You think? Nope.

 

I have been spending some time imagining the future. I have considered all the technology and all the things that we will no longer have to do. This leads to the realization that there will be a list just as long of things we are no longer able to do. The logic goes like this:

If we have a calculator, we will no longer have to do arithmetic computations, therefore we will become unable to do arithmetic computations. Other iterations of the thinking we would employ to do simple computations will be likewise confounded. And yes, I have seen this come to pass already. We rely on the crutch so much that it stops being a crutch and starts being an essential part of the process.

Back when I was a boy we had to use interpolation tables to try and figure out logarithms. I don’t remember what a logarithm is or why I would try to figure one out but I recall that we had to look at the chart for a number above and below the one we wanted, then compute the (percentage?) distance between the two that our number was, and then apply the same percentage distinction to the logarithms above and below, and we would find the logarithm for the number we had. In my whole life, I have never had to do that, but the idea of interpolating by looking at relative distances and computing percentages has, actually, come in handy. So if we now have a button on a calculator that presents us with a logarithm, ready to eat, we will not develop the particular skill, or the underlying thought process.

If we no longer have to read a map to get directions, we will stop understanding how to read a map for other purposes, or to read other graphical representations (blue prints or the place mats at children’s restaurants). We stop being afraid of heading into the unknown and that’s fine, but we place ourselves at the mercy of the disembodied voice on our phones. And if it says “take a right” you do it, even if you see that this would lead you off a cliff. Maybe a healthy fear is useful because it demands that we judge and plan. The lack of a need to fold a map will reduce our problem solving in that regard. You thought fitted sheets were tough before? Now - forget it.

The advent of Wikipedia knocked out the need to go to the library. But now people don’t know how to do any research at all, even if it doesn’t require a library visit. Forget about the loss of the skill of vetting information and determining whether something is reliable, this leads (silly as it sounds) to a lack of patience and even a loss of familiarity with the alphabet. Not joking.

Sure, we no longer hunt with a spear and we seem to have done OK for ourselves as a species, but if we let the computer do the target selection, or the aiming, then our strategic thinking and our fine motor skills will suffer. All those phone numbers stored in my phone mean I don’t develop the memory skills to remember anything, not just phone numbers. Can an AI system construct letters and essays for me? Then I lose a sense of personal voice, and style and even self. I never learn to structure argument or write persuasively because I expect it is all done outside of me and I can rely on a technology to think for me. Spell check means I no longer have to understand how words work and are structured and it bespeaks an inability to break down other things to see how they are built. Grammar checkers absolve us of then need to understand the interplay between words and how clarity in sentence composition represents clarity of thought. Our thoughts are then not refined in that regard and we can’t assemble a valid sentence without that crutch.

We no longer write things out by hand which will lead to an inability to do such – an evolutionary change in our hands away from the musculature which allows for writing and into any parts needed for typing or swiping or whatever. We no longer sign our names, instead we click on whatever link or digital X that our accountant appends to our tax forms. Soon this will mean we no longer need to know our own names. And no, I’m not catastrophizing and inventing a dystopian future. That dystopia is already here. I have students who don’t understand how to sign their names (some don’t know how to spell their names when they write).

The fear is a degradation of skills and of the foundational elements of thinking which are transplantable into other contexts. When we short circuit these skills in one area, we end up harming all the other processes which similarly rely on the same foundations. If a computer can draw a picture then I don’t work to learn to draw (which might help me appreciate spatial relations, the symmetries in the world around me or any of the many realizations which art allows me to see) and I never end up imagining a world I want to see. If instead of fighting wars, I send drones, I don’t need all that physical exercise that basic training requires. I never learn the teamwork, and the respect for human life that having to stare at an enemy combatant might afford. Instead of playing sports, I can be content to sit in the basement, growing bigger as I let my virtual self get some exercise.

Again, I’m not acting the luddite, nor am I being hysterical, bewailing a future where we are all incompetent without wifi. I am commenting on a progression (or regression) which has its roots in observable history and which is already taking place. My students can do very little without consulting their phones and they have no understanding of how those phones work.

