The terrible irony is that the territory was always defined by a bunch of 19th century Christian bigots. The histories of library catalogue systems is one of exclusion and privilege - all now (of course) embedded in AI where no one can see it.
Also, there are actual people called "Librarians" who could help you with that. Because they either know their library by heart, or can find what you need faster and easier from years of experience.
There is no way for a chatbot to replace that kind of assistance.
One of my history professors in college used to say that his job was to teach us how to find any information we needed and use it to make sense of the world. That’s been a helpful mindset to have. Too bad it isn’t a more universal educational goal.
My computer science professors were very similar. They told us that their job was to teach us how to learn. It has been very helpful in a field that changes constantly and quickly.
I can imagine! And having an insatiable curiosity about history has been a useful inoculation against a lot of the things conservatives have been saying and doing for the past few decades.
Librarians actually have a name for that, it's "serendipitous discovery" and it's one of the big arguments for having open stacks in a library so that people can find things that they may not have even known they were looking for.
Exactly, you'd get into the general area and poke around, or just wander. Browsing the stacks was always one of the great joys of childhood and college as well.
As a teacher, I can't relay how much I miss seeing "serendipitous discovery" in my student's work. It does happen but not very often.
I talk to them about sitting on the floor in front of a library shelf and going through books under a particular call number to find interesting stuff. They don't
Even aside from its meaning, or the greater context... I just love the sound of those two words, together. It's like an anti-tongue-twister, where you think "Oh, jeez, that's a lot of syllables", and then finish the words without trouble and realize you enjoyed saying it.
Happened to me just this weekend! I was at the library dropping Mom off for a program, went browsing the cookbook section b/c I just finished Ina Garten's memoir, found and checked out 3 books on the history of food
I feel this way all the time about my mechanical engineering degree. It's not that I remember 10 years out how to do the engineering. It's that I remember where to find the books that explain how to do it, and how to read the tables in those books.
Just a reminder, if you come into my mentions to tell me that you use AI despite knowing that it (a) was created by stealing the work of me and all my friends, (b) is destroying the planet, (c) can’t do shit without significant errors…
…and (d) is being used to dismantle my government by people who either don’t understand (a)-(c) or actively welcome them, then I will block you.
Fucking lazy ass grifter technology built on theft and destruction, causing more theft and destruction, and you’re USING it because you like a summary?
And it just isn’t very good. Let’s assume they fix the ‘hallucinations’; it still produces very low-quality work and that’s inherent. You can’t brute force intelligence, we’ve known that for decades.
I REFUSE to use it until my very boss forces me (repeteadly and personally) to. I am computer programmer and am in no way interested in training machines to learn to do our jobs (any job, not just programming) so we all can be replaced. For fun, even less likely to do so! I treasure human creativity
Oh and I’m doing the ridiculous thing that takes forever, thank you. I am 7 hours in and about 30% done with the first stage of lumber treatment, which is fire.
I learned about this Japanese technique thanks to YouTube videos + probably a few reddit posts. Lots of context which made it more interesting and more enjoyable.
100% on all of this, but what’s funny to me is that as soon as you wrote raised beds I knew where this was going wood wise. I was like oak is expensive, so is cedar (location dependent)…let’s go softwood and a blowtorch lol
I'm reading a post about AI, only to realize at the end that I didn't even put a thought into what I should treat my raised beds with last year and that it could be harmful to my health 😬. I did more meticulous research when looking to buy a coffee grinder.
I came for takes on AI and card catalogs but am also looking into what I can do for raised beds so, lol, this became extremely, hilariously, relevant XD
Yes! I need to put in raised beds this year, and stupidly I thought pressure treated wood would just be treated with pressure 🤷🏻♂️ like freeze drying.
But came because the talk of card cataloguing means I need to recommend "How to write a thesis" by Umberto Eco https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0262527138?tag=morewretchtha-21
I'm glad I'm not the only one who went "omg I'm actually planning raised garden beds" lol.
I had *not* researched it yet but had figured cedar would probably be a good choice. It's naturally rot resistant without the need for chemical treatment. Gonna look up the fire thing now, though!
I have gone down this rabbit hole (pressure treated, linseed oil, ceder, etc). Can you be more specific about what you are trying to do? Did you burn the boards?
“Shou Sugi Ban, also known as Yakisugi, is a traditional Japanese wood preservation technique that involves charring cedar wood to enhance its durability and resistance to fire, water, and pests. This method not only protects the wood but also creates a unique and attractive blackened finish.”
Current plan is after I put in these main beds, to build three separate beds specifically to cold frame, and do one as untreated wood, one as wood with tung oil, and one as full yaki-(can’t call it sugi because I won’t use cedar) pine + tung oil and then see which one lasts longest and by how much.
