There’s this podcast I used to enjoy (I still enjoy it, but they stopped making new episodes) called Build For Tomorrow (previously known as The Pessimists Archive).
It’s all about times in the past where people have freaked out about stuff changing but it all turned out okay.
After having listened to every single episode — some multiple times — I’ve got this sinking feeling that just mocking the worries of the past misses a few important things.
The paradox of risk management. If you have a valid concern, and we collectively do something to respond to it and prevent the damage, it ends up looking as if you were worried over nothing.
Even for inventions that are, overall, beneficial, they can still bring new bad things with them. You can acknowledge both parts at once. When you invent trains, you also invent train crashes. When you invent electricity, you also invent electrocution. That doesn’t mean you need to reject the whole idea, but you need to respond to the new problems.
There are plenty of cases where we have unleashed horrors onto the world while mocking the objections of the pessimists. Lead, PFAS, CFCs, radium paint, etc.
I’m not so sure that the concerns about AI “killing culture” actually are as overblown as the worry about cursive, or record players, or whatever. The closest comparison we have is probably the printing press. And things got so weird with that so quickly that the government claimed a monopoly on it. This could actually be a problem.
you know how banks will say “Past performance of financial securities does not represent potential future performance” or whatever: this is much the same thing. There are plenty of things that people freaked out about that turned out to be nothing much. There are plenty of things that people did not freak out about when they really should have. People are basically shit about telling the difference between them.
While i do get this vibe from the headline, the article actually closes with a call to be mindful of the shortcomings of generative AI (while using it)
There are keyboards, but usually computers/tablets/phones are banned in class. Our high school did not ban laptops on lessons (it was a very liberal school), but few people used them anyway. Then there are tests, solutions in which can also get too long to quickly write without cursive. Even here, teachers did not accept assigmnents and tests in a typed form, except during remote learning. Not to mention the formulas, which would be troublesome to type out, doubt kids would be fluent in LaTeX.
When I was in school in the early 2000s we just wrote formulas down on the blank bits, after we printed off the rest of the document.
I find it bizarre that someone would refuse to accept a typed document especially because it would probably make it easier to read in the case of students with bad handwriting
Fair, and I guess accepting typed papers is more common in universities. But schools still don’t. Mostly because tradition is hard to break, in large part because a lot of people (especially elderly) would find it uncomfortable to read from a screen as opposed to paper. I can relate because I am this way myself))
I work alongside people that went to Cambridge, and even they don’t use cursive. No one uses cursive in the real world, it’s just this made-up thing you get taught in school just to waste some time.
Respectfully disagree. I myself went for embarrassingly long without knowing English cursive (only knew it for my native language), so I know the difference, and it DOES matter. As soon as most of my reading materials (and thus notes) became English, I had no choice other than to learn cursive, because otherwise writing is painfully slow.
And another thing! Kids these days aren’t learning cursive handwriting. It’s the death of culture, I tell you.
There’s this podcast I used to enjoy (I still enjoy it, but they stopped making new episodes) called Build For Tomorrow (previously known as The Pessimists Archive).
It’s all about times in the past where people have freaked out about stuff changing but it all turned out okay.
After having listened to every single episode — some multiple times — I’ve got this sinking feeling that just mocking the worries of the past misses a few important things.
I’m not so sure that the concerns about AI “killing culture” actually are as overblown as the worry about cursive, or record players, or whatever. The closest comparison we have is probably the printing press. And things got so weird with that so quickly that the government claimed a monopoly on it. This could actually be a problem.
you know how banks will say “Past performance of financial securities does not represent potential future performance” or whatever: this is much the same thing. There are plenty of things that people freaked out about that turned out to be nothing much. There are plenty of things that people did not freak out about when they really should have. People are basically shit about telling the difference between them.
While i do get this vibe from the headline, the article actually closes with a call to be mindful of the shortcomings of generative AI (while using it)
What school are you in where kids aren’t taught cursive?? This is in standard first grade program.
Most schools in the US have replaced this worthless skill.
Along with all the other worthless skills like playing musical instruments or getting exercise
👌👍
It had to be the US /s
I am skeptical that this is possible, because you just wouldn’t be able to keep up with the necessary speed using non-cursive letters. It is SLOW.
I wonder if there are other more faster methods of writing text down… 🤔
There are keyboards, but usually computers/tablets/phones are banned in class. Our high school did not ban laptops on lessons (it was a very liberal school), but few people used them anyway. Then there are tests, solutions in which can also get too long to quickly write without cursive. Even here, teachers did not accept assigmnents and tests in a typed form, except during remote learning. Not to mention the formulas, which would be troublesome to type out, doubt kids would be fluent in LaTeX.
When I was in school in the early 2000s we just wrote formulas down on the blank bits, after we printed off the rest of the document.
I find it bizarre that someone would refuse to accept a typed document especially because it would probably make it easier to read in the case of students with bad handwriting
Fair, and I guess accepting typed papers is more common in universities. But schools still don’t. Mostly because tradition is hard to break, in large part because a lot of people (especially elderly) would find it uncomfortable to read from a screen as opposed to paper. I can relate because I am this way myself))
I work alongside people that went to Cambridge, and even they don’t use cursive. No one uses cursive in the real world, it’s just this made-up thing you get taught in school just to waste some time.
Respectfully disagree. I myself went for embarrassingly long without knowing English cursive (only knew it for my native language), so I know the difference, and it DOES matter. As soon as most of my reading materials (and thus notes) became English, I had no choice other than to learn cursive, because otherwise writing is painfully slow.
I get what you’re saying but you cannot disagree with someone’s personal experience.
I am not disagreeing with your experience. I am disagreeing with cursive being a “made-up thing that nobody uses”.
It’s been removed in most of the US.