OLDaily

Bernard Williams
2019/07/22

This is a new online archive of works by the philosopher Bernard Williams. I know Williams for two major areas of work: first, his work on ethics (and especially the concepts of utilitarianism and of moral luck), and second, his razor-sharp insightful work on the philosophy of René Descartes. Unfortunately the book links just redirect you to Amazon (where research goes to die). Similarly, many of the links go to paywalls (what publishing has done to philosophy is an absolute sdhame). But there are enough links to open sources to give you a sense.

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How to shrink a university and how to talk about it: one campus begins the process
Bryan Alexander, 2019/07/22

Bryan Alexander discusses the strategies being pursued by universities in the face of fiscal pressure: "Quality over quantity, right-sizing (from corporate America): key words for describing this strategy." But there's a disturbing aspect to this: "Will those be students from wealthier families?" The thing is, the more universities serve a small wealthy elite, the less there will be broad support for public funding. We already see this with complaints that student grants and loan forgiveness only benefit the rich. A lack of public support pushes them to contract even more. It's a downward spiral universities can correct only if they find a way to serve the wider public. Of course, my scepticism is such that I don't think many of them really have an interest in doing that. Update: what we have today is Inside Higher Ed missing this exact point with respect to an Wall Street Journal article.

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What a very bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community
Sara Chipps, Stack Overflow, 2019/07/22

I think there's a really good and useful insight in this article, and it's this: "Even kind feedback can come off as caustic and mean when there is a mob of people behind it... The monster in this case is not one person, it was created when lots of people, even with great intentions, publicly disagreed with you at the same time." Once again, we see how perception matters as much as reality.

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What Kind Of Open EdTech Allows Us All To Follow Our Dreams Of A Better World?
LMS Pulse, 2019/07/22

This is a ncie post, because it makes us think of what it is we want to do, rather than what we need to build or how to build it (or what job we need to get, etc. etc.). "Only after we find what’s “Belo” (Beautiful), even in the most difficult and horrendous of life’s circumstances, an endless energy and a constant stream of curiosity is available for us to devote ourselves into understanding a problem, considering alternatives, and fiercely tackling them as the hope for a better world begins to materialize in front of our paths." I actually think about that quite a lot, and in the end my definition is very much the same as the author's: " Moving fast and breaking things has proven to be a cautionary tale for entrepreneurs nowadays. 'My future is increasingly peaceful, calm and balanced. It’s the only way I can be sure I’m doing things right and it’s the only way I can stay sensible.'"

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How to Make Sure Your Students Recognize Famous Art
Christina Chang, The Art of Education University, 2019/07/22

I remember in high school studying famous artists in preparation for Reach For The Top, a television quiz show. It really made no sense to do what this article suggests, which amounts to simply remembering who painted what. Most recently, working on my post about Art, it was a different story. I wasn't trying to remember anything, I was considering whether I not I appreciated the works, whether I would include them in a list of important art, and what I wanted to say about them. This is an activity that makes far more sense to me. You don't need to remember art you don't like. And you shouldn't have to.

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AI Unfettered
Andy Marken, Content Insider, 2019/07/22

Some good observations in this post on AI. "Because most extensive, robust AI systems are cloud-based, they are available to more people for more applications. However, the lack of solid AI skills hasn’t kept pace with demand so more mistakes will occur.  And it’s going to continue for quite a while." Side-note: something I do with a lot of articles (including this one) is to read them from the bottom up after I've read them from the top-down. This allows me to capture the gist of an article in a different way, to see what points really stand out.

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