During a recent review of a fully online Master’s programme, a familiar question surfaced: how do we know the student actually did the maths?
Generative AI has intensified this concern, but I argue that it has not created a crisis in assessment. It has revealed structural weaknesses that were already present in our reliance on unseen exams and correctness as primary evidence of learning.
If digital environments make surveillance based control both more difficult and more problematic, then we need to ask deeper pedagogical questions. What counts as valid evidence of learning? How should academic integrity be understood when tools are ubiquitous and powerful?
During a recent review of a fully online Master’s programme, a familiar question surfaced: how do we know the student actually did the maths?
Generative AI has intensified this concern, but I argue that it has not created a crisis in assessment. It has revealed structural weaknesses that were already present in our reliance on unseen exams and correctness as primary evidence of learning.
If digital environments make surveillance based control both more difficult and more problematic, then we need to ask deeper pedagogical questions. What counts as valid evidence of learning? How should academic integrity be understood when tools are ubiquitous and powerful?
Retro-futurist scene: armoured cyborg seated in a chair wired to machines, a luminous figure reaches toward him, and a giant brain in a dome above a neon city and stars.
Why am I doing this boring job? I need it to pay for myself. Yes, I will use AI because it gets the job done. I don’t need to waste my thinking power on pointless tasks. You need to understand your students, because you are out of touch. You may have skills, but for students they are useless. Students are paying for this. Give us something worth studying — something that makes a real difference, real-life experience!
Ask us to solve real-life problems! Give us simple tasks. We all understand your maths. Look for people who genuinely want to engage in the task. Let us experience teamwork properly — the frog died because we were not able to work as a team.
Take a real problem and ask students to solve it. You can give marks for simple tasks to motivate students. But you cannot dismiss them. You are knowledgeable — you need to bring learning to life for them.
If a task feels pointless, students will optimise it. In an AI-saturated world, that is predictable. When someone says they will use AI to get a boring job done, that often tells us more about the design of the task than about the character of the student.
I agree that learning should involve real problems, not artificial exercises that can be completed mechanically. Education should develop judgement, decision-making, and the ability to work with uncertainty. Those are not things AI can simply replace.
At the same time, correctness still matters. In many fields, getting the maths right is not optional. The deeper question is whether students can explain, justify, and apply what they produce, not just generate an answer.
Your point about teamwork is important as well. Collaboration only works when roles, responsibility, and shared purpose are properly structured. Otherwise it becomes tokenistic.
We probably agree on more than it seems. If students are bored, that is a design issue. The response should not be dis
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Jacob,
I hear what you're saying.
If a task feels pointless, students will optimise it. In an AI-saturated world, that is predictable. When someone says they will use AI to get a boring job done, that often tells us more about the design of the task than about the character of the student.
I agree that learning should involve real problems, not artificial exercises that can be completed mechanically. Education should develop judgement, decision-making, and the ability to work with uncertainty. Those are not things AI can simply replace.
At the same time, correctness still matters. In many fields, getting the maths right is not optional. The deeper question is whether students can explain, justify, and apply what they produce, not just generate an answer.
Your point about teamwork is important as well. Collaboration only works when roles, responsibility, and shared purpose are properly structured. Otherwise it becomes tokenistic.
We probably agree on more than it seems. If students are bored, that is a design issue. The response should not be dismissal or surveillance, but better problems, clearer purpose, and learning that connects to real practice.
For me, political and economic action are of secondary importance, though they are essential. There must be radical change in the political field, but such a change will have no depth if I do not pursue the whole. If the whole is not primary, if the whole is only secondary, then my action towards the secondary will have limited significance. If I see a certain path and act politically, this political action becomes important to me, not acting integrally. But if acting integrally is really important to me and if I pursue it, then political action, religious action and economic action will come rightly, deeply, fundamentally. If I do not pursue the other but merely confine myself to political, economic or social change, I create more misery.