I have touched on these themes in earlier posts – between 2014 and 2018 (because I am that ahead of the curve) but important messages cycle back around.

https://rosends.blogspot.com/2018/03/2-rantz.html (part 2)

https://rosends.blogspot.com/2017/11/what-hath-internet-wrought.html

https://rosends.blogspot.com/2014/12/look-it-up.html

 

 

Chumrot in Halacha

 

I have become very confused recently, specifically about the concepts sometimes intermixed when discussing Jewish “law.”

I vaguely recall a story in which a famous gadol of a rav is approached by his students (apologies if you know this story and I’m getting the details wrong). The students pointed out that he consistently issued chumrot and they wondered if he ever ruled leniently. He agreed with their point and decided to issue 3 leniencies. I recall that one went something like “you aren’t supposed to learn Torah on the eve of the 9^th of Av but I will rule that you can” or something like that. The point is that what students considered additional study/effort was what he was recontextualizing as a leniency because he created an allowance when the law/practice(?) (in the eyes of students) absolved them of that responsibility, if only for a short time. The "strict" reading stopped learning and the leniency allowed it. But wwhich one, if either was a stringency or a leniency?

Law in Judaism, halacha (the way to be) trace back to a few different sources – black letter text, textual inferences, statements in the oral law, expansions of application, edicts (time based and continuing) and adjudicated precedents are a few.

One idea which has always been a thorn for me is the idea of “rulings” – give a rabbi a fact pattern and he will apply a law and show what the practical application is. However, this ruling will be non-exportable, dependent only on the most local facts and accounting for unique variables. This allows rabbis to rule “leniently,” that is, looking for exceptions or interpretations which don’t require applying the law in its most stringent iteration. What is important to remember, though, is that the entire range of applications has to be considered valid “law” because in a given case, a different ruling might be issued an be equally valid though contradictory on the surface.

Take a case in which someone mixes up meat and dairy appliances and uses the wrong one for the wrong food. In certain cases, one dimension to be considered is the financial loss to the individual. If it is substantial, the rabbi can find a way to allow the appliance to continue to be used. This must then be as reasonable and valid an application of the law as a ruling invalidating the use of the appliance. The statement “kosher” is as valid as “not kosher” – in a sense, both are true and only an external context decides which is invoked. This even holds true on a communal level – what is acceptable for an entire community might not be for another. Some laws are designed only for certain locations (walled cities and Shushan Purim, for example) and some practices developed based on geography, like the ban on Kitniyot for Ashkenazic Jews. Food on Pesach made by Sephardim is still kosher; it is only the accepted norm which applies to only some which makes the food forbidden.

The gemara, in Masechet Chullin, 18b discusses the law when someone moves from place to place. In the discussion at hand, regarding the exact location of a shochet’s cut in order to create a kosher animal, one community accepts a cut that another would not. The resultant animal is then, in a sense, both kosher and non-kosher depending on the person. If a person moves (unless he is moving from Bavel to Israel), the gemara explains, he is held to the stricter standard. But does that apply to all “law” types? Is the understanding that schechita must be at one place a chumra/stringency? Or is it simply an understanding of the law that developed via a different tradition? What about a local minhag (as minhag, on at least one level carries the force of law)? Is a minhag a stringency?

In Pesachim, 50a, the policy is applied to locations where the practice is not to work on the eve of Passover. The text discusses a thing which is permitted but the people have a minhag/practice of considering it assur/forbidden. But the limits of this application are not discussed.

I considered applying this to the question of keeping 2 days of Yom Tov outside of Israel. Is that a chumra or just a unique ruling, or a different application of law? When people travel, is this rule about stringencies applicable? What exactly is a chumra? On which kinds of “laws” would it apply?

Just a bunch of questions for today…

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Extra notes -- there is an halachic concept known as Yuhara (arrogance). One may not accept a stringency upon himself because it would look like he is counting himself as a particular scholar. But the question of "stringency" can shift based on the popular practice and isn't even clear

see https://dinonline.org/2011/08/05/yuhara-laws-of-arrogance/ for more confusion

Also, there is a concept of minhag chasidus which is acceptable (though in some cases, not so acceptable) but that isn't always clearly a forbidding of that which is permitted; it is often just doing soemthing others don't do, but it isn't clear when and if that is, or ever was, haughtiness.

First Draft This

 

I read the news today, oh boy. All the big players are trotting out their Siri in a can versions so that people can interact with their browsers in order to avoid having to not know anything for any length of time.

