HN user

oerdier

83 karma
Posts1
Comments38
View on HN

A critical difference between a calculator and an LLM is that a calculator doesn't make decisions. A calculator performs the operations you type in, nothing more. An LLM does make decisions. The human operator of the LLM needs to be able to evaluate the decisions made by the LLM. That requires education and experience beforehand.

An LLM is a force multiplier only, not a replacement. It's a personal assistant to an expert. To use an LLM in a acceptable way, you still first have to learn how to do what it does yourself. I think your suggestion for people to be taught how to use LLMs is justified, but they should do so only after first being taught a no-LLM curriculum. I think this should be entirely after what the notion of an education was in pre-LLM times. Don't incorporate LLMs into our current education, instead teach use of LLMs after our current education.

Dutch culture is primarily atheist, yet it's considered virtuous and goes-without-saying to uphold agreements . A common saying any child would have heard is "afspraak is afspraak": an agreement is an agreement, period. Atheist doesn't mean amoral or unreliable.

Individual businesses may be different, of course.

One doesn't exclude the other. I still program myself; I actually have more time to do so because the LLM I pay some billionaire for is taking care of the mundane stuff. Before I had to do the mundane stuff myself. What I pay the billionaire is a laughable fraction compared to the time and energy I now have extra to spend on meaningful innovation.

I wasn't suggesting individuals shouldn't be able to pay with credit. I have a credit card myself, which I use when I can't pay with debit. I was suggesting that for a population as a whole, having paying with credit being so commonplace leads to crippling debt issues, which as far as I can believe "the reports", is an issue in the US.

Your comment on the risk of paying with debit cards surprised me. I've never considered it a risk at all. It made me realize that perhaps here (in the Netherlands) we have consumer protection systems in place, in addition to the payment systems, that prevent any issues.

I think it's healthy for a population to not have as part of day-to-day life to pay with credit, effectively paying with money you might not actually have, going into debt. How many US citizens are crippled by credit card debt, and the interest on it?

After getting shoulder bursitis two years ago--although the direct cause was sports, not desk habits--I dove into the world of split ergo keyboards. I did get one (a Kyria v3) and learned to type on it at an acceptable speed--although still significantly slower than my speed on a regular keyboard.

Wanting to optimize my layout, I did research into my typing behavior and logged my keystrokes (and storing these logs as securely as I would a password). Analysis did give me notable insights (e.g. by far my most used keys are arrow keys, for selecting text), but my main conclusion was that even during a regular full day of programming preferring my keyboard over my mouse (tiling window manager, hotkeys, browser extension to virtually click on elements using keys), I don't actually type that much, and if I do, it is in bursts, never more than 20 seconds or so.

Although I find typing on a split fun and comfortable, I went back to a regular keyboard because the hit in productivity is not worth it for me. The experiment did teach me how to improve my ergonomics. I optimized my desk height and bought a very flat and less wide keyboard, with the completely unused numpad section chopped off ("TKL") so if I do grab my mouse there is less travel.

This kind of translation problem is the focal point of Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 5 episode 2, "Darmok" (1991).

I watched it for the first time after somebody referenced it, as I did just now, as an example of this kind of problem. Despite my knowing the point of the plot beforehand, I found the episode was still interesting.

I wish I could mention this episode here for language enthusiasts to enjoy without revealing the main plot point (that idioms in languages are hard to translate). Shaka, when the walls fell. But I think the very act of mentioning it in a thread on this topic does so unavoidably. Temba, at rest.

I hope they'll apply the critical thinking rule of thumb to check for themselves what modern research has to say on this!

Edit: And how can you critically assess if that research is any good? To do it well you need... domain knowledge.

Not being able to solve basic math problems in your mind (without a calculator) is still a problem. "Because you won't always have a calculator with you" just was the wrong argument.

You'll acquire advanced knowledge and skills much, much faster (and sometimes only) if you have the base knowledge and skills readily available in your mind. If you're learning about linear algebra but you have to type in every simple multiplication of numbers into a calculator...

Critical thinking is not a generic/standalone skill that you can practise targetedly. As in, critical thinking doesn't translate across knowledge domains. To think critically you need extensive knowledge of the domain in question; that's one reason why memorizing facts will always remain necessary, despite search engines and LLMs.

At best what you can learn specifically regarding critical thinking are some rules of thumb such as "compare at least three sources" and "ask yourself who benefits".

Vets Who Code 1 year ago

Great initiative, but the landing page on Firefox Android is quite annoying because the animated text wraps and keeps changing the vertical position of the text I'm trying to read.

