Get me an editor, stat!

Eliezer Yudkowsky is very, very smart. But I'm not sure the world needed a thousand word post pointing out that, apparently, most people just regurgitate answers they don't really understand in order to get good grades. Stand by for the monograph on how sometimes, guys will say that they want a serious relationship, when all they're actually interested in is hooking up.

Comments

Really what the post is arguing is that students are repeating definitions without really understanding the underlying causal model. The funny thing is that in a very influential philosophy piece, Quine levels a similar accusation at practicing scientists.

Posted by Gabriel | August 22, 2007 7:20 PM

Hey,

That man was talking about you wasn't he?

Posted by demakt620 | August 22, 2007 7:30 PM

Do you speak the way you type/blog? The first comma in the last sentence is just wrong. There's no pause there. Are you being paid by the comma, rather than by the word?
Gabriel: Yes, but sometimes the "underlying causal model" (or "cause," as many of us prefer) is not known, even though the phenomenon is well observed & completely verifiable.

Posted by M. Bouffant | August 22, 2007 8:22 PM

Stand by for the monograph on how sometimes, guys will say that they want a serious relationship, when all they're actually interested in is hooking up.

I'm reading that one to my daughters as a bedtime story every month until they're teens.

Posted by Adult | August 22, 2007 9:08 PM

M. Bouffant,
On the semantic point this is a real distinction: events have causes and theories have underlying causal models. On the substantive point, Quine's point applies most clearly to cases where we have good predictions but a shallow understanding (e.g. Newton's concept of gravity, the psychometric concept of "g"). However, he argued that in principle, there is no meaningful distinction between a definition and a relationship even in our mature theories.
I'm not sure whether I agree with him. Certainly in both my own work and in grading I intuitively perceive a difference between /getting it/ and not.

Posted by Gabriel | August 22, 2007 9:41 PM

Having invested a presumably handsome sum in this preening ninny, perhaps the Atlantic could hook McArdle up with a "comma coach".

Hey, Atlantic, are, you, happy, now?

Posted by Steve Kelso | August 23, 2007 6:21 AM

Now I know what Ann Althouse's stalkers do on their days off.

Posted by Paul Zrimsek | August 23, 2007 8:40 AM

Megan, considering that the entire underlying fundamental premise of No Child Left Behind is the exact opposite of what you just described (that testing is exactly accurate and gives a precise, measured reading of student achievement and intelligence), you might not want to be so glib.
Anyway, the premise that I took from the article was that effective teaching and learning requires stepping well beyond cliched password-guessing (why is the metal plate hot? heat induction). One imagines that you were excellent at finding the "right answer" as a student. So was I.

Posted by jonathan | August 23, 2007 10:24 AM

It goes beyond grades, just look at John Quiggin.

Posted by aaron | August 23, 2007 11:13 AM

Stand by for ...

Sailor talk! BZ, Megan.

Posted by Rod | August 23, 2007 11:44 AM

Sorry, Eliezer Yudkowsky is an incredibly tedious opportunist, who claims to work in AI and fancies himself a physicist. If he was so smart, he would realize that no one wants to read 1000 word essays in an rss feed. I've read more interesting Grue papers.

Posted by Solong | August 23, 2007 4:21 PM

Solong said: "Eliezer Yudkowsky is an incredibly tedious opportunist, who claims to work in AI and fancies himself a physicist."

Could you post supporting evidence for the three claims? A tedious opportunist? How boring.

Posted by Matthew | August 24, 2007 5:53 PM