elprupneerg

starting to wonder if the "epidemic" of students submitting papers that teachers think are AI-written, really are just the next wave of systemic public education failures being noticed by professors

more and more I'm running into posts clearly written by humans that read like an AI wrote them but are consistent in tone, posted in like a shopify listing or pseudo-wiki.

looping circular topics, things that could have been caught in an editing pass but people probably aren't given enough time or paid well with to do a good job with the formulas they were taught were the only way by the schools

I went to a pretty good US public school, and by the late 2000s when I was graduating, a lot of the techniques taught to me were suddenly:

1. useless compared to giving me an intuition for what problems actually used the thing (compared to knowing how to solve it once presented)
2. and

you gotta understand, at least in the US, it seems to me like a reason things are are The Way They Currently Are, is that the parents think the schools will teach the kids the same things the schools think the parents will teach instead.

the schools teach to the standardized tests because their funding hinges on it.

the schools teach to the SATs/ACTs and whatever universities or trade schools are looking for. Because second-order funding for the schools, through the state and the town, depend on people moving there or not going private/charter, and those people are looking at graduation and acceptance rates. The people they're chasing, at least. it's a race to the bottom at every level.

the universities assume the high schools taught you the math you'll need, and the high schools assume the universities will teach it.

I've been thinking about the whole "cars stop for pedestrians carrying (what appear to be) bricks" thing

I was a driver for 15 years before I took great pains to move somewhere I could quit driving, and the thing that became extremely evident to me is that you really are incentivised to only care about the objects on the road that can cause you damage. truck drivers been generally the absolute worst to share the road with, and I've always believed it's because they just don't have to care. some unconscious thing in their brain knew that if we collide, I'm going under their grill. and I don't think it's ever been a conscious consideration; I don't think any of the trucks that have nearly run me off the road over the years saw me in my little sedan and thought, "I can take em." I don't think any of them saw me at all

it's just that attention is so precious when you're driving. I think it was especially noticeable to me because of my neurodivergence, but I think it's true for all people. most of them just don't know why their energy levels are depleting so fast. driving pulls your awareness up to a level that you really just can't keep up with and have to pick and choose what you track. you can care about pedestrians so much and do your damnedest to see everyone, but when it comes down to the wire, your limited human processing is choosing the dangers over the things you're a danger to every time

as a full time pedestrian now, it's really tempting to be flippant and accuse drivers of being monsters who simply don't care if I live or die. it's fun sometimes, even, and I will not stop. but in 99% of cases, drivers really just do not have the mental resources to catalogue objects that are not threats to their lives or property. they just don't!

basically what I'm saying is, as far as individual solutions goes, carrying bricks makes things easier for everyone

i feel like there'd be more political will for moving away from driving-as-default if more people like, truly understood in their bones that "driving" = "operating heavy machinery at high speeds, surrounded by others doing the same"
like people, even people used to driving, will be stressed as fuck the first couple times they have to operate a forklift despite being a smaller piece of machinery in a lower stakes environment

zero bad bitches hitting my line this week..mercury must be in gatorade 🤣