If political action is separate from the total action of man, if it does not take into consideration his whole being, his psychological as well as his physical state, then it is mischievous, bringing further confusion and misery; and this is exactly what is taking place in the world at the present time. Cannot man, with all his problems, act as a complete human being, and not as a political entity separated from his psychological or spiritual state? A tree is the root, the trunk, the branch, the leaf and the flower. Any action which is not comprehensive, total, must inevitably lead to sorrow. There is only total human action, not political action, religious action, or Indian action. Action that is separative and fragmentary always leads to conflict both within and without.
@GeePawHill I discovered the most interesting people by subscribing to hashtags. I would never have found specialists for lichens by boosts of people only. It's great if you are interested in more nerdy issues.
@GeePawHill super convenient for negative filtering though. Some super nice folks out here also post stuff I shouldn't look at. If it's tagged, my filter protects our friendship, and that's worth it to me.
I never use hashtags on Mastodon since I forgot that they were used in Twitter. They are not used in Telegram. In case of Russian mastodon there are 2 bots that boost your posts if they are written in russian. I have no idea how they are boosted if they are written in English and how, let's say, a person would find somebody to follow in Mastodon if he only registered and wants to find something to read and interact with.
@Sevapopov I use hashtags because I and others follow them to find specific content. Some people block things like the name of the president to avoid seeing it. They are my favorite tool.
@Sevapopov AFAIK people can opt out of allowing full-text search of their posts. If so, you can only find people talking about opera if they use a hashtag #opera.
@Goodlucksil Isn’t that wild? I did NOT expect that. But that’s perfect for my purpose. I’ve edited the post to explain why I made this request. Thank you!
@futurebird Now, that’s an interesting perspective I hadn’t considered! As a performer, my main use of Mastodon besides playing games is to post “Look at what I will be doing“ and “Look at what I did” 😂 … and “Look at my cat,” of course.
@futurebird (I favourited and boosted this, but given the content of the post, I feel like that could be interpreted as a passive-aggressive attack. It isn't meant to be, I have nothing of value to add to this, but I completely agree with the sentiment expressed.)
Also, probably very few people will find this interesting, but the latest campaign in not another D&D podcast lampoons this kind of social media influencer with a Social Media Warlock (derives her power from her social media following.)
@futurebird I, too, like replies more than anything else. Though I often find I have nothing productive, useful, or fun to say. So the favorite button is just "i liked that" and the boost is "my friends will like it too".
@futurebird "Maybe I'm very strange but my metric for a post "doing well" is replies ..."
Me too. Some if this is valuing dialogue.
And at a slightly different angle I'm getting interested in "What we know" as in "we the folk here and now". So "what is our common knowledge or combined knowledge?".
@futurebird That’s just how I feel too. What I like here are the conversations. I’d rather exchange ideas with a few interesting people than generate large impression counts. I’m in no way opposed to promotion—I hope this medium also gets my music out there too. But it means more to me to know a few people listened and had thoughtful responses—or that one performer would like to play it—than that thousands passively know it exists. @meganmariehart
@futurebird completely agree with you ! That being said I don't reply that much even on here because I never know what to say (and maybe because years of other platforms have ruined the way I connect with people online)
@futurebird agreed. To me, a post that elicits even one relevant reply is more "successful" than a post with a zillion likes and no replies. This medium is built for conversations, not just broadcasts. I sometimes start following someone with posts on a topic of interest, but then unfollow them again because they're 100% broadcast. Missing the point of an interactive medium...
I think about “engagement” differently on Mastodon. Before the Elon-gation of Twitter I had more than 12k5 followers there (I left at that point!) Here I have fewer than a quarter of that number, but I feel far more engaged. People scrolling past one’s Tweets without even glancing at them counted as being ‘seen’ — a meaningless statistic!
@KimSJ I feel the same way about engagement statistics, they’re useless to me! Mastodon is great and fun without them. However, I was thinking that maybe for someone who hasn’t made the jump yet, some numbers could be an incentive, just because they are so used to them.