One small step in the browser wars and on giant leap into the abyss of ignorance.  ChatGPT and its little friends are taking over the world. With a little nudge, each of them can construct sentences in response to a prompt. They can comment on current events (some more current than others), provide information and write (at least first drafts of) assigned papers. The English teacher’s job is thusly in peril as there is no need to teach the process of writing, right?

So now let’s work backwards. If the writing is not needed as a skill then what is left of the English classroom? What’s the point? Do we really value the reading of text simply for the sake of reading text? Isn’t reading just a way to generate prompts for literary responses? Golly gosh I say – maybe we can outmode all that nasty reading because students can turn to an iteration of AI to summarize pages of prose into bullet points of tasty, tasty soundbites and frame a response to such prompts as “What Can We Learn about Human Nature by Watching Romeo flit from Rosaline to Juliet?” Just point the Bard-by-Google, or whatever the next version of a deep-learning machine, to the text and let it wrestle with the question while all the students just sit there and count their money from the jobs they get which don’t need them to write essays.

And teaching grammar? Who needs to? We have Grammarly and all the auto-correct extensions which can check our writing on the flea fly and tell us how to conform to those silly rules (if they don’t just make the changes for us). So books? Out. Grammar? Out. What else is there? Let’s all go focus on math (no wait…I have a calculator), or on history (um, nope…I have Wikipedia and the rest of the internet). Map skills? No – my phone has the directions. Robotic surgery. AI generated art. Watson can play Jeopardy and diagnose illnesses and Deep Blue can play chess. Gee, with the advent of new technologies, it seems I don’t need to be able to do anything! Mankind can sit around and get fat while robots, computers and house elves do all the actual work.

Newsflash my padawans, the goal of education is not (or at least should not be) driven by the production of content. Education shouldn’t even (primarily) be about the attaining of skills. These are useful, interesting and efficient ways of measuring progress but they are inherently unimportant. Yeah, I said it. Forget that a computer doesn’t actually know anything (the current crop of programming build sentences based on the appearance of words in a particular order in its knowledge pool, not because they actually know what they are saying). Forget that a computer’s output is reliant on a human’s input (both in the constructing of initial programming and in the prompt which drives output). Forget that a computer can’t decide to be capricious, wrong or unexpected. A computer, as far as I can tell, can’t do the one thing that education is supposed to be about:

“Think.”

Can a computer generate a first-draft? Sure, but while it can even fix certain basic errors, it can’t assess its own weaknesses as a first draft measuring against the vagaries of a variable human audience, let alone the intangibles of style (and I have found that it often misunderstands the meaning of a sentence and recommends changes which actually introduce errors). It can’t reconsider a decision and reverse a position when confronted with contrary information because it doesn’t actually have an opinion in the first place. It can’t passively absorb and then craft a measured response sometimes driven by agenda and sometimes not. A computer cannot “write” because writing is the intentional presentation of th overflowing of ideas and thoughts, and a computer has neither of these.

In a world driven by instant gratification and an expectation that our answers and products appear in a microsecond, we immediately value automation which can create the end-result immediately. But the problem then is that we have lost sight of process and focus too much on product. Learning (including reading and crafting drafts, understanding the way grammar works and being able to assess other positions) is about brain development, not about generating responses. When a teacher asks a student a question, she or he isn’t asking for a computer to answer it. The teacher is asking that person to reflect, think, balance and compose. A calculator can compute an answer but it can’t intuit a relationship between numbers, and a person who relies on the calculator never learns to estimate or even judge whether an answer makes sense.

What has to change in the classroom to keep our pedagogy relevant? In a good classroom, not much. A good teacher has explained, from the get-go, that the essential goal is thinking and has clarified, along the way, how each step is designed to accentuate student-thinking. Can a student “cheat” by letting a website create a piece of writing? Sure, but that student will be developmentally stunted. A biker can cheat by using an electrically powered bicycle and he might get to the finish line in record time, but he won’t build any muscle. Essay writing isn’t a race, but a process, designed to help the muscle that is the brain grow stronger, more flexible and able to adapt and more equipped to deal with the unexpected, like a situation in which there is no computer available (the exportability of process and the cross fertilization of ideas is the synthesis which will allow for new ideas to flower and is beyond the scope of computer thinking).

