> But do the apologists even believe it themselves? Latham, the professor of strategy, gives away the game at the end of his reverie. “None of this can happen, though,” he writes, “if professors and administrators continue to have their heads in the sand.” So it’s not inevitable after all? Whoops.
This self-assured ‘gotcha’ attitude is pungent throughout the whole piece, but this may be as good an example as any. It’s ridden with cherry-picked choices and quotes from singular actors as if they’re representative of every educator, every decision maker, and it’s such a bad look from someone that clearly knows better. I don’t expect the author to take the most charitable position, but one of intellectual honesty would be nice. To pretend there isn’t, or perhaps ignore, those out there applying technological advancement, including current AI, in education in thoughtful, meaningful, and beneficial even if challenging to quantify ways, is obtuse. To decide there isn’t the possibility of those things being true, given their exclusion, is to do the same head-burying he ridicules others for.
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> After I got her feedback, I finally asked ChatGPT if generative AI could be considered a gimmick in Ngai’s sense. I did not read its answer carefully. Whenever I see the words cascade down my computer screen, I get a sinking feeling. Do I really have to read this? I know I am unlikely to find anything truly interesting or surprising, and the ease with which the words appear really does cheapen them.
It may have well been the author’s point, but the disdain for the technology that drips from sentences like these, which are rife throughout, taints any appreciation for the argument they’re trying to make — and I’m really trying to take it in good faith. Knowing they come in with such strongly held preconceived notions makes me reflexively question their own introspection before putting pen to paper.
Ultimately, are you writing to convince me, or yourself, of your point?
>Ultimately, are you writing to convince me, or yourself, of your point?
I like that you point out here that the author clearly has a strong opinion, and then immediately say that the act of expressing that opinion may suggest that they do not hold that opinion at all.
By this logic, are you trying to convince us that you don’t love the way this article is written, or are you trying to convince yourself of that?
Rather, what I hoped to articulate was a sense that being able to viscerally feel that an author holds a very obvious position from the outset of an article, and then not seeing them make even the faintest attempt to proactively argue their point against the most obvious—the easiest—criticisms, comes across lazy.
I expect arguing in good faith, and this wasn’t that.
Anything else is just aesthetics and personal preference