(Nobody actually asked why, but I imagine someone must have thought it.) Curiosity is one reason, the other is a recent offline discussion about whether we are hindering a more wide spread adoption of the Fediverse because we dislike advertisements. It’s possible that brands and “influencer”-type people aren’t getting the kick they’re used to from the Fediverse because there are no metrics showing how many people have seen a post. Perhaps it’s different with your own instance – I don’t know! 2/7
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that people would want to test the waters by creating an account on an established instance before committing to setting up their own, even if they have the necessary knowledge and funds. I think people have become accustomed to the insane numbers on commercial social media: millions of views, thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. (I have never been part of this; my profession is too niche. Classical music accounts for just 2–5% of music sales, 3/7
… and opera is primarily a live art form, so its market share is so small as to be essentially unmeasurable. I never bothered to find out how many people I reach vs how many interactions a post gets. I really couldn’t care less!) Brands and “Influencer”-minded people, even people just used to commercial socials testing the fediverse might feel like it is not working for them and leave again, so I was wondering about the *potential* reach of a toot. 4/7
I feel like I get more meaningful interaction (and perhaps even ticket sales!) from a Mastodon post about an upcoming show than from posts on other social media platforms. But a “feeling” dosen’t help when trying to convince people to join. Or to get active. My current theater @staatstheaterdarmstadt is on here since 2022 – zero posts! I would like them to get active or even set up their own instance. I think every theater should have its own instance! It can’t be more work than FB and IG. 5/7
All theaters have websites. I’m not tech-savvy (my husband takes care of that for me), but it seems to me that if you have a website and domain, setting up a Mastodon server can’t be that hard. Perhaps it’s even possible to run it as an outlet only, then they wouldn’t have to deal with moderation. I think every publicly funded entity should have a presence on the Fediverse instead of commercial social media. (Or at least in addition to.) My experimental toot is meant to create an example … 6/7
… to demonstrate that Fediverse posts are worth the time and effort. Perhaps there is also an argument for a feature request: maybe there should be audience metrics for toots?! Though I imagine that could be difficult due to Federation. Again, I have no idea if one already gets numbers and insight by running an instance.)
Perhaps we can move beyond numbers in the long run, but for now, I fear people enjoy them even if they gain nothing from them. Kinda like a game highscore, I suppose.
@Kirsty The thing is this: few people complain here about posting about what you do.
There are instances like .art that seek creators who post about what they do.
What people do NOT tend to react well to is the language of avdertising. This can also be about what you do (e.g. LinkedIn), or specific events and services.
What @meganmariehart gets 100% right is behaving as a human being with a job she shows passion for, where she will show what she does.
@staatstheaterdarmstadt Before getting them an own instance, let them fill their account! Without communication, no followers. Mastodon prepares an entry for newcomers where they can find local instances instead of the one big. They can move at every moment. My experience with social media (I work professionally with these): With much less followers you get much more interaction and relations to your audience in the Fediverse. But only if you are communicating actively. The ratio
@staatstheaterdarmstadt Even if you don't want actively post you could have your RSS feed go into your Mastodon account. Then you just need to check notifications for comments and toot-toots.
I'm a novelist. I enjoy Mastodon as a water cooler experience with people in my various communities, with hastags being useful. Not interested in trying to flog my books here, or seeing any others who do so.
@metalbrawler I wanted to test the potential reach of a post without hashtags, basically just for the sake of discussion. My home theater has a Mastodon account since 2022 but never posted anything! Perhaps I can convince them to get active if I can show them a posts potential, and maybe other theaters and artists will join. Fingers crossed!🤞 Thank you!
Edit: oh, my instance only had your first toot. The other 6 appeared only once I replied here. Kinda ignore.
