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Pasha

Defend Kebab

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joined 2022 September 05 06:58:22 UTC 

				
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Pasha


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Defend Kebab

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 06:58:22 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College (NYMag)


link-archive link


Article describing what was predictably coming to college campuses since GPT3 got released. The narration follows some particularly annoying Korean-American student trying to make quick bucks from LLM-cheating start-ups and a rather dumb girl who can't follow basic reasoning, which makes the read a bit aggravating and amusing but overall the arch is not surprising. Recommended for a quick read. Basically all the grunt work of writing essays and the intro level classes with lots of rote assignments seem to be totally destroyed by cheap and easy high quality LLM output.


Some interesting highlights for me:


    

  • There is a consensus in the article even shared by the cheating students that writing essays in "Indigenous studies, law, English, and a “hippie farming class” called Green Industries" is an important transformative experience and if young adults miss out/cheat on this for 4 years then we must be seriously worried about the next generation.
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  • It is not explored much what the students are doing with their time instead of writing these very important essays. There is one throw-away quote from a brain-rot girl about how she scrolls TikTok all day and has no time for essays. Perhaps all the students are getting one-shotted by dopamine addiction algorithms but perhaps they are not and many are socializing or learning actually interesting things instead of writing indigenous studies slop essays. This should be a major question but just left unexplored.
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  • None of the journos or the academics quoted in the article can bring themselves to question if these young adults should even be in the university if they are all so eager to cheat (and earlier pandemic-era mass cheating spree is mentioned as well). There is a whole paragraph dedicated to justifying seemingly pointless essays, never-again-remembered-calculus-exercises, and the importance of doing "hard things" (which is apparently writing pointless essays and never-again-remembered-calculus-exercises). But there is not a single example of a "hard thing" students are missing out on because of LLMs in the whole article. Literally every single example is students automating busy work which should cost any 120+ IQ individual little brain power but lots of time. And a bizarre out of place paragraph about the need to "consider students more holistically" with a non-sense blurb from some academic.
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  • Academics sound extremely lazy and whiny about trying out the most obvious solution: ditch all course-work based grading in favor of oral examinations and comprehensive graduation exams. This would immediately solve the whole problem (it would even align the incentives to get students to use LLMs for studying instead of cheating) and it is not even a "revolutionary" solution, just how universities used to work not that long ago. But obviously this would fail 90%+ of the current university students and likely destroy the entire industry as vast majority of the students providing their income stream are not nearly smart or conscientious enough to pass then.
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think Kulak is either insane or at least relatively good at acting the part of the mad prophet but in general I can’t help but think he is closer to the truth than most other people in these internet spaces.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Turkish government has immediately made announcements to the effect but I have dim hopes of even Syrians in Turkey leaving. The ones in Europe look basically impossible without a very radical shift


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 11, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Motte loves to talk about the things women (even relatively smart introspective women) don’t get about men psychology and dating.


Well, what are some things even the most insightful men don’t get about female psychology and dating?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What am I supposed to do? Keep standards high and fail them all? That’s not an option for untenured faculty who would like to keep their jobs. I’m a tenured full professor. I could probably get away with that for a while, but sooner or later the Dean’s going to bring me in for a sit-down. Plus, if we flunk out half the student body and drive the university into bankruptcy, all we’re doing is depriving the good students of an education.




This is so strange to read. Literally half my degree dropped out in our first year because of self-selection and mandatory credit requirements. This was treated as entirely normal and a good thing, as it is obviously a bad thing for people to waste their time and money on degrees they don't like/aren't capable of following.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As someone living the “not very well integrated brownish expat working a lot in high earning sector in the West” life it makes me rather nervous to see the calibre and the intentions of the people supposedly vouching for my interests in this debate.


The social contract I came here for is simple. I broadly like the society these people created. I don’t think a different people could/would create this society so I am happy people of broadly the same ancestry and culture stay in control of it. In exchange of living in it and having my children become a proper part of it I can pay a lot in taxes and generally be a modal citizen at the sidelines of the society.


