#use your fucking brains and critical thinking skills

[amynchan]

Don't know how to run numbers? Someone will budget for you for a fee. Or, get this, the words "buy in bulk" will become gold to you without actually checking the prices given to you. Clearly you are saving money.

Don't know how basic body functions work? This magic juice will re balance your XYZ for you and make you all better!

Don't know basic lab safety? This cleaning agent is Not Toxic At All, and you should be A-Ok using it!

Whomst the fuck is Hitler, and why are people mad about him? He's dead; he clearly doesn't have any effect on us today!

The president can and should make all of these changes. it's the good and right thing to do, and the evil establishment is stopping him! No, I don't care why it was made or what it's made to prevent. We need to solve today's issues!

Oooh! I hate the president! We don't need a government; just burn it all down and make a new one! Raaaawr; take back our power through whatever means necessary! The rest will figure itself out!

Grrr! The news makes me so angry! If only there were a conveniently placed action I could take--oooh, a conveniently placed action I can take without much input from my brain whatsoever!

Gimme the tl;dr of it all. I don't care to read all of this or do basic fact checking; I trust that any random stranger on the internet will give me the basic facts and everything I need.

Ow. Muscle hurts. Eh, if I ignore it, it'll go away. It's fine; it's fine.

Uuuuugh, my brain hurts and my body hurts. I'm just gonna lay in bed and hope it'll go away. Clearly there's nothing I can do to feel better. (just so you know, I am very guilty of this one)

Mathematics, sciences, history and social studies, English, and even physical education have their places in your life. Even if you hate the subject (history is my arch nemesis). Think critically about what you learn instead of giving them These Hands On Sight.

I always ask my students what they can use the skills I teach them for outside of my classroom. After all, I'm not going to be around to hold their hands about it forever. A lot of them just give me lip service and roll their eyes, but the ones who think about it find themselves using the skills sooner than they think. Their communication skills improve, and they're able to think through things calmly and see through the bullshit that people give them on a day-to-day basis.

To those in school, this shit is tedious, but it's literally a brain workout to prep you for your own life. Apply what you learn to other places. See how it can be useful in your life. Practice the processes of thinking things through and applying what you learn.

You see I too often sat in school classes and thought “when am I ever going to need this, I’m never going to be an engineer, I’m never gonna be a scientist, I’m never gonna be a linguist” and then I grew up and it turns out a lot of bigots and cults and scams and grifts hinge their entire business model on you just. Not knowing what a protein is or some shit

[corvidseee]

Chat we need to put jk Rowling in a blender.

Quick hp rant as a former fan:

Alright so I’m not speaking out of my ass here. I used to be a major Harry Potter fan and I idolized Rowling because I loved her work. I however started falling out of love with it around 2019 and Rowling’s tirade in 2020 solidified that. With that very brief exposition out of the way,

Fuck Harry Potter bro.

I specifically want to touch on how some fans like to say that “the ironic thing is that most of Rowling’s characters would hate her.”

No the fuck they wouldn’t. Harry Potter is very pro establishment, pro police, sexist, and racist. Her main character was a victim of the fuckass wizard police and instead of having him rewrite the oppressive system, he got to become the oppressor (this is represented as good.)

Remember in the books when hermione tried to free the house elves? Remember how the moral of that story is that sometimes the slaves want to be oppressed ? What the fuck!!!

There are MANY more examples that I won’t get into (mostly related to gender and disability) but JK Rowling is a hateful, fascism aligned person and that reflects in her work and through her characters that yall love so much.

I’m not even condemning enjoying Harry potter. It’s ok to enjoy problematic media as long as you can acknowledge its problematic. Unfortunately, yall are not doing that!

In this case, you cannot separate the art from the artist. You cannot consume any Harry Potter related content without acknowledging and contending with its inherently bigoted and fascist undertones. You cannot cannot consume Rowling’s work in ANY WAY without grappling with her rhetoric, intentional or not.

If you absolutely must consume hp, you need to pirate it or else you are supporting Rowling and her transphobia. Even then, you are still consuming a deeply problematic, ill intended work (proceed with caution.)

Tldr; Harry Potter is actual ass but it’s ok to enjoy it as long as you are willing to acknowledge and grapple with its problematic elements. Also, monetarily supporting Rowling actively harms trans lives so don’t fucking do it.

[shouldhavestayedawayfromhere]

I don't care if I'm annoying everyone with this, I can't stand Chatgpt I'm the biggest hater of that thing. It's literally a zombie. It's dead but pretends to be alive and it eats your brain. It also spreads like a virus, so keep your fucking hands off it. If you're infected, I'll keep a three foot distance from you at all times. Don't touch me.