Original: could you edit this toot when you're done? I'm interested, but if I bookmark it, it'll just go into the how-come-it-has-not-toppled-yet pile of to-reads :-G
I once run an experiment similar to yours. I asked people to boost a toot with a URL to a webserver I controlled, no hashtags either. It got <3k boosts. Yours will probably get similar numbers. At that point, IIRC, the Fedi (or was it just Mastodon?) was ~2M accounts, so it reached ~15% of the net. I wrote abut it here:
Yesterday1 I did something that I don't know how to qualify. At the beginning I was just playing a silly thing where I
registered a new domain on a dynamic domain service. I set up Apache on my home s
But hashtags are the best way to reach people. You mention a theater. They should post with hashtags of their region of influence (city, province, etc), the type of œvre (opera, music, etc) and maybe a couple more. They should sniff around until they find the right ones. I wish there were tools for that, hmmm...
@mdione I've just finished reading your blog post. Very cool, I wish I had read this before making my notifications useless (and they are now!) It seems that the Fediverse is not the best place for spontaneous experiments! I’m not sure if the idea was so bad that I should delete the post, or just wait! Think I’ll wait
Had several questions about how the main "Home" feed works on Mastodon. Here's what it shows:
1. All posts from all accounts you follow in chronological order, newest at top 2. All posts shared by accounts or groups you follow 3. Posts that use hashtags you follow in chronological order, newest at top
...and that's it, there's nothing else on your Home feed. It doesn't push anything else at you, it doesn't hide anything from you unless you ask it to. No algorithms, no ads.
That's a great question! It's interesting to see how different strategies impact reach. I'm really curious about your findings—what have you noticed so far? 😊
@maharanisantoso Waaaaay more interactions than I expected! Most of them have been positive, but I also had to learn that bursting out of my own comfy bubble exposed me to not-so-nice people I didn’t even know were on here.😸
I can't see your post and am way to what ever to read all the rest of your 🧵 ..
😎
Not sure what you want to achive.
Yes we do have some federation statistics in at least some of our backends. friendica servers for example display the amount of platforms, server and people they found in the fedi.
Than there is the part that we don't like the standard fashion influencer who treat us like sheep to heard or cows to milk.
Of course there are business models to think of, but there are a whole lot of middle men that need to jump on the train. An important part of the enshitification talk by @pluralistic is about all this. No clicks you can buy, no algorithm you can buy, no data you can buy to groom your victims.
Like to say, we created this for us and people like you. ❤️
@jesuisatire Fair! Thanks for the reply! (I’ve been wondering about the reach of a post outside of hashtags, and whether this could be used as an argument to encourage theaters to join the Fediverse. My current theater is on Mastodon but has never used the account!)
rubbish, especially young people. What's missing in the Fedi are local connections when you depend on real visitors. Hashtags don't work satisfactorily for this. Our groups are only boosting bots. One reason why the museum for which I unofficially do storytelling is officially on Facebook and Instagram: it is that that's where the real visitors are. I can only encourage people to focus on communication rather than numbers. But this requires people power within the institutions.
@NatureMC Plus, I would like to add, it takes time to build your audience since you don't get any "help" by inbuilt algorithms. On the other hand, you don't need to try and understand how the algorithms work I think we will see more people joining open platforms in the long run. When you're socialised with the numbers game, it can be hard to re-learn and focus on the interaction.
Like many others, I saw your boost without any hashtags.
I usually forget to use hashtags and often end up shouting into the wind. But it is ok, I’m as introverted on-line as in person. A large response would likely overwhelm me - 😀
I love what your end game here is; getting theaters involved in the Fediverse. I suspect that the metrics you're asking about are available to those running an instance. Otherwise, how would "Trending" be established. I think you need to talk to someone running their own instance. I think a good place to start would be fedi.tips/
the underlying protocol of Fediverse is not dependent on any tags. strictly saying it does not have tags at all. it works like email and delivery depends on user addresses ;like username+servername. if a connected user reposts or comments some post in Fediverse, there's a chance that his followers get a copy if the original post too, so posts spread across trhe different servers on Fediverse. some platforms (like Mastodon) allow subscription to tags and some filtering on tags. others do not offer that features. but tags often may be used in seatch engines on servers and people may sort out messages with tags for easier search.
