It is a classic Pop Psychology/Philosophy legend/trope, predating Community and the AI boom by a wide margin. It’s one of those examples people repeat, because it’s an effective demonstration, and it’s a memorable way to engage a bunch of hung-over first year college students. It opens several different conversations about the nature of the mind, the self, empathy, and projection.
It’s like the story of the engineering professor who gave a test with a series of instructions, with instruction 1 being “read all the instructions before you begin” followed by things like “draw a duck” or “stand up and sing Happy Birthday to yourself” and then instruction 100 being “Ignore instructions 2-99. Write your name st the top of the sheet and make no other marks on the paper.”
Like, it definitely happened, and somebody was the first to do it somewhere. But it’s been repeated so often, in so many different classes and environments that it’s not possible to know who did it first, nor does it matter.
It is a classic Pop Psychology/Philosophy legend/trope, predating Community and the AI boom by a wide margin. It’s one of those examples people repeat, because it’s an effective demonstration, and it’s a memorable way to engage a bunch of hung-over first year college students. It opens several different conversations about the nature of the mind, the self, empathy, and projection.
It’s like the story of the engineering professor who gave a test with a series of instructions, with instruction 1 being “read all the instructions before you begin” followed by things like “draw a duck” or “stand up and sing Happy Birthday to yourself” and then instruction 100 being “Ignore instructions 2-99. Write your name st the top of the sheet and make no other marks on the paper.”
Like, it definitely happened, and somebody was the first to do it somewhere. But it’s been repeated so often, in so many different classes and environments that it’s not possible to know who did it first, nor does it matter.