I am aware of the costs I am imposing on the society here. I am pricing the residents out of the housing market, causing some wage suppression, watering down their culture and social cohesion and giving them mixed-race grandkids who doesn’t quite look like them.


The desirable scenario for me is that immigrants are not too high in numbers and generally similar in profile to me so that the tensions aren’t too big and our posterity assimilates without attracting too much negative attention.


The very undesirable scenario for me is that high profile individuals shout it to the regular people from the top of their lungs that their culture is worthless, their children are deadweights, and they will use armies of people who look somewhat like me to teach them a lesson.


This is a very dangerous game they are playing. Many PMC immigrants seem entirely incapable of sensing the zeitgeist and subterranean societal currents of the countries they are living in. The people from the subcontinent are especially bad at this


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Theory time: Israel is pushing very hard to start a regional war with US involvement before US elections so the next president (the one that won’t be a zombie presumably) has no choice but to continue.


This missile attack is a dramatic warning that Iran can decimate oil production and other regime critical infrastructure in every single American ally in the region. Iranian leadership has been very consistently acting like they are aware that they won’t survive a war with the US.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sorry but I get a strong feeling you have never been exposed to any university system other than modern American liberal arts colleges. What I have seen around Europe typically was that learning happens during exam crunch time and coursework is either just recommended or has relatively little effect on your end grade. If you are doing a “hard” degree then for many major exams you are also responsible for subjects of previous semesters as well so you have to stay on top. This works perfectly fine. I don’t think American students are any lazier than their counterparts in continental Europe, I think they just got conditioned heavily by the only education they have ever experienced.


Also no I liked maths a lot and I have an engineering job using a decent amount of trig-calculus level maths regularly. But I also observed how nonsense the maths requirements were for most degrees.


Incidentally I found it amusing you chose the student using chatgpt to write personal introduction for an “ Ethics and Technology class” as a particularly egregious example. I have never been exposed to an ethics class that wasn’t total non-sense taught by dimwit professors. Just all around busywork. We were either forced to take such classes because of vague ideas about how it would make us more ethical or something or people did so for easy elective credits. The whole faculty had a jobs-program feeling to it. It would be absolutely my top course to cheat through with an LLM.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for September 11, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Life announcement: I am going to become a father! (Typical caveats, if medically everything goes well etc)


It wasn’t planned, but we would probably try in 1-2 years with my partner anyway so it wasn’t an unpleasant surprise either.


Still a bit early so we haven’t told anyone outside of close family. Really weird to keep interacting with friends as if everything is normal and we are all ultimately careless young adults.


So dump on me any advise you can think of!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 16, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is something rather reprehensible about picking up on certain events that happened 100+ years ago and then insisting on prefixing every mention of a nation with that event like a Homeric epithet. It has only two possible outcomes: maximal woke virtue signaling competition to derive somehow moral superiority from talking about horrible things your grandparents have done (a la Germans) or Balkan-style history fights because if you are aware of any history beyond John Oliver sketches then you know that events don’t occur for no reason.


In 1915 something like a quarter of the Muslim population in Anatolia were recent refugees ethnically cleansed out of Caucasus and Balkans in very similar ways to Armenians. Country was fighting for its survival against the Entente that had explicit plans to further this ethnic cleansing from both western and eastern directions until Russia collapsed. Probably a majority of non-Kurdish population of Turkey today has near ancestry who were ethnically cleansed out of their homelands during the events of late 19th-20th century. Something like half the countries in yesterday’s Eurovision rooster holds some significant responsibility for these series of cleansings which included the 1915 Armenian one too. Somehow as long as they don’t challenge NATO consensus these countries never get to carry a genocide epithet.


