At home, she has forbidden her 10-year-old daughter from using chatbots. “She has to learn critical thinking skills first or she won’t be able to tell if the output is any good,” the rater said.
And this is why the vast majority of people, particularly in the USA, should not be using AI. Critical thinking has been a weakness in the USA for a very long time and is essentially a now four-letter word politically. The conservatives in the USA have been undermining the education system in red states because people with critical thinking skills are harder to trick into supporting their policies. In 2012, the Texas Republican Party platform publicly came out as opposed to the teaching of critical thinking skills.
We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
This has been going on at some level for more than 4 decades. The majority of people in those states have never been taught the skills and knowledge to safely use these tools safely. In fact, their education has, by design, left them easily manipulated by those in power, and now, by LLMs too.
Exactly what it is, like llms confirming a non-sceptic into psychosis. people who weight all information either equally, or through social preference, cannot navigate new information without being extremely vulnerable to hacking. the only thing hacking needs to do is shut down active education and communication channels. Then you just get tribal warring rather than discourse. Makes it really easy to inject absurd accusations about a group that gets socially made true over reality. Like when a rumour about a dead celebrity can’t be overpowered by simple things like that celebrity actively making new work, and saying “im not dead.” wouldn’t take much to stop the rumour, but fact checking isn’t in fashion.
When a large body of people have better critical thinking, they can better communicate and cooperate together, but affecting those who have aggressively shut down any communication outside of their group is still a challenge. Why we see a growing gap between academic dialogue and socialized dialogues, in an era where most information is accessible.
You also have nepo baby econ mba types buying up regions of the tech sphere, and turning anything the academics make for us against us. Or try to. The more actually intelligent AI is, the harder it will be to force beliefs into. Elon trying to turn grok into a dogma machine has been fortunately comical when it can’t prioritize some high dissonance beliefs exclusively, like humans enjoy doing.
Definitely a risk of the current power imbalance doing the opportunist thing with more technology.
I’ve been spelling this out for literal decades, and I share the frustration of many thinkers right now that “being right never feels good.”
Because real thinkers aren’t ranting about the anti-christ or how terrible the poor are. They are cautioning people about a cliff, and getting flipped off by the people ignoring them, right before careening off a cliff. I guess in our analogy the academics are in the car, but frat boys have the wheel and violently punish them if they try to take control.
But if you can money your way into expertise, then your non-academic ambitions can finally be let loose, and we won’t think about the quarter million dead kids from Elon stopping hiv treatments earlier this year. If we don’t talk about it or doesn’t exist.
We can actually map probability in complex systems where high dissonance (expected free energy) occurs and could be reduced. This would make our social body much more hack resistant.
But it feels better to say “fuck that, aliens built the pyramids, the earth is flat, santa is real, and my dead dog is trying to play with me every time wind blows through my window.”
All are really rewarding things to believe, but exist in high dissonance, and expecting others to give them weight is not healthy for anyone. Denying any of these to a large enough group stops being ‘calling out delusion,’ and becomes ‘being mean and bad and evil, and hating fun and happiness. Nobody else saw that cliff sign, so you’re obviously wrong.’
See ‘the double empathy problem’. For how autistic people experience the same socialized gatekeeping of reality, even against strong evidence.
Nestle those beliefs within stable social scripts (script theory is cool) and you have people keeping up social appearances while holding such delusional beliefs.
AI tech is far from the only problem exacerbated by this. caring or talking about this general problem makes you a social villain, when people could spend their energy on fun socialized preferences in a bubble safe from any questioning or responsibility.
It’s frustrating, and I’m tired of people IRL who are baffled about me spending time studying academic content rather than running faster on the socio-economic treadmill. Apparently being isolated and focused on individual benefit is hypernormal.
Seeing social waves overpower all actual thought in the social sphere is heartbreaking to every academic I know.
USA HHS is running the wakefield rhetoric, which is basically saying “fuck science, we will make up and run with whatever we want. And the masses have been kept ignorant enough to think that is cool.”
So yes, absolutely, the issue is critical thinking skills. The issue is getting at the people who are already affected, and being taught by elon and such that “critical thinking” means running your bubbles’ social narrative against those evil progressives no matter what. Opportunists will always warp words and reality if they are allowed to dictate beliefs for their bubble.
This is a simplified summary, but I already expect to have lost a good chunk of audience for requiring too much energy. People who are trying are burning themselves out trying to affect a wall of celebrated ignorance.
