OLDaily

Feature Article
Bruno de Pierro Interview
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 2020/05/15

I received a request for responses to some questions in my email. The questions were quite involved and it would take me quite a while to type answers. But also, in relation to a work-related question, I had been looking at AI-based transcription. And also, my new Audio-Technica microphone arrived today. So as an experiment, I used Otter.ai to transcribe by answer. I was speaking off the top of my head, without notes. Below is the unedited transcript, preserved exactly as converted by the AI, for science. And here is the link to the original audio, also unedited.

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Colleges Show Great Interest in Alternative Credentials But Weak Follow-Through
Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology, 2020/05/15

This is just a quick survey article, but it's worth taking note. "No matter what type of alternative credential students are earning, most institutions don't retain official information about it. In a recent survey, just a third of institutions (38 percent) that offer alternative credentials said they allow those to be represented on students' university records." It makes sense, though, that universities would want to privilege their flagship offering, the university degree. These days, doing anything less represents a threat. Here's a link to the survey (it was behind a spamwall, though, so no guarantee that it will still work).

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What the pandemic tells us about personal identity
Kieran Setiya, New Statesman, 2020/05/15

This post is more about philosophy than about pandemic. While the teaser suggests tantalizingly "we are embodied beings and digital communication can feel lacking" the article doesn't really discuss "what will happen to our sense of identity as we interface with others, increasingly, as avatars and not beings in physical space? Will we embrace our disembodiment, or recoil from it?" Instead, we get a (not useless) excursion into Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons. The problem is, the 'disembodiedness' Parfit talks about is very different from the 'disembodiedness' of using Zoom and Slack and the rest. We're still in our bodies when we use these tools. So none of the sidetrack discussion into 'stream of consciousness' or 'waking with the body of a beetle' is relevant here. None of that has happened or is in danger of happening.

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This Philosopher Is Challenging All of Evolutionary Psychology
Ryan F. Mandelbaum, Gizmodo, 2020/05/15

Evolutionary psychology is the idea that humans evolved certain psychological traits - the fight or flight response, for example - that were evolved to serve a primitive need for survival and which persist to this day. This article features an interview with Subrena Smith who in her recent paper (paywalled, but there are some quotes here) questions the idea. The problem with evolutionary psychology is pretty straightforward: "we don’t have the relevant evidence about how our ancestors behaved to make any substantiative claims." We think ancient humans evaded predators, but "Did our ancestors avoid predation because they were good at hiding in bushes or because they were running?" Evolutionary psychology is at issue today because it's used to explain and defend supposedly 'natural' behaviours. "If you say evolution made us so, then... we won’t use our resources to make you do stuff you can’t do." Good article.

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Responding to a Study You Just KNOW Is Wrong
Daniel Willingham, Science & Education, 2020/05/15

I am often critical of Daniel Willingham but I'm enthusiastic about this post. Writing about the learning styles debate, he notes that the "problem caused by the uncritical dismissal of disproven theories is that you might miss new developments." Then he (very smartly) shifts topics to describe the phenomenon with respect to eye-tracking studies in autistics, which have had a chequered history, but which have been revived in some new, and potentially good, science. And the point is clear: even if you're sure about a theory (for example, 'there are no learning styles'), more recent work might offer counter-examples to that theory. So what do you do? You ignore it. And - yes - believe it or not, that's the right response. Wait for the science. See if it's replicated. And base your views on the reserach (appropriately and critically read and interpreted). As Willingham himself notes, hist view on learning styles theory has changed over time (see here versus here). What will not move the needle one way or another is righteous indignation.

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This Word Does Not Exist
Thomas Dimson, 2020/05/15

Generative AI is the new thing this year. In one of the best efforts I've seen recently, this site creates new words with (more or less) appropriate definitions. Like 'kochinize', which means 'converted (one thing) into another by mixing it with another'. Other recent generative AI projects include Jukebox, "a neural net that generates music, including rudimentary singing, as raw audio in a variety of genres and artist styles," IDentif.AI, which generates optimal drug combinations, generated worlds and the creatures within them, and many many more.

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