@iwein @metalbrawler Yes. I play Oxygen Not Included, and I post threads about my play. I do add the tag, # oxygennotincluded, so my followers can filter it.
Maybe this works with content warning already, and we could theoretically simply use another tag symbol (if it's not recognized as a hashtag, it meets your desires)
For example &fediFunctions is very filterable to avoid post like this and it's not recognized as a hashtag. We do need to change habits for it, and that's hard.
And it can easily annoy or inconvenience people as well. Not sure what a screen reader does here, but I'm pretty sure it's not great.
@iwein @GeePawHill @metalbrawler I kind of wish for hashtags that aren't searchable, but usable for this purpose (I guess plain words would do, but that feels a little less directed). I do not *want* my posts to be findable by some hashtag, but this is a good use of them.
@geonz Okay, my bad, not idealy worded. I explained my intentions in a reply thread later on. (In short, I want to convince people who are still fixated on numbers to join the Fediverse.)
I've read your original thread and many of the replies (including some of the rude ones).
I'm sincerely curious about something, though, and if you've said I missed it. Is there a downside to using hashtags that I'm not seeing? Maybe not a hashtag soup, but just, say, "# opera" at the end?
@naga Other than it eating into the character limit, I can’t think of any real downside. However, if someone were to set up their own instance, they could adjust the character limit if they regularly need more space for text.
About the only time I use hashtags is for my Darkover writeups (I do not call them reviews):
* (hash) Darkover so people can find, subscribe - or block! them
* (hash) bookstodon so the Bookstodon bot catches and boosts them.
If the English of a post is littered with Blue Words, my eye will usually skip over it as I've come to expect such posts to be unusually self-important.
@foobarsoft For posts about performances I usually add 'opera' and 'operaSinger' so people can filter me if they want the browser but not art. Then the work we’re performing, the composer, the city and if I have enough room the region. If I just blurt out a random though, I don’t tag them.
Like many others, not boosting or quoting, but commenting here to add to the count. I've now seen this boosted into my feed by two different folks I follow.
Your post was boosted into my feed by someone I follow. For what it's worth, I think the thing people trained on other social media struggle with about the Fedi is that it's not instant. A post on the Fedi doesn't "go viral" and blast through to everywhere in nothing flat. It burbles on for days, sometimes months, as gradually daisychains out from where it started. So they feel they've had no reach or no interaction, when really they just stopped counting too soon!
@virtuosew That’s a very good point! Sometimes, I get likes and boosts on posts that are years old. I guess theaters that want to publicise upcoming performances would have to post more in advance. The ability to edit posts has helped me a lot when there have been cast changes. I also quote my own posts when I want to add something to a performance I have already posted about.
@metalbrawler It’s harder to abuse hashtags here, because if you spam hashtags people care about they will just block you without a second thought… but that makes the right hashtags super valuable because you can quickly engage with your specific community.
It is one of the most difficult things to be free, to forget everything that one has known, inwardly of yesterday, to die to every experience one has had, pleasurable or painful. But only then is the mind free to live, to act totally. To do this requires an awareness without choice, a passive awareness in which all the secret longings, urges, compulsions, wishes and desires are revealed, where the mind does not choose but merely observes. The moment you choose, you have subtly established authority, and therefore the mind is no longer free. To be aware inwardly of every movement of thought, the implications of every word, the significance of every desire and wish, and not to deny or accept, but pursue, watch choicelessly, this frees the mind from authority. It is only when the mind is free that it can discover what is true and what is false, and not before; and this freedom is not at the end but at the beginning.
