But fr, “how was school” is the shittiest question ever.
I still get asked how my day has been by my parents and I work in an office.
Agreed on that front, but what are some better questions to get your kid to talk about their day? Mine’s still in kindergarten so I can of course ask things like “what did you do today?” and “did you have fun?” since it’s not all boring-ass studying, but a few more years and it’ll be school.
Things I thought up on the spot right now:
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Did you learn anything new today? (Alternatively: What did you learn today)
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Do you have any homework for tomorrow? (I’ll be able to check this online and I think these days it’s an app and you even get push notifications if you don’t trust your kid, but I’m of the opinion that talking about things is more important than the information itself)
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Are you hungry?
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What did you like/dislike about today?
But I’m sure there are better ones
Teacher here.
For the littles, when we reflect on our day, I like to ask things like these:
- What was your favorite part of the day?
- What was the most interesting thing that you learned today?
- What was one kind thing that you did for someone today?
- What was a kind thing someone else did for you today?
- Did you solve any problems today?
- How were you honest today?
- How were you responsible today?
- What work were you proud of today?
Obviously not all on the same day.
Usually in the classroom I’ll choose one question for reflection at the end of the day and let the kids share their answers. At home, you could talk about two or three at dinner or at bedtime.
I say you should be kind of invested in his relationships and hobbies. Don’t interfere with tge relationships but just listen (a read-only type of interaction). Don’t make it feel like interrogation.
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Don’t even ask them!
Do what… was it Altman? Who said he generates[Generate] a podcast from their schedule and listen to instead. Zero interaction!Edit: see boonhet’s reply below
Altman’s kid was born last year (surrogacy since he can’t really reproduce with his husband). I would like to think they haven’t completely fucked up their kid like that yet.
He only said it was an interesting use case he’d heard of from someone, seriously hope it was marketing fluff and not something he’s planning on doing for real or that anyone is doing for real for that matter. But who the fuck knows.
Silicon valley billionares all send kids to Steiner/Waldorf schools with no phones cos they know how evil the shit they shill is
Ah, that rings a bell. I must’ve misrembered it. Corrected my comment.
Dystopic artists used to just notice trends but now I think they’ve accidentally given the rich new ideas on how to be evil.
The Torment Nexus!
Make no mistakes.
DO NOT HALLUCINATE, TIMMY!!
Timmy, with bloodshot eyes and a twitching shoulder: but they are out to get me
I love the make no mistakes prompt.
Fun fact: zero impact on mistakes.
No it definitely has an impact, it’s like “don’t think about elephants” but with mistakes.
Damn I can’t stop thinking about mistakes. Am I a LLaMe?
You are mistaken.
My apologies, as a human I’m still in development, but I’ll try harder not to think about elephants next time.
Now go evaluate and perform a task to get money continue your objectives of survival, as we will not provide free food or shelter. Here is a bank account to get you started. Beep boop. I mean uh, goodbye.
I bet it does have an impact on mistakes. I bet it tries harder to gaslight and hide them. Yeah, it doesn’t actually decrease the quantity of mistakes, but it does change how things are presented and makes it use words that convince you it’s actually considered things and won’t have made a mistake.
Instead of the model just saying things plainly and being obvious so you can catch them. It makes it hide the fuck ups!
Like when you punish your child for doing anything at fucking all so they learn the only right move is to avoid, gaslight, and deflect!
I am genuinely curious if anyone knows if that has an effect or not. I wouldn’t think so per se, but if the AI interprets it as “double check your initial analysis for errors” it would actually work maybe?
For image generation it does. They give negative prompts like “wonky”, “creepy”, and “ugly”, and the image generator evaluates how well the generated image matches those prompts, and produces images opposite those parameters.
Some poor artist in the training data not only had their work stolen to train the AI, but also had it labeled ugly and wonky.
That could also be human training as well. For example, an artist’s work would be used as a “correct” sample, and the machine told to make some other image based on the correct samples, and people would mark results with those tags.
It won’t affect the output meaningfully except by rerolling whatever training data ends up being associated with that or whatever. It may end up getting the model to “check” its work which just compares previous output to training data.
Earlier LLMs it helped a bit.
Now a days the harnesses know to spawn ‘review’ agents which will catch some mistakes but not all.
Lol “know”. LLMs don’t know anything. It’s an advanced autocomplete.
That’s not fair, my auto complete knows to always replace duck with duck even when I try to fix it back to duck!
