RE: https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/116304296612633497
A thing that my years working in the software industry have taught me is that sometimes people just want information. Not good information, not accurate information, not useful information. They just want information.
“Here is a transparently fictional timeline for our project!”
“Here is some technical gobbledygook that will make you sound smart if your parrot it with confidence!”
“Here is a slide full of charts nobody will ever critically examine or even superficially understand!”
“Here are some quantitative metrics whose meaning is beyond dubious, but we sure as heck were able to output those numbers!”
“Here is a whitepaper that sounds just like your idea of what a smart person sounds like!”
@inthehands while ai is causing new problems here I think this is also part of how we teach people how expertise and the social value of "smartness" works.
Sure people often need to rely on the expertise of others, but we should emphasize that it's an exercise in community and trust.... and usually we don't, schools present it as an exercise in authority... so yeah people go looking for something that produces authority for them.
Edit: wrote some more about this: https://bayes.club/@wronglang/116307615948005128
I contribute to extremely applied research on mundane but politically spicy topics such as health and inequity. I have a degree in chemistry and a PhD in evolutionary biology that gave me enough time wrestling with the gnarlier parts of statistical algorithms to be an expert on most* of applied statistics. I try to respect that work when posting. The way expertise is treated on social media and in daily life is broken, and it's hurting all of us. #Introduction
Andrew Todd
Paul Cantrell
Krzysztof Sakrejda
Avi Rappoport (avirr)
jack
The Orange Theme
Cassandrich
Sara
Mike Ottum