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Last month observed temperatures more than 5°C above the 1981-2010 average across Greenland and the eastern Canadian Arctic. This was associated with a negative N(AO) large-scale circulation pattern, which contributed to ridging over the region.
Awareness implies observing the world as it is, to know the world, the trees, nature, the beauty and the ugliness, to be aware of your neighbour, what they are wearing, and also to be aware of what you are, inwardly. If you are so aware, you will see that there are a great many reactions – like and dislike, punishment and reward – in that awareness. Can you be aware without any choice, a choiceless awareness, just to be aware without choosing, without prejudice? To become totally aware of your consciousness means: can consciousness become aware of itself? Which means also can thought, your thinking, become aware of itself?
What is essential is to see that one is confused, that all activity, all action which springs from confusion, must also be confused. It is like a confused person seeking a leader– his leader must also be confused. So it is essential to see that one is confused and not try to escape from it, not try to find explanations for it, but be passively, choicelessly, aware. Then you will see quite a different action springs from that passive awareness. If you make an effort to clarify the state of confusion, what you create will still be confused. But if you are aware of yourself, choicelessly, passively aware, then that confusion unfolds and fades away. You will see, if you experiment with this – and it will not take a long period of time because time is not involved in it at all – that clarification comes into being. But you must give your whole attention, your whole interest, to it.
A remarkable book that fixes quantum mechanics. Deep research uncovers Einstein’s mistakes that have affected modern physics. Explore a new idea—fully supported by evidence—that was lost to history.
Karma is the process of time, the past moving through the present to the future; this chain is the way of thought. Thought is the result of time, and there can be that which is immeasurable, timeless, only when the process of thought has ceased. Stillness of the mind cannot be induced; it cannot be brought about through any practice or discipline. If the mind is made still, then whatever comes into it is only a self-projection, a response of memory. With the understanding of its conditioning, with the choiceless awareness of its own responses as thought and feeling, tranquillity comes to the mind. This breaking of the chain of karma is not a matter of time, for through time, the timeless is not.
ICE getting kicked out of Europe would be a nice sport to watch. Oh, and J.D. Vance getting booed at during the opening ceremony, that was a nice touch. More of that.
mountaineering is the sport I am looking forward to watching.
Winter Olympics are more than just about a city, they are about scenery, nature, and regional/national identity. the organisers really choose some great location.
Palestinians are freezing to death while the EU rewards Israel with lucrative contracts. That's the 5th option - an EU specialty - missing from your list. I don't like it at all and it spoils the other four.
Il y a tellement de bonnes réponses à lire, j'en rejoins beaucoup. @EUCommission , ce serait tellement intelligent d'avoir un peu de bon sens écologique, économique et humain.
Wait, don’t you guys already have this memorized? I thought you were the pro-surveillance fan club with season tickets, face scans, ID scans, and everything. At least in the Soviet Union they knew how to spy on people properly.
Any system, any method, that teaches you how to meditate is obviously false. One can see why, intellectually, logically, for if you practise something according to a method – however noble, however ancient, however modern, however popular – you are making yourself mechanical; you are doing something over and over again in order to achieve something. In meditation, the end is not different from the means. But the method promises you something; it is a means to an end. If the means is mechanical, then the end is also something brought about by the machine; the mechanical mind says, ‘I’ll get something.’ One has to be completely free from all methods, all systems; that is the beginning of meditation; you are already denying something which is utterly false and meaningless. And there are those who practice ‘awareness’. Can you practise awareness? If you are practising awareness, you are all the time being inattentive. Be aware of inattention; do not practice how to be attentive. If you areaware of your inattention, out of that awareness there
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Any system, any method, that teaches you how to meditate is obviously false. One can see why, intellectually, logically, for if you practise something according to a method – however noble, however ancient, however modern, however popular – you are making yourself mechanical; you are doing something over and over again in order to achieve something. In meditation, the end is not different from the means. But the method promises you something; it is a means to an end. If the means is mechanical, then the end is also something brought about by the machine; the mechanical mind says, ‘I’ll get something.’ One has to be completely free from all methods, all systems; that is the beginning of meditation; you are already denying something which is utterly false and meaningless. And there are those who practice ‘awareness’. Can you practise awareness? If you are practising awareness, you are all the time being inattentive. Be aware of inattention; do not practice how to be attentive. If you areaware of your inattention, out of that awareness there is attention; you do not have to practise it.