[alurite16]

I'm not gonna waste my time tryna say it in the comments with the character limit and I already was looking for a reason to rant about this want so imma need yall to lock in.

@pepper-sprite

There is a major difference between the depiction of murder vs the depiction of incest in fiction. Both of these acts are illegal IRL because it's wrong and it negatively impacts people. However writing about them is completely fine because it isn't real it's HOW YOU GO ABOUT DOING IT that matters.

Say for example I wanted to write a story about a school shooter who does end up killing people in my story. I would write the story as is, I wouldn't try and paint the shooter in a good light, I wouldn't try and make it seem like they were true victim in all this. I also wouldn't try and sexualize/romantize the killer or try and make a bonnie and Clyde type situation. Because I know it's wrong, it's disrespectful to the people who have been affected by it, and I'm not a weirdo who has school shooter fetish.

Now if someone wanted to write a story about incest and they were trying to market it off as sexy, cute or something desirable then that's when it becomes a problem. If you're writing a story about father having sexual relations with his own daughter and you're over here saying how it's hot and turns you on then OBVIOUSLY it's a problem. You're not trying to tell a story you're just telling us your fantasy.

No one is saying you don't write about these topics completely, people are trying to say stop writing incest in a way that gets you and others off but in a simpler way. Because if you're over here shipping two characters who are family members talking about how hot and cute they look together then obviously people are gonna think you like incest IRL it's very simple.

But to answer your question these people are defending incest.

[tommygotwrittenoff]

yeah no, the way they talked about eddie before, after, and DURING sex and revealed that t genuinely looks at eddie as his competition in regards to buck definitely means y'all are well on your way to a bt wedding

[noblest-roman-of-them-all]

This is my favorite one, because yeah, he probably would fucking say that, but how? Under what circumstances? What will it take for him to conceivably fucking say that? The situation most certainly exists, the question is, can I as a writer first discover this circumstance, then secondly can I write it in convincingly enough for the nay-sayers who are admittedly a bit boring and narrow-minded and forget that dynamic characters should, indeed, be dynamic and sometimes behave out of character, much like real human people behave out of character under certain circumstances?

The answer to would he fucking say that is almost always yes.

The answer to can I write him fucking saying that? Is a much trickier thing.

would he fucking say that? let's investigate.

[bisexual-birdy]

as much as i force myself to enjoy daily life and the natural whimsy of the world, i can’t hide who i truly am.

a hater.

[funnygirlthatbelle]

i suspect that a huge factor in the defense of students using gen ai (and academic dishonesty in general tbh) comes from the fundamental misunderstanding of how school works.

to simplify thousands of educator's theories into the simplest terms, there are two types of stuff you're learning in school: content and skills. content is what we often think of as the material in school- spelling, times tables, names, dates, facts, etc.- whereas skills are usually more subtle. think phonics, mental math, reading comprehension, comparing and contrasting; though students do those things often, the how usually isn't deemed as important as the what.

this leads to a disconnect that's most obvious when students ask the infamous "when will we use this in the real world?" they have- often correctly- identified content that the content is niche, outdated, or not optimized but haven't considered the skills that this class/lesson/assignment will teach.

i can think of two shining examples from when i was a kid. one was in middle school when they announced that we were now gonna be studying latin, and we all wondered why on earth they would choose latin as our foreign language. every adult promised us it'd be helpful if we went into medicine, law, or religion (ignoring that most of us didn't want to go into medicine, law, or religion), but we didn't buy that and never took it seriously. the truth was that our new principal knew that learning languages gets harder as you get older, and so building the skills of learning a language while it was easy for us was more important than which language we learned, and that's an answer twelve year old me would've actually respected.

similarly, my geometry class all hated proofs. we couldn't think of a single situation where you'd have to convince someone a triangle was a triangle and "look at it, of course it's a triangle" wouldn't be an acceptable answer. it was actually the band director who pointed out that it wasn't literally about triangles; it was about being able to prove or disprove something, anything using facts.

and so, so, so many assignments that are annoying as hell in school make more sense when you think about the skills as well as the content. "why do i have to present information about something the teacher obviously already knows about?" because research, verifying sources, summarizing, and public speaking are all really important skills. "why does this have to be a group project?" because you will have to work with other people in your life, and learning how to be a team player (and deal with people who aren't) is an essential skill. "why do we have to read these scientific articles and learn about graphs?" because if you can understand them, people can't lie to you about them.

now, of course, there's a lot we could do better- especially we as in the american school system. the reason i have an education minor but am not teaching is because of those issues. there are plenty of assignments that are busywork and teachers that are assholes and ways that the system is failing us.

but that doesn't mean you should cut off your nose to spite your face!

the ability to learn and grow and think critically is one of our most powerful tools as people. our brains are capable of incredible things! however, the same way you can't lift a car unless you consistently lift and build up to that, your brain needs to train in order to do its best.

so yeah, maybe chatgpt can write a five paragraph essay for you on the differences between thomas jefferson and alexander hamilton's governing philosophies. and maybe it won't even fuck it up! congratulations, you got away with it. but by outright refusing to use your brain and practice these skills, who have you helped? you haven't learned anything. worse, you haven't even learned how to learn.

