So what the AI lacks is vision - imagination - intuition : Just the things that our public school system works so hard to wring out of our children. I'm afraid that the interchangeable cogs for the industrial wheels that our current educational system is designed to churn out may indeed be replaced in many cases by AI. But those who strive to develop their vision, imagination, and intuition, and to express them in creative ways, are likely to find their very humanity in great demand. But our current school system will not get us there.
The school system is a mechanism that the private sector uses to train workers at public expense. That 'educational' values reflect the need for obedience, conformity, time-discipline, and so on is therefore unsurprising since it's entire reason for being is corporate profits.
Hmm… I believe it was Horace Mann who introduced the Prussian-style education system to the US, a system that was expressly designed to create workers for the benefit of The State, in particular for “nation building.” Prussia was also among the first States to introduce compulsory State education.
The private sector would be better off training workers “on the job” (through apprenticeships, internships, etc.) than having students mentally paralyzed by mass public education schemes, which rob them of their creative impulses and analytical abilities.
Governments benefit from conformity, obedience etc. The private sector is at its best when participants add value through creative innovation. See the difference between the E-commerce and the Postal Service as one of many examples…
Of course, correlation ≠ causation... but the idea Mann imported was founded (in his time) on pure Prussian Statism, as it was designed then and as it grew around the Continent and beyond. (Hence all the compulsory state/state-approved education systems there.)
That capitalists would play the hand they’re dealt is hardly surprising. Their job is to increase capital, after all. And students who have an eye to high-paying careers will do well to “follow the money” (if indeed material wealth is a primary goal in their life).
I agree: it’s a shame the arts and humanities do not enjoy the same status as they used to...but I’m with Emerson when he observed that good books are a substitute for the best universities.
I didn't know Emerson said that, but since he got booted from Harvard for teaching students to think for themselves about the existence of God, I'm sure he was very much hoping for that to be the case. Legend.
The growth in public education in the US is coupled almost 1:1 with industrialization, urbanization, and the abandonment of agriculture and yeomanry. Mann may have had in mind a now archaic notion of Statism, but the real beneficiaries were industrial capital.
Factory workers require a different education than farmhands, and so public education is devised to fill these gaps by teaching technical reading (how to read a manual), time-discipline (how to show up at work on time and stay until the end of your shift) and obedience.
Beyond engineering behavior, If you look at it today, in reality, huge amounts of money are diverted into "commercially viable" disciplines like the STEM fields while arts and humanities (less useful to industry) are dying slow deaths - the big point I'm trying to make is that the needs of capital dictate the content of education 90%. The needs of the State (ideological hegemony, a sanitized discourse around the past crimes of the State, official lies, etc) account for about 8%. The idiosyncracies of the teacher account for perhaps 2% of the total curriculum/emphases.
I'm not idle in speculation or basing this on graphs - I have worked in the public ed system for years, and I see this stuff on a material level. Doesn't make me automatically correct, but hear me out.
Apr 17, 2023·edited Apr 17, 2023Liked by Joel Bowman
A lot of what is coming out of the AI art world is exciting and shit for the same reason - it allows people without artistic training to produce art. My artsy friends and I are excited about Midjourney and so on because we're simply art-types who do other genres than say, painting or digital drawing and now can play around in a new genre. However, we are seeing an absolute ton of AI-supertrash because people with no sensitivity or taste in art are pumping out these images like there's no tomorrow. AI can give you the artifact but it cannot give you the eyeballs to judge the artifact.
Agreed. AI is only as good (or bad) as the artist/writer/poet using the tool. Like nuclear energy, which can power the world…or end it… a lot depends who’s doing the using.
And yeah, Nietzsche was a genius at cutting right to the heart of an issue with remarkable economy of words.
It's a good platform, since it's composed almost entirely of people who self-select lower levels of exposure (relative to Twitter, Medium, etc) in exchange for censorship resistance and credibility with a regular audience. However, the shine will start to come off as the normies/late majority begin to wade in, just like all social media ever. So, enjoy the Golden Age - I give it 6 months, tops.
As the
spirit
wanes
the
form
appears.
