest people in first world countries make tons of decisions what to spend their money on, that is how we decide merit, if people decide to give you their money you have merit. We try to regulate so it doesn't get abusive but there will always be some holes, but that system is as close to an unbiased merit function we have gotten.
The other good merit function we have is one vote per person, that is how we elect national leaders, this doesn't have some of the abusive loopholes as the capitalist merit function, but instead it has other abusive properties which is why every modern country choose to do a mix of both.
Both of these functions, market value and vote per person, are at least in my eyes pre-defined rules. You have to agree with them under the many circumstances where they apply.
To me the term meritocracy just seems too idealist and it assumes too much in relation to complex and varied systems like economy or politics.
Well it is a machine so of course it doesn't care:
ChatGPT is a bullshitter in the (Frankfurt) sense of having no concern for the truth at all
Detecting true plagiarism with it (or a derived entity as a service) would be as useful the currently proposed watermarking. Turn the technology to some advantage, because the profit seekers and free riders certainly won't be deterred.
I think you mean "This could be great for university. Suddenly thousands of mediocre low effort papers are now good enough to pass them and keep getting money from the government instead of having to fail them". Big universities are businesses first, research institutes second, and educations maybe fifth or even lower.
Rare and blessed be the university that isn't a business in the modern age. But show me one, and I will show you a university that isn't on the international rankings.
As long as government money is doled out to barely adult humans in large quantities to obtain a degree there will be an industry to service providing these degrees.
I've seen a rather disturbing amount of malfeasance by educators, where they award the highest grade to anyone who even moderately puts in an effort. Many educators even waving away their responsibility to accurately determine aptitude and assign grades accurately.
Grade grubbing alone has infiltrated even the most prestigious, and I find it hard to believe that the average student is that much better than their counterparts up to 70 years ago. Even the average student at these institutions. I just don't believe we can trust educators to do their job. I remember arguing back and forth with an educator who believed their only job is to 'educate', where if someone learned something, then they have done their job. I could not believe it. I'd understand if it was from a grade school perspective, but this person was teaching at a university. Another educator on HN no more than a few weeks ago in a related thread said their perspective is to not deal with the students, parents, and administration who will hound them about grades, they said something along the lines of "giving people an A will stop this, and who cares anyway? The best of the best will go on to do research, side projects, etc. anyway".
Speaking towards the article, "Humanities" absolutely deserve their reputation, even among research where they have a perpetual replication crisis, hilarious events such as Sokal and Grievance Studies affairs. If you don't want this reputation, take a hit towards funding, call out poor research, in fact don't allow poor research to even get near publication. Reject more students. It is clear standards are low, raise them, significantly. You can make mistakes, but I hardly if ever see them corrected in a timely fashion. I should not see articles where a US state is considered to be higher in terms of voter suppression compared to North Korea.
In fact, when you view ChatGPT purely as a machine to parrot and bullshit then it is already superhuman. (Moreso with the parroting than the bullshitting)
There was a front page of HN post just a few days ago about a college student developing exactly that tool. As you can imagine it’s a hard problem but there is absolutely going to be value in it.
I think its interesting in the discussion of bullshit in the humanities article there is no knowledge or acknowledgement of published bullshit in STEM. And yet pretty much every competent STEM academic is going to have seen a lot of it, perhaps more than in the humanities. There's a reason for citation counts and impact numbers being rewarded more than the raw number of publications when it's time for making tenure decisions.
The university is very resilient and capable of reinventing itself and its mission. I predict that every major contemporary state will fail before the university.
In many third world countries, teachers/professors are abysmal and incompetent. So, if the US can grant student visas to people who can afford the US tuition fees, these colleges can be filled up with foreigners.
It would be interesting if AI would end up raising the expectations placed on humans for academic (and other) publications, and maybe even for general discourse, because “obviously” if your output can be replaced by an automaton, you’re not up to snuff and can’t be taken seriously. I’m not holding my breath though, the opposite trend of putting AI up on a pedestal is quite strong.
Producing bullshit that’s decent enough to get through uni has always been a thing.
Some people are panicking now because it’s gotten very easy to figure out that they are the actual bullshitter and they finally need to actually do their jobs properly for the first time in their lives but don’t know how to.
It's a huge mistake. The point of life is the synthesis and growth through working through things. We are moving towards a completely meaningless but instant world.
Meaning is ambiguous and finding it is intrinsic to the human condition. Meaning is getting harder to find, certainly, but it can still be found. What we are moving towards is a deterioration of fulfilling experiences as our social world is corroded by the modern internet.
Socrates: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters...
This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit.
Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
please tell me this was at least partly written by ChatGPT as a joke illustrating the very kind of meaningless academic drivel that it's attempting to rail against?
Not speaking to it's truth content, but it reads like self important bullshit.
" When you are growing and everyone trusts you, you can do no wrong, and your mistakes shrink into nothing on their own."
" When you begin to shrink and your reputation sours, you can do no right, your wrongs balloon catastrophically and your rights slowly shrink into nothing like your wrongs used to"
Academia I'm sure provides tons of stuff, but once you sour your reputation and you pop your balloon, it's very very hard to recover from it. We've gone from a world where the average person trusts institutions to a world where the average person doesn't.
Even I don't trust anything coming out of any large institution anymore. If I look up news, and I see CNN and MSNBC and any of those big networks, I keep scrolling until I find someone showing me the raw event with no commentary.
If I search some review I scroll past all of the official review sites and find some random nobody who appears to be expressing their own experiences.
Why?
Because I don't trust anything bigger than an individual. Doctors hide themselves behind hospitals with a million accountant sent number punchers who are incentivized to screw you over.
Companies pull the journalists into their wings so that the journalists are beholden random advertisers, and can write whatever they want without much risk to their own credibility.
I'm confident academia is falling to very similar issues. These institutions take responsibility and spread it thin like butter over toast, and when you do that everything and that institution needs to be considered not credible.
All of these opinions of academia probably come from the behavior of a small fraction of bad actors who get popularized in the news, but because those bad actors aren't named and shamed as individuals, the institution takes the blame and all of the good things that come out of it are no longer worthy of trust.