[HN Gopher] An open letter from educators who refuse the call to...
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An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in
education
Author : mathgenius
Score : 19 points
Date : 2025-07-10 22:09 UTC (51 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (openletter.earth)
(TXT) w3m dump (openletter.earth)
| amelius wrote:
| Makes sense. You also don't give calculators to students of
| arithmetic.
| luqtas wrote:
| woah, calculators aren't burning energy and water on big
| servers running technology that violates copyright and gives
| money to capital oriented companies
| multjoy wrote:
| You can rely on the answer a calculator gives you. There's no
| danger that it will simply be confidently wrong.
| somanyphotons wrote:
| Some calculators will confidently state incorrect answers
| to questions like:
|
| (10^15 + 7.2 - 10^15) * 100
| sfpotter wrote:
| A calculator uses some type of finite precision arithmetic
| internally. If you run afoul of the limits of this
| arithmetic system, it may very confidently give you a wrong
| answer!
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Water? I didn't realize that when you use water it disappears
| from the universe, or even from earth, or even from the local
| ecosystem
| DavidPiper wrote:
| (Theses days) it's hard to know what you mean by this and
| whether you're being sarcastic.
|
| No you don't give arithmetic students calculators for their
| exams, and you expect them to know how to do it without one.
|
| Yes you probably give professionals who need to do arithmetic
| calculators so they can do it faster and with less errors.
|
| Giving calculators to people who don't know how, why and/or
| when to use them will still get you bad results.
|
| Giving calculators to someone who doesn't have any use for one
| is at best a waste of money and at worst a huge waste of time
| if the recipient becomes addicted to calculator games.
| izacus wrote:
| The person you're responding to has clearly used the word
| "student". What on earth are you on about?
| sfpotter wrote:
| One of my favorite essays on a similar topic:
| https://sites.math.washington.edu//~koblitz/mi.html
|
| Neal Koblitz's "The Case Against Computers in Math Education".
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| Wow. Now there's a quote:
|
| > "Youngsters who are immersed in this popular culture are
| accustomed to large doses of passive, visual entertainment.
| They tend to develop a short attention span, and expect
| immediate gratification. They are usually ill equipped to study
| mathematics, because they lack patience, self-discipline, the
| ability to concentrate for long periods, and reading
| comprehension and writing skills."
|
| For context, the essay is from 1996. You could have told me
| this is from the current year and I would have believed you.
| ultrarunner wrote:
| > You could have told me this is from the current year and I
| would have believed you.
|
| Agreed. It's a matter of degree, and I wonder what reaching
| the eventual limit (if there is one) looks like.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's a platonic dialogue that has basically the same
| sentiment.
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