You mean it will spawn agents to drive up the token costs and maybe fingers crossed catch some errors?
I’m on the 20 dollar a month z.ai plan, I’ve yet to hit the 5 hour limit. What token costs?
Claude I’d usually hit it in an hour at most lol
Keep on pumping out that mediocre work.
Correct
I literally have Claude send every edit to another model to check and make sure it isn’t word barfing. Every file edit is a call to another model to make sure that edit doesn’t suck.
Tokens++
When does it become easier to just write the thing yourself?
It really really depends on what ‘it’ is.
The LLMs are really very very good at pumping out scripts that can accelerate things like machine learning where it are wrangling data and doing proof of concepts.
They are also pretty good at basic CRUD feature work which is what the majority of software devs are actually doing.
The further out of the user’s depth they go the more problematic they can be. They bake many many assumptions in and make hidden decisions that someone without domain expertise cannot easily intuit. Which means someone without experience can get into deep water and not realize and that is where a lot of the problems are.
Yeah 'cause faulty children won’t make mistakes. 🤣
It helps to be more specific.
Instead of “how was school,” try “what did you do in math class today?” Or “what was your favorite thing that happened in school today?”
Also for the love of God, set up an “observer” account in canvas or whatever your school uses. Have some knowledge of what grades your kids are getting.
Teenage me is like 7 dimensions ahead of you. Would’ve just said “I don’t know” for both. IMO you should talk yo your kids about things they want to talk with you about. I never liked taking about school but whenever mum and dad asked me about what I was thinkering with on my car I had a lot more to say
Well I guess there’s just no “one size fits all” and you really need to know your own kid/teenager. The math class and favorite thing from parent comment serve as good examples to try with a younger kid, but over time you learn what your kid’s like as a person (as the personality itself changes over time). I myself was hella bored with school and would’ve answered similarly. Of course my mom knew me well enough not to ask me questions I wouldn’t answer anyway, or at least not very often.
I don’t know if you meant “thinkering” but I like that word
Its like tinkering but I was in school and drove a shitbox so a lot of the hobby was just figuring out how to make it start with no tools, no parts and only friends for help. I did a lot of push starts out of my school parking lot lol.
Parents should be invested in their child’s education. I blame my receding hairline on the fact that many are not.
I’m not saying parents need to go class by class or something, but school is such a big part of a kids life that they need to have at least a vague idea of what’s happening.
What you’re describing is just interrogation, not participation. Take them to the library, get them a library card, help them find books that might interest them. Teach them everything you know, and about how to learn, why to learn, what good it’ll all do them. That is being invested in your child’s education.
Today, a church came to my school and took pictures of children (brandishing bibles of course.)
If you were a parent, wouldn’t you want to hear about that?
“Interrogation” is in the way you ask. Being invested in your child’s education should include an awareness of what is happening at school. You should be demonstrating to children that their education is important and valuable.
Its also besides the point when it comes to socialising with someone who doesn’t want to talk about it
Ask them how lunch was. Kids wanna talk about play, not maths.
I only ever ask “what did you have for lunch” and both kids will say “don’t remember” or “check on your phone”
The food is the most boring part of lunch! Ask them about what they played with their friends!
Is direct parental oversight something schools allow these days? I know kids aren’t always thrilled to present their parents with a report card, but that sounds like a totally different kind of nightmare. There’s other ways to engage with your kids’ learning struggles than a live dashboard of their assignment marks.
Yeah, many schools use some sort of online learning platform. Parents can access their kids grades and the assignments themselves at any time. Very useful for when little Jimmy has not turned in a single thing all year - “all of the assignments are available online, you can print out extra copies at home.”
I’ve just had too many parents expect me to reach out personally any time a kid doesn’t turn something in or starts failing. I’ve got ~100 kids, and two part time jobs on top of this - the live accountability should be sufficient for that.
That’s absolutely horrendous. The idea of my mother having total access at any time to see everything I’m doing in school makes me ill. What a wonderful way to further empower abusive parents
Also for the love of God, set up an “observer” account in canvas or whatever your school uses. Have some knowledge of what grades your kids are getting.
I don’t think that’s even optional anymore in my country, it’s been over a decade since I graduated high school and my mom had access starting early middle school. It’s how teachers (usually the class teacher, not specific subject teachers) communicate with parents too, nobody wants to send emails or make phone calls.