What is meditation, and why should one meditate? Is it natural? Like breathing, like seeing, like hearing, is it natural? And why have we made it so unnatural, taking postures, following systems of Buddhist meditation, Tibetan meditation, Christian meditation, Tantric meditation, and the meditations set by your favourite guru? Aren't all those really abnormal? Why should I take a certain position to meditate? Why should I practice, practice, practice? To arrive where? Can I follow a system – twenty minutes in the morning, twenty minutes in the evening – to have a quiet mind? Having achieved a quiet little mind, I can go off and do other mischief all day long. Is there a way of meditating that is none of these things?
Systems imply repetition, practice, following a method. If you follow a method, a system, a practice, it becomes a routine. And when the mind becomes a mechanical thing, then you have conflict, then there is an escape through sex, or through other forms of activity. Therefore, at all costs, avoid any system of meditation, because a mechanical mind can never find out what truth is. The mechanical mind can become very disciplined and orderly, but that orderliness is in contradiction to the order we were talking about. In the orderliness of repetition, there is contradiction between what you are and what you should be, between the ideal, the perfect, and all the rest. There is contradiction in that, and where there is contradiction there is distortion, and therefore a tortured mind. And a tortured mind can never find out anything. So don’t belong to any system; don’t follow any guru.
I am questioning the whole process of following, not the substitution of one authority for another, or of one guru for another – those are all childish activities. But if we can inquire into the question, into the problem of why we follow, then perhaps we shall understand the problem of authority. When you are asked why you follow, you do not know the reason why. The reason is fairly obvious – you follow for satisfaction, for a motive, for gain, for an end in view. But the whole instinctual response to follow somebody, to follow an ideal, to follow an experience which you had ten years ago and which you want now, and therefore follow and strive after in order to get that richness – this total process of following is the problem. The moment you follow or have a guru, you create the authority. But if there is cessation of following, there is no authority, there is no guru; then you are a light to yourself.
One of the results of fear is the acceptance of authority in human affairs. Authority is created by our desire to be right, to be secure, to be comfortable, to have no conscious conflicts or disturbances, but nothing which results from fear can help us to understand our problems, even though fear may take the form of respect and submission to the so-called wise. The wise wield no authority, and those in authority are not wise. Fear, in whatever form, prevents the understanding of ourselves and of our relationship to all things. The following of authority is the denial of intelligence. To accept authority is to submit to domination, to subjugate oneself to an individual, to a group, or to an ideology, whether religious or political; and this subjugation of oneself to authority is the denial, not only of intelligence, but also of individual freedom.
All data are referenced at My visualizations: Arctic Climate Seasonality and Variability Arctic Sea Ice Extent and Concentration Arctic Sea Ice Volume and Thickness Arctic Temperatures Antarctic Se…
Early 20th century warming was in large part due to rising solar activity and relatively quiet volcanic activity. However, both factors have played little to no part in the warming since 1975. Solar activity has been steady since the 50's.
the crazy thing is that it's undeniable even to people my age (in their fourties). Like you can feel that it is different to when we were young. There is just record after record when it comes to heatwaves.