Now looking this up myself as I have an old pallet and some broken IKEA shelf bits I want to convert into outdoor upright gardens but have been stalled on the best way to prepare them for a long outdoor life. My wife is particularly concerned about the potential for attracting termites... 🙀
This guy has been reno-ing an abandoned farmhouse in Japan and documenting the whole process, INCLUDING building new wall panels like those from new lumber. And you get to listen to a soothing 'Strayan accent the whole time. https://www.youtube.com/@TokyoLlama
I needed this today. I'm stuck in research hell for an assignment with a million sources open and I need to still do the boiling down part. (When I'd much rather be building planters ☺️)
Great thread, feels like going on a very familiar and welcome journey. I love that experience of diving into a new thing and gathering a dozen books/articles/videos and figuring out which ones you need to deep dive into and which ones help to point the way. (My thing right now is basket-weaving!)
There’s also value in the time spent on the information search! The longer we hold the question in our mind and sort through related data, the better we’ll remember all of it.
I am a skilled programmer because I've had to read, understand, test and extrapolate from other people's answers to not-precisely the same problem I had in the first place. If I've been using AI to get answers I'd be a copy-paste monkey.
In librarian school we learn how to help people with this process by performing a reference Interview, asking leading questions to find out what they’re actually after. The secondary things they discover by browsing along the way is serendipitous discovery. That’s where the magic happens.
There’s this big thing going on that explains so much of what is happening, but we don’t talk about it directly. It’s an explosion of discomfort with and outright rejection of uncertainty. The embrace of LLMs that give us simple, easy answers and free us from the tyranny of doubt is a symptom.
The causes are things that are often talked about directly, like the reactionary backlash to minorities gaining equality and the COVID-activated death drive. But how those things have drastically decreased tolerance for uncertainty is not as widely discussed.
Perhaps you'd like to hear more about my proposal for replacing high-stakes HS graduation exams with a
"Can you explain >75% of a random selection of 100 XKCD cartoons, including why they are funny?" test
Exactly, the journey is the learning. No journey, no learning. (Only thing the thread is missing is the fact that you'd follow the number to the shelf and quite often find the book was out, especially if it was for assigned work as a student)
A couple of my courses were so niche that you might then end up wandering the library to see if you could find the person who had it out, and end up finding what you needed in the other book they had out
Very good thread!
Knowing =/= understanding
Understanding allows you to do much more than just knowing. Bloom’s Taxonomy is used as a planning aid in teaching- that’s why those hard questions used words like ‘compare and contrast’.
Don't tell anyone but this is a big part of the reason I'm good at my job. When somebody asks me to look into something, I don't necessarily know the answer right away, but I know the right questions to start Searching with and how to weed out the irrelevant or just plain wrong answers. 🤫
When I was a paralegal before I went to law school, a young lawyer told me: you dont need to know things, you just need to know where to go to find out. 40 years ago. I’ve always found it to be solid advice.
This is what made me mad when people asked if I was going to become a teacher after doing my English Literature and History degree.
No mate, I'm doing it because I'm in interested in the subjects - they've been my faves since I was in school (I was 30 by the time I did this particular BA).
The point wasn't to get the degree, the point was to study two subjects I loved at a higher level than the O-levels I'd taken a decade and a half earlier, and in particular to study my special areas of interest (WW1 literature and history, if you're wondering).
With any data processing, starting with good source data is a necessity. AI operates under the assumption that you can logically sift through all possible input data (regardless of quality). You need learned experience from experts to find good input data. Finding good experts is a skill itself.
I do a lot of adult instruction, and I tell students: if this doesn't seem a little difficult, then you probably aren't learning. Some students push back with catchphrases like "learning should be fun." I say it can be fun, but the struggle is the point--a symptom of understanding and change.
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There is no way for a chatbot to replace that kind of assistance.
“Self driving” cars are the AI analogue.
I talk to them about sitting on the floor in front of a library shelf and going through books under a particular call number to find interesting stuff. They don't
Fucking lazy ass grifter technology built on theft and destruction, causing more theft and destruction, and you’re USING it because you like a summary?
I. Will fucking. Block you lol Find something less destructive & doesn't steal from people.
My favorite is the alligator version 😍 https://youtu.be/NylnCQ5PVWw
Sorry, nevermind, thought I was in the composting sub.
But came because the talk of card cataloguing means I need to recommend "How to write a thesis" by Umberto Eco https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0262527138?tag=morewretchtha-21
I had *not* researched it yet but had figured cedar would probably be a good choice. It's naturally rot resistant without the need for chemical treatment. Gonna look up the fire thing now, though!
NEAT!
i’d looked into it for siding back east and somehow this never came up
"Can you explain >75% of a random selection of 100 XKCD cartoons, including why they are funny?" test
Knowing =/= understanding
Understanding allows you to do much more than just knowing. Bloom’s Taxonomy is used as a planning aid in teaching- that’s why those hard questions used words like ‘compare and contrast’.
No mate, I'm doing it because I'm in interested in the subjects - they've been my faves since I was in school (I was 30 by the time I did this particular BA).