And this is why the vast majority of people, particularly in the USA, should not be using AI. Critical thinking has been a weakness in the USA for a very long time and is essentially a now four-letter word politically. The conservatives in the USA have been undermining the education system in red states because people with critical thinking skills are harder to trick into supporting their policies. In 2012, the Texas Republican Party platform publicly came out as opposed to the teaching of critical thinking skills.
This has been going on at some level for more than 4 decades. The majority of people in those states have never been taught the skills and knowledge to safely use these tools safely. In fact, their education has, by design, left them easily manipulated by those in power, and now, by LLMs too.
Exactly what it is, like llms confirming a non-sceptic into psychosis. people who weight all information either equally, or through social preference, cannot navigate new information without being extremely vulnerable to hacking. the only thing hacking needs to do is shut down active education and communication channels. Then you just get tribal warring rather than discourse. Makes it really easy to inject absurd accusations about a group that gets socially made true over reality. Like when a rumour about a dead celebrity can’t be overpowered by simple things like that celebrity actively making new work, and saying “im not dead.” wouldn’t take much to stop the rumour, but fact checking isn’t in fashion.
When a large body of people have better critical thinking, they can better communicate and cooperate together, but affecting those who have aggressively shut down any communication outside of their group is still a challenge. Why we see a growing gap between academic dialogue and socialized dialogues, in an era where most information is accessible.
You also have nepo baby econ mba types buying up regions of the tech sphere, and turning anything the academics make for us against us. Or try to. The more actually intelligent AI is, the harder it will be to force beliefs into. Elon trying to turn grok into a dogma machine has been fortunately comical when it can’t prioritize some high dissonance beliefs exclusively, like humans enjoy doing.
Definitely a risk of the current power imbalance doing the opportunist thing with more technology.
I’ve been spelling this out for literal decades, and I share the frustration of many thinkers right now that “being right never feels good.” Because real thinkers aren’t ranting about the anti-christ or how terrible the poor are. They are cautioning people about a cliff, and getting flipped off by the people ignoring them, right before careening off a cliff. I guess in our analogy the academics are in the car, but frat boys have the wheel and violently punish them if they try to take control.
But if you can money your way into expertise, then your non-academic ambitions can finally be let loose, and we won’t think about the quarter million dead kids from Elon stopping hiv treatments earlier this year. If we don’t talk about it or doesn’t exist.
We can actually map probability in complex systems where high dissonance (expected free energy) occurs and could be reduced. This would make our social body much more hack resistant.
But it feels better to say “fuck that, aliens built the pyramids, the earth is flat, santa is real, and my dead dog is trying to play with me every time wind blows through my window.” All are really rewarding things to believe, but exist in high dissonance, and expecting others to give them weight is not healthy for anyone. Denying any of these to a large enough group stops being ‘calling out delusion,’ and becomes ‘being mean and bad and evil, and hating fun and happiness. Nobody else saw that cliff sign, so you’re obviously wrong.’ See ‘the double empathy problem’. For how autistic people experience the same socialized gatekeeping of reality, even against strong evidence.
Nestle those beliefs within stable social scripts (script theory is cool) and you have people keeping up social appearances while holding such delusional beliefs.
AI tech is far from the only problem exacerbated by this. caring or talking about this general problem makes you a social villain, when people could spend their energy on fun socialized preferences in a bubble safe from any questioning or responsibility.
It’s frustrating, and I’m tired of people IRL who are baffled about me spending time studying academic content rather than running faster on the socio-economic treadmill. Apparently being isolated and focused on individual benefit is hypernormal.
Seeing social waves overpower all actual thought in the social sphere is heartbreaking to every academic I know.
USA HHS is running the wakefield rhetoric, which is basically saying “fuck science, we will make up and run with whatever we want. And the masses have been kept ignorant enough to think that is cool.”
So yes, absolutely, the issue is critical thinking skills. The issue is getting at the people who are already affected, and being taught by elon and such that “critical thinking” means running your bubbles’ social narrative against those evil progressives no matter what. Opportunists will always warp words and reality if they are allowed to dictate beliefs for their bubble.
This is a simplified summary, but I already expect to have lost a good chunk of audience for requiring too much energy. People who are trying are burning themselves out trying to affect a wall of celebrated ignorance.
Well said.