Even right now, you, dear reader, are deciding how YOU feel about what I have written. And if you haven’t learned how to evaluate and construct a response, you will spend your time finding a piece of AI to help you decide what you think. And that’s sad.

The readiness is all

 

[Note, I’m writing this in Word and copying/pasting it into the blog so I am not embedding links.]

There is an idea in Jewish law that it is incumbent upon each of us to begin to study the laws of a holiday 30 days before the holiday so as to prepare ourselves and help us become comfortable with that holiday.

Much discussion has ensued about the scope and specific intent of this practice. Some discuss whether it is applicable to all holidays or just some, others about whether that means pushing off other elements of learning in order to focus primarily on the upcoming holiday 9and what kinds of conflict this might cause).

Some resources:

https://halachayomit.co.il/en/Default.aspx?HalachaID=1346&PageIndex=3

https://www.ou.org/holidays/hilchos-chanukah-30-days/

https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/6482/why-30-days-of-preparation-for-a-%D7%97%D7%92

https://www.torahmusings.com/2021/03/how-much-holiday-preparation/

 

The real wrinkle to me is the fact that 30 days before Passover is Purim. I’m not as interested in the question of “how do I study for Passover if I have a question about Purim” because I think that the calendrical proximity is its own answer. In a sense, practicing the rituals and observing the obligations of Purim IS a preparation for Passover.

On the most explicit level, the events of the Purim story, the idea of salvation from an oppressive force leading up to an acceptance of the Torah (as Shavu’ot is to Pesach, “kiymu v’kiblu” is to Purim) closely parallel our rescue from Egypt. So even simply reading the megillah is a pre-reading of the Haggadah as it tells a story of miraculous redemption – it is a Magid in its own rite (sic). That Esther decreed her fast for the people beginning on the 14^th of Nisan (according to the interpretation presented on this chart https://www.chabad.org/holidays/purim/article_cdo/aid/1359/jewish/Table-of-Dates.htm) means that observing the fast of Esther is a preparation for the Fast of the Firstborn which directly precedes Passover.

The other Mitzvot of the day similarly key us in to how we should be understanding Passover. One major Pesach obligation is making sure that the poor among us has Kimcha D'pischa, proper flour with which to make matzah https://ohr.edu/ask_db/ask_main.php/273/Q5/. What better was to teach us this Passover law than to make a similar one 30 days earlier? We are required not only to have a se’udah, a feast (like we will be required to have a seder on Passover) but we must give food-gifts to others to make sure they have a feast and we must donate to charity (mishlo’ach manot and matanot l’evyonim are then both ways for us to learn the laws of Passover).

There are other connections that allow Purim to set us up for Paschal success. We learn about Haman on Purim, while Passover’s Exodus story includes our receiving the manna (Hamon, in Hebrew). The megillah speaks of Mordechai as the author of the text as Moshe wrote the Torah text (for more on this connection, listen to https://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/851709/ari-mirzoeff/short-purim-vorts-4-the-connection-between-moshe-rabbeinu-and-mordechai-hatzadik/ ). 

Reading about the list of the ten sons of Haman presages our study of 10 plagues. The Megilla (8:17) speaks of the fear of the Jews which fell upon the nations – “ki nafal pachad hayehudim aleihen” and reading that should help one understand the fear that is described which fell on the Egyptians in Sh’mot 15:16 (tipol aleihem eimata vafachad) and pointed out in Tehillim 105:38 (ki nafal pachdam aleihem). So learning about the story of Purim calls forth so many aspects of the Passover story that observing the laws and obligations of Purim is tantamount to preparing for Passover!

It isn’t about echoes or repeated tropes, but about how there is a larger plan in place which allows us not just to see fanciful connections, but actual interwoven words, themes and events. Our calendar is not a linear series of chronological events, separated by blank spot, but is a spiraling process through which we see the innate interconnectedness between all formative historical moments. Purim is 30 days before Passover because we cannot, in a sense, be truly prepared for Passover without it.

[secondary note -- Purim is always 30 days before Passover because in a leap year, the second Adar holds the holiday. This same fact is why Tu B'Shvat is not the same sort of preparation for Purim though it is often observed 30 days prior. Because 7 times every 19 years, it is 60 days before Purim in Adar II it cannot be said to have the same connection.]