It’s commonplace for Turks like your friend’s boyfriend to act opportunistically hypocritical but I am generally quite proud that our population at larger never succumbed to the propaganda regarding their own ancestors unique evilness.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for August 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Japan winning a gold medal in breakdancing is somehow more hilarious than breakdancing in olympics.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for June 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Kitty Genovese




I remember learning about this stuff in my English class as a teenager (in the context of some weird psychological mystery of how nobody helped etc) and the actual story went completely over my head. After some life experience of racialised underclass dynamics and now that I google and see photos of the perpetrator and the victim... the story suddenly clicks in my head very well


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Israel will never give citizenship to substantially more Arabs than its current ratio of around %20 Arab citizens. That would be totally suicidal, nobody in the country supports such a thing and it’s simply a fake solution made up by westerners (just like the “2-state solution”) to avoid thinking too hard about the unpleasant implications of the Israeli state.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sorry for discrediting myself by describing killing a couple hundred thousand people out of a population of 2 million as genocide.


Eager to hear more of your genocide-free strategy of starving them instead and bombing those “meat shields”. Oh and the final option forcefully cleansing the land of them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Perhaps it’s a technology thing. Declarations of war made more sense when war involved marching 250k men armies in fields or packing 5M men in trains towards the enemy. It’s really not clear when a “war” starts when you can chuck hypersonic missiles at some select targets once in a while


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 28, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As a very long-term but low profile mottizen, I feel like I have made a thread about quite a lot of important junctions in my life asking for advise. Here comes the next one:


I bought a house! Still not 100% official but will be soon. It is not in a perfectly pristine condition but did not seem too bad either. Needs some urgent renovations like a new floor and some semi urgent ones like a new kitchen.


I assume most people here are a bit older than me and have some experience with such things. So give me your best house owning tips please. Especially looking for websites/books/Youtube channels about DIY and house decoration and whatnot.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for April 11, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A lot of this doom rhetoric just assumes things like democracy (olds controlling politics), welfare state (olds sucking up resources) or even high life expectancies (olds living long beyond retirement) will keep up. If even a fraction of the predicted problems hit these countries, world will change way beyond our current comprehension and most of these things likely will stop being problems in the currently predicted ways.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 17, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Watched the Conclave (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20215234/) at the cinema the other day. Visually well made (although it is just difficult to portray Catholicism without some impressive visuals), somewhat okay but uninteresting story with no clear point and an incredibly disappointing ending. Couldn't stop comparing it to another depiction of a Catholic conclave, from 2011's Borgia (the European made one: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1736341/)


Which made me realize that I am not sure if I have ever watched a movie that depicted a modern religious institution well. Not about some humble believer of the religion, not a sob story about how the religion doesn't match up to modern liberal sensitivities etc.


I am looking for a well-made movie about modern-day Japanese monks, or Latin American/African evangelizers or Iranian Mullahs or whatever is out there. Does anyone have any recommendations for me?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for September 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What’s your definition of decent pizza?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 15, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What damage did Israel exactly inflict on Iranian nuclear capabilities so far? All I have seen  is a couple dead scientists and some bombed non-critical infrastructure near the nuclear facilities. I have a hard time believing Israel’s opening attack wasn’t the best they can do with tons of smuggled bombs/drones and local collaborators as well as unprepared Iranians.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Isn’t security guarantees also how we got WW1?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you bother to follow the actual thread, you will see that my comment was written on October 11t 2023 and describes a future hypothetical based on the statements of Israeli politicians at the time. That hypothetical turned out to be more correct than not.


Stop masturbating with words. If you want to mass murder people have the courage to actually say so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Isreal is a country of neurotic people with abysmal school results




Care to explain?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Because it means the remaining Arabs will have to either be somehow deported, or live under a permanent apartheid/occupation regime.


No Iran doesn't want a 20% Jewish population I am sure. But then Iranians didn't settle in a land exclusively inhabited by Jews in the 20th century and then spent the last century in a struggle to take over the said land. So the comparison is really pointless and distracting.


In fact there are approximately zero comparable cases to Israel's ethnic problems in the last century which is the exact thing that makes it such a hot-button issue.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 15, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes they obviously thought about it quite hard and the solution is to bribe and blackmail enough American politicians (with child rape) to get the American military to complete the job.


“Best” is a meaningful term because Israelis don’t have the means to actually destroy the facilities themselves. If they would, this would change the strategic picture massively.