[downfallofi]

So the last week at work I've made a few costly errors due to constantly being rushed to do something else, but today, my CEO entrusted me with like, the fanciest credit card Ive ever seen (it was metal, but black colored, and I just imagined the credit limit for it being in the six figures) and I was supposed to mail it to a client, but my dumb ass tried to cut a tag off of the bag my owner put it in with my pen knife and. I sliced into the actual fucking strip of the card, noticeably. And its all I can think about now, because I left the boss a message trying to explain that, but there is no way I can say what happened out loud without feeling really, really bad. Like. Is this one mistake lately too much? Is this too costly? That card is definitely slashed, and it has to make it's way to this dude, and?

Im just still kicking myself and have been all day because at what point do mistakes add up to like... I should be smarter than this? Why did I try to push down a blade into a thin fucking bag to. I dont know. Ugh. I just cant help asking myself am I meant to not be at this job and should be looking elsewhere or is this a sign that I really am just not capable of performing tasks?

[arolesbianism]

The leftism leaving tumblr users bodies when you ask them to recognise other countries as real places with real ppl that exist just as much as they do

[atalienart]

idk, I'm so fed up with Al that I had to get it off my chest...

I hate Al, I hate stupid prompted images that flood every space. I hate Al popping up every time I open anything on the internet. I hate people who pretend that prompting is such a skill and so much work but are scared to actually disclose they used Al for their stupid images and text. What are you scared of? I hate people who think writing "make me a ..." makes them a creator of anything. I hate people who think generative Al is an improvement and innovation. It's not! The fact that something is new doesn't make it good! Do you know viruses? There's always a new one at the corner.

Can't you see it? It makes you dumber with every use. Your creative skills decline with every command you give to a machine. Your communication skills deteriorate every time Al writes an email for you or you talk to your virtual girlfriend. Your ability to decide about yourself shrinks every time you ask a machine what to do, what to buy, what to say. Your critical thinking vanishes (well, assuming you even had any to begin with) whenever you ask "grok, is it true?". Whenever a computer does homework for you, whenever it writes an essay for school (which you won't even proofread) or spits a picture you were supposed to make yourself for a class, you become more stupid and less skilled. It won't make you into a good writer or artist just as watching work out videos won't give you muscles.

And you mock people who don't want their brains to rot, who maintain their values, who don't want to destroy their integrity and planet, who improve their talent and skills and spend their time actually thinking and learning stuff.

You can't even see how big corporations fuck you hard and slow every time you pay them to improve their Al monster, dangling colourful pictures before your eyes like a cat toy, cackling seeing your pupils blow wide. They promise you money and lure you with a vision of fame that those pathetic, broke artists will never see in their worthless lives. But you will. You'll have it all! Just feed their wallets with your money and databases with yourself and turn off your brain. You really think you'll have money and fame? Who will ever see your pretty pictures under millions of other pretty pictures? Who will read your book, when John Pickle published 30 only yesterday using Al? Who will watch your great movie when someone else has already made one with their own face and now they're kissing their favourite actor in space in a ship with too many details? Well, at least you can use someone else's voice to scam their family. If you get caught by the police you'll have your two minutes of fame before the Al erection supplement commercial rolls in :)

Al is here to stay! Yeah, like the putrid smell of your rotten brains.

[plaidos]

"Its a cool toy" girlie whats happened is you've found yourself in a poorly defensible position and you're not applying any critical thinking skills here like you do when, for example, talking about transmisogyny

AI increased the energy consumption by a VERY significant amount, with plans to expand, so that it can worm its way into every aspect of the internet and replace as many human workers as it can. The reason so many companies are investing in it is because it removes the need to pay wages. AI image generation will increase in quality until you won't be able to tell a real image from a generated one (this is a very VERY bad thing).

People are already using AI to try and cheat their way through college. Instead of learning to draw, or commissioning an artist, people are consulting the approximation machine. AI is going to do unbelievable damage to the median income, to the entire creative commercial sector, to the environment and to image/data security.

And your point is that *its a cool toy*???