I appreciate your taking the time to elaborate. I see you've responded to all comments on your original comment and remained civil despite people's negative sentiment. There are too few places on the internet left where such civility remains, and I thank you for contributing.

I would not feel assured of students actually completing the work themselves with _only_ something like examind.io as an extra measure. For it to be used in their own time, they would use it on their own hardware. As user viraptor pointed out, whenever there's anti-cheat software, someone is going to create targeted anti-anti-cheat software. That's what I meant by arms race.

For me to feel assured of students not fooling the anti-cheat software, for their input device they would have to use hardware controlled by me. It's not feasible to let them use hardware controlled by me in their own time.

I can see how a tool such as examind.io might help in accurately evaluating how students use other tools on a computer. For that they could use hardware controlled by me, during a test.

In the Netherlands, programming in secondary education (ages 12-18) is not uncommon but also not widespread. If it's offered, it's not great. Like programming taught at universities, it's mostly people with a knack for it that actually improve.

For my msc thesis, which I finished 6 years ago, I researched how to teach programming to people without natural talent. I found a method with great results, and have yet to see anyone do something remotely similar. I'm not teasing a sale, all my stuff will be fully free. I've been working on it fulltime for the last three years, and I expect to have a 1.0 in two years, so let's say four years.

In principle nothing about the structure of the course has to change. You can keep an existing course with instruction during class and and working on a project outside of class. Even handing in the project and grading could stay the same, although the grade for the project wouldn't be recorded and would serve only as an indication. You then add a longer test at the very end, for a grade.

How I set up my course is different from traditional education. Most instruction happens from self study (including videos and software). Face to face time is for questions. All elements, material, staff, and students, have to be tuned for this setup to work though and is hard to pivot to in existing setups because education (in the Netherlands at least) is very entrenched.

This self-study centered learning approach, like the in-person tests instead of projects, comes from necessity. Great (and I expect ever increasing) teacher shortages.

As a teacher, my answer to publicly available AI, regarding grading, has been to only let work by students I have seen been done myself (or staff, trusted implicitly) count towards passing/failing/diplomas.

This means graded longer tasks such as writing or programming, which in the past were done outside of class and then handed in, are instead done in person (like most exams are, traditionally). To acknowledge the longer process, the time alotted for such a test is much longer (up to 3 hours instead of 1) and I can expect less of work created in 3 hours than work created over 6 weeks.

Students still have the opportunity to hand in work that was done outside of such an in-person test, which I will grade, but that grade isn't on the record is serves only as an indication.

I wish I could trust students, but plagiarism has become so easy now (added to a zeitgeist of personal gain above all) that a critical mass fails to resist.

I think diploma's are very useful. They get their usefulness from the trustworthiness of the party handing out the diploma. Only recording grades for work that has been done in an environment controlled by that party has downsides, but in the current and foreseeable situation I don't see a better way of maintaining a base level of trustworthiness.

I love teaching without grades or diplomas involved so much more. Then it's all about doing what's best for the students.

Pop!_OS has been my daily driver for three years and counting. I think its desktop enviroment is already fine, with a few annoyances (hiding the top bar requires GNOME Toolkit and doesn't work reliably).

I've been following the progress of Cosmic casually. To me it seems a slightly more [cohesive|streamlined|robust] version of the current desktop, which would be great.

Although it also seems like for non-early adopters like myself who just want to use something that works and gets out or their way is a long way off. Videos reviewing the alpha version say this fairly universally.

There is a fog-of-war mechanic, called 'vision'. In the game discussed in the monitor article (League of Legends), what is shown on the minimap is restricted to what your team can see at that moment.

The monitor is akin to having an experienced coach watch you play live. Is that also cheating? I think it is.

I also think it's impossible to detect, unless the player suddenly becomes extremely much better at the game. That's the best they can do to catch cheaters at chess. But chess is orders of magnitude easier to monitor, because the game state and input are small and simple.

When I first read about the monitor I realized that for many types of games cheating will become unstoppable. Although sad, the bright side is that it drove me away from online gaming even more, to the benefit of my overall health.

Here in the Netherlands, already a generally densely populated country, there's a teacher shortage everywhere, including cities.

People rather have higher paying jobs, or quit because the job disappoints. I belong to the latter group. I quit teaching at secondary school (ages 15-18). After three different schools in three different areas, and having spoken with many colleagues and their experiences, I sadly had to conclude that broadly the work culture in secondary education (in this country, at least) is dramatically lacking professionalism. To a point where I think if my goal is to teach the next generation well enough, my time and energy is better spent elsewhere.