We need graphics like these for biodiversity loss, disruption of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, and all the other components of the #polycrisis so that people don't think climate disruption is the only crisis that's about to end 14,000 years of human civilisation and plunge the survivors back into the age of nomadic tribes, if there are any at all.
has no authority. It has never known authority. It is not the rejection of authority, but the non-existence of it. Both authority and law, outer and inner, are put together by thought. The outer authority, sometimes rational, sometimes irrational, has its place and its responsibility; one cannot brush it aside, and the intelligence of freedom knows its limitation and its necessity. The inner authority, which is subtler and deeper, is much more complex. Guidelines, which seem to give certainty and assurance, become a pattern, the norm, which becomes the authority. This authority may be traditional, a person, a symbol or an idea. The mind, being aware consciously or unconsciously of its own disturbance and disorder, brings about both the outer and the inner authority. A disorderly group soon finds a leader, who then directs and controls it. The reaction to this is not freedom. The understanding of the nature of this disorder and the disturbance, and the going beyond them, is freedom. The acceptance of authority is caused by disturbance and disorder. The effect is authority, and the
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has no authority. It has never known authority. It is not the rejection of authority, but the non-existence of it. Both authority and law, outer and inner, are put together by thought. The outer authority, sometimes rational, sometimes irrational, has its place and its responsibility; one cannot brush it aside, and the intelligence of freedom knows its limitation and its necessity. The inner authority, which is subtler and deeper, is much more complex. Guidelines, which seem to give certainty and assurance, become a pattern, the norm, which becomes the authority. This authority may be traditional, a person, a symbol or an idea. The mind, being aware consciously or unconsciously of its own disturbance and disorder, brings about both the outer and the inner authority. A disorderly group soon finds a leader, who then directs and controls it. The reaction to this is not freedom. The understanding of the nature of this disorder and the disturbance, and the going beyond them, is freedom. The acceptance of authority is caused by disturbance and disorder. The effect is authority, and the reaction to that is to conform or to deny. This very denial assumes another form of authority. Where there is no freedom, there must be authority.
Jacob Urlich 🌍
in reply to Steve • •You need to understand your students, because you are out of touch. You may have skills, but for students they are useless. Students are paying for this.
Give us something worth studying — something that makes a real difference, real-life experience!
Jacob Urlich 🌍
in reply to Steve • •Look for people who genuinely want to engage in the task. Let us experience teamwork properly — the frog died because we were not able to work as a team.
Jacob Urlich 🌍
in reply to Steve • •But you cannot dismiss them. You are knowledgeable — you need to bring learning to life for them.
Steve
in reply to Jacob Urlich 🌍 • •Jacob,
I hear what you're saying.
If a task feels pointless, students will optimise it. In an AI-saturated world, that is predictable. When someone says they will use AI to get a boring job done, that often tells us more about the design of the task than about the character of the student.
I agree that learning should involve real problems, not artificial exercises that can be completed mechanically. Education should develop judgement, decision-making, and the ability to work with uncertainty. Those are not things AI can simply replace.
At the same time, correctness still matters. In many fields, getting the maths right is not optional. The deeper question is whether students can explain, justify, and apply what they produce, not just generate an answer.
Your point about teamwork is important as well. Collaboration only works when roles, responsibility, and shared purpose are properly structured. Otherwise it becomes tokenistic.
We probably agree on more than it seems. If students are bored, that is a design issue. The response should not be dis
... Show more...Jacob,
I hear what you're saying.
If a task feels pointless, students will optimise it. In an AI-saturated world, that is predictable. When someone says they will use AI to get a boring job done, that often tells us more about the design of the task than about the character of the student.
I agree that learning should involve real problems, not artificial exercises that can be completed mechanically. Education should develop judgement, decision-making, and the ability to work with uncertainty. Those are not things AI can simply replace.
At the same time, correctness still matters. In many fields, getting the maths right is not optional. The deeper question is whether students can explain, justify, and apply what they produce, not just generate an answer.
Your point about teamwork is important as well. Collaboration only works when roles, responsibility, and shared purpose are properly structured. Otherwise it becomes tokenistic.
We probably agree on more than it seems. If students are bored, that is a design issue. The response should not be dismissal or surveillance, but better problems, clearer purpose, and learning that connects to real practice.