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Mercenary Pen's avatar

Agreed that class will be the last thing shattered by AI, if it ever shatters it. This piece reminds me of a 2021 article in Current Affairs dealing with the nature of accounting for wealth: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/01/trumps-taxes-and-the-nature-of-money

"Your net worth is a number. A capitalist’s worth is a conversation."

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

What an excellent article. Thanks so much for this. Loved this quote: "Theft itself becomes a conversation, rather than just a crime, when a wealthy person does it. When one capitalist robs another, my experience is that they tend to discuss among themselves how to restore the thief to good standing without destroying anyone’s life, livelihood, or privacy."

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AnAmericanReader's avatar

Very interesting read. Thanks.

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Thanks!

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Michael Sexson's avatar

I also read this as a parable built on Shakespeare’s Tempest with the magician father and the wide eyed daughter celebrating a brave new world. I had to do some major mental maneuvers but in the end it worked. —MS

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

I hadn't thought of that! Thanks for that reading

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Prince of Permsia's avatar

I am so uncultured I did not get that reference

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Mark Slight's avatar

I'm not sure not getting a Shakespeare reference is so very uncultured

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loretta v's avatar

hugely embarrassing ask on Substack but could someone please explain what this is sayinh

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Blake Nelson's avatar

Great piece. It’s like a “parable” though I’m not sure I know what a “parable” is.

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Moo Cat's avatar

Is it more dystopian to simply spy on my high school students' laptops when they write in-class essays and never assign out of class essays? Based on the essays they write under my surveillance, they're doing pretty good! Of course I work in an (mostly blue-collar) exurban school where our installation of this software on every student laptop bothers no one, I doubt this would fly at a prep school.

I do wonder if the college pedagogy really had any accountability back in my day (early '00s) either. Nearly everyone I knew in my English major looked up summaries of books and skimmed them for text evidence to support thesis statements that were often similar to arguments made by scholars on JSTOR about similar books. I was a sucker and got obsessed with the books and making an original argument about them.

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

I stopped reading the books for English class starting around grade 10. Just looked up extracts online in the Amazon "Look Inside Your Book" feature and would cobble together some thesis based on some googling. But I don't know if I'm really the model that our educational system should be built around

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Philip Tetley-Jones's avatar

AI and any dreams of a technocratic paradise are built around the idea that we are Minds, whereas we are first and primarily Monkeys. Social apes. Status seekers and social manipulators.

Good story.

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Thanks

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Jack Valker's avatar

Yeah. Still can’t fucking read tho

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Marina Reis's avatar

That's a great piece!

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Thanks!

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V.M. Harrigan's avatar

This is so good. I wandered into this post, groggy from a nap and thought I was reading an article about a student named Miranda for a while. No notes.

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Thanks!

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Lee Archer  |  Nottingham Arts's avatar

“read good”?

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Henry Begler's avatar

Really dug this one

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Thank you! That means a lot.

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Mark Olague's avatar

It’s way worse than you think.

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Bhavin Jankharia's avatar

This is just so good.

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Thank you!

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Prince of Permsia's avatar

Great story as always!

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Thank you!

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David's avatar

Fascinating read!

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Naomi Kanakia's avatar

Thank you!

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