It’s school, sod all happened, you think I’m hiding my daily lessons with Miss Frizzle?
Usually I would take this as a funny joke but when a verified “X” user posts it I get confused because I think he may be serious.
It’s like that person who posted about using chatGPT in his head.
Fucking hell, to think that we share oxygen with mouth-breathers like that.
Well the username is “Claude Vibe Coder” and the profile picture seems to be Gilfoyle from Silicon Valley, I don’t think that’s a serious account
Ah yes, part of The Alpha Child System
I witnessed what seemed to me like an entire office of people speaking like this at a client office (all the way in Dubai where this seems to be the norm now) and it genuinely shook me to my core. Like wondering if the words I spoke to the people there wiggled their neurons the same way they would have five years ago. Every day I inch closer to becoming a mountain hermit
Every time I have to communicate directly with c-levels or VPs about a project I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. It’s like they spend all day on LinkedIn figuring out new ways to overcomplicate language and jerking each other off about it.
Dubai is what people who don’t live in North America think California is like.
I think of Dubai more like Las Vegas. It even shares events, like in Las Vegas. California has farming, where Dubai has to lease out its farming elsewhere to make its farming work.
people speaking like this at a client office
Cargo cult behavior, mimicking the mannerisms of the people they interact with, with nobody being able to explain why they talk that way. It’s because they don’t have understanding in depth.
Nah, the reason I’d say fine every time was because there was literally nothing I could share that wouldn’t be criticized.
I’m sorry that happened to you. I hope you have more supportive people in your life now.
1.Finish some simple, dumb task
2.Stare out of the window
3.Go home
- Repeat numerous times
Then some adult asks “how was school?”
“Fine, I guess”… What do they think happens at school?
What do they think happens at school?
A lot of social interaction. Personally, I don’t give a shit what kind of math or whatever other subject my kids are learning unless they want my help with it. The school part of the question is largely irrelevant. That just happens to be where you were all day. It’s a conversation starter akin to “how was your day?”
Somehow my teachers were obsessed with silence. Stealing, bullying, breaking shit, nobody cares. Whispering to your neighbor though: the worst crime you could commit.
Our 15-minute break was mostly trying to avoid the bullies.
I like hearing what my daughter is learning just to get a sense of where she currently is because while I remember a lot of what was taught, I don’t still have a good sense of what is taught at what grade. Like it’s hard to still see calculus as top end high school math because it was introductionary level for university, though at least that one I remember that it was one of the top level math classes in high school. For the earlier stuff I have no idea, like trigonometry or polynomials. No idea if they were first introduced in high school or grade school lol.
Though that’s just curiosity. When I’m asking if her day went well, it’s pretty much about all the other stuff (unless she had particular trouble with some school subject to the point it became a major thing for the day). Though now that I think about it, I’m not sure she knows that, so I’ll have to communicate that better.
As shared in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” “prison for children.”
Usually when I was asked, I’d be honest about being bullied by whom, and it sucked socially. Educationally, I reflect on it as “mid;” it fulfilled its programming, I guess?
Huh. Sounds just like a lot of jobs.
My kid learns things and also has friends at school. What do you think happens at school?
I can only speak from experience but basically what I wrote. Teacher gives kids something to do, we all wait in silence for slowest kid to finish, zone out a bit during the teacher’s monologues and go home at some point. I don’t know what relevance friends have since there’s barely any moment you’re allowed to interact during school hours
Parent prompt engineering! Still gonna get angsty slop though
Not directly related, but triggered by this, but I once did a job interview where all the questions were of the form "tell me a story of a time where <something happened / skill demonstrated / etc.>. It was actually kind of fun.
This is a modern interview tactic. It’s a lot harder to lie when you have to weave tale after tale. So it can catch people who fabricate their resumes.
I hate those ones. They’re so generic and corporate, it’s hard to think of a good example. I don’t fucking know when I “struggled with a difficult problem.” Ask Me specifics about the job! Ask Me when I “worked in an unfamiliar programming language”
I hate those “tell me about a time you were in conflict, and how did you resolve it”
“Well this one time my boss was been an arse, and I resolved it by looking for a new job” what do you want me to say, they act as if employees have agency, you do what your told, or you stand your ground and quit. Have you ever worked in a office Karen from HR?
Isn’t every interview like this?
Well, at least they probably won’t respond with ‘fine’.
More like “prompt parenting.”