---Charles Bukowski
So what the AI lacks is vision - imagination - intuition : Just the things that our public school system works so hard to wring out of our children. I'm afraid that the interchangeable cogs for the industrial wheels that our current educational system is designed to churn out may indeed be replaced in many cases by AI. But those who strive to develop their vision, imagination, and intuition, and to express them in creative ways, are likely to find their very humanity in great demand. But our current school system will not get us there.
Well said. Dehumanization through institutionalization. There's never been a better time to be human, in the truest sense of the word.
The school system is a mechanism that the private sector uses to train workers at public expense. That 'educational' values reflect the need for obedience, conformity, time-discipline, and so on is therefore unsurprising since it's entire reason for being is corporate profits.
Hmm… I believe it was Horace Mann who introduced the Prussian-style education system to the US, a system that was expressly designed to create workers for the benefit of The State, in particular for “nation building.” Prussia was also among the first States to introduce compulsory State education.
The private sector would be better off training workers “on the job” (through apprenticeships, internships, etc.) than having students mentally paralyzed by mass public education schemes, which rob them of their creative impulses and analytical abilities.
Governments benefit from conformity, obedience etc. The private sector is at its best when participants add value through creative innovation. See the difference between the E-commerce and the Postal Service as one of many examples…
Of course, correlation ≠ causation... but the idea Mann imported was founded (in his time) on pure Prussian Statism, as it was designed then and as it grew around the Continent and beyond. (Hence all the compulsory state/state-approved education systems there.)
That capitalists would play the hand they’re dealt is hardly surprising. Their job is to increase capital, after all. And students who have an eye to high-paying careers will do well to “follow the money” (if indeed material wealth is a primary goal in their life).
I agree: it’s a shame the arts and humanities do not enjoy the same status as they used to...but I’m with Emerson when he observed that good books are a substitute for the best universities.
I didn't know Emerson said that, but since he got booted from Harvard for teaching students to think for themselves about the existence of God, I'm sure he was very much hoping for that to be the case. Legend.
The growth in public education in the US is coupled almost 1:1 with industrialization, urbanization, and the abandonment of agriculture and yeomanry. Mann may have had in mind a now archaic notion of Statism, but the real beneficiaries were industrial capital.
Factory workers require a different education than farmhands, and so public education is devised to fill these gaps by teaching technical reading (how to read a manual), time-discipline (how to show up at work on time and stay until the end of your shift) and obedience.
Beyond engineering behavior, If you look at it today, in reality, huge amounts of money are diverted into "commercially viable" disciplines like the STEM fields while arts and humanities (less useful to industry) are dying slow deaths - the big point I'm trying to make is that the needs of capital dictate the content of education 90%. The needs of the State (ideological hegemony, a sanitized discourse around the past crimes of the State, official lies, etc) account for about 8%. The idiosyncracies of the teacher account for perhaps 2% of the total curriculum/emphases.
I'm not idle in speculation or basing this on graphs - I have worked in the public ed system for years, and I see this stuff on a material level. Doesn't make me automatically correct, but hear me out.
A lot of what is coming out of the AI art world is exciting and shit for the same reason - it allows people without artistic training to produce art. My artsy friends and I are excited about Midjourney and so on because we're simply art-types who do other genres than say, painting or digital drawing and now can play around in a new genre. However, we are seeing an absolute ton of AI-supertrash because people with no sensitivity or taste in art are pumping out these images like there's no tomorrow. AI can give you the artifact but it cannot give you the eyeballs to judge the artifact.
Also that Nietzsche quote at the end is superb.
Agreed. AI is only as good (or bad) as the artist/writer/poet using the tool. Like nuclear energy, which can power the world…or end it… a lot depends who’s doing the using.
And yeah, Nietzsche was a genius at cutting right to the heart of an issue with remarkable economy of words.
Thanks for your insights!
It's a good platform, since it's composed almost entirely of people who self-select lower levels of exposure (relative to Twitter, Medium, etc) in exchange for censorship resistance and credibility with a regular audience. However, the shine will start to come off as the normies/late majority begin to wade in, just like all social media ever. So, enjoy the Golden Age - I give it 6 months, tops.