I get saying that people aren't ontologically evil for using AI, but you do understand that AI itself is a MASSIVELY damaging structure??? thats completely unnecessary?? Like boo hoo ur cool toy is gone, but at least the people of memphis can fucking breath again.

You've gotten too used to having the right opinion, that now you've found you have the wrong one, you're being way too stubborn about it

if you think that the "people in memphis" can't breathe "because of AI" then your brain is utterly cooked on bite-sized factoids you've learned from social media.

the massively damaging structure you're describing is capitalism. i am actually against that.

also, you're right: i am used to always having the right opinion. i am literally always right. you are like bugs to me. this is no exception. now scuttle away

[lust4lore]

Rafe + casual dominance. That’s it. That’s all.

oh, anon, you have a big big beautiful brain. not sure if this is exactly what you wanted, but my mind is still stuck on dumb!reader and brattamer!rafe so here you go

CW: mention of alcohol, mildly dark!rafe?

your lack of critical thinking skills annoys the fuck out of him, he thinks, but deep down rafe cameron loves the way you depend on him.

he’s there when you’re making rounds at a bonfire, blissfully unaware of your surroundings. a large hand rests on your lower back, lightly guiding you through the crowd and yanking you close when you narrowly miss bumping into someone. god, you’re so fucking stupid, anger flares in his veins and his fingers dig into your ribs. but then, you look up at him, doe eyes empty as you giggle a soft ‘thank you, rafey’, and his resolve goes up like smoke. a smile tugging at the edges of his mouth as he nods, mind settling once more.

he’s there when you’re cooking something on the stove, hair coming way too close to the open flame for his liking as you mindlessly tilt your head. he comes up behind you, grabbing your hair and jerking your head back until you’re looking up at him. ‘y’know, sweetheart, sometimes i think you don’t use your fuckin’ head’ he sighs, tying a messy bun atop your head. he takes your jaw roughly in his hand, planting a firm kiss on your lips before smacking you chidingly on the ass and heading back to his seat at the counter.

he’s there to cut you off after you’ve had a little too much to drink, taking away what would’ve been your next shot and letting the bartender know you’ll have a water instead. ‘alright, you’re done for the night. no more’ he tells you, but the vodka in your system has other plans, and you scoff before reaching for the glass again as he raises it over your head. ‘no m’not, rafe, give it back’ your words are high pitched and slurred at the edges, a muffled yelp leaving you as he squeezes your face between calloused fingers, leaning in close. ‘stop being a brat, i said you’re done for the night. quit whining’ his eyes are dark and angry, something in his tone making your thighs clench and your stomach drop.

you infuriate him endlessly, you’re one of the biggest bimbos he’s ever met. but you’re his bimbo, and that’s all that really matters.

[animentality]

not to be such a boomer, but I think chatgpt is fucking this generation over, at least in terms of critical thinking and creative skills.

I get that it's easy to use and I probably would've used it if I was in school when it came out.

but damn.

y'all can't just write a fucking email?

also people using it to write essays ... i mean what is the point then?

are you gaming the educational system in pursuit of survival, or are you just unwilling to engage critically with anyone or anything?

is this why media literacy is so fucking ass right now?

learning how to write is learning how to express yourself and communicate with others.

you might not be great at it, but writing can help you rearrange the ideas in your brain. the more you try to articulate yourself, the more you understand yourself. all skills can be honed with time, and the value is not in the product. it's in the process.

it's in humans expressing their thoughts to others, in an attempt to improve how we do things, by building upon foundations and evolving old ideas into innovation.

scraping together a mush of ideas from a software that pulls specific, generic phrases from data made by actual humans... what is that going to teach you or anyone else?

it's just old ideas being recycled by a new generation.

a generation I am seriously concerned about, because digital tests have made it very easy to cheat, which means people aren't just throwing away their critical thinking and problem solving abilities, but foundational knowledge too.

like what the hell is anyone going to know in the future? you don't want to make art, you don't want to understand how the world works, you don't want to know about the history of us?

is it because we all know it's ending soon anyway, or is it just because it's difficult, and we don't want to bother with difficult?

maybe it's both.

but. you know what? on that note, maybe it's whatever.

fuck it, right, let's just have an AI generate "therefore" "in conclusion" and "in addition" statements followed by simplistic ideas copy pasted from a kid who actually wrote a paper thirty years ago.

if climate change is killing us all anyway, maybe generative ai is a good thing.

maybe it'll be a digital archive of who we used to be, a shambling corpse that remains long after the consequences of our decisions catch up with us.

maybe it'll be smart enough to talk to itself when there's no one left to talk to.

it'll talk to itself in phrases we once valued, it'll make art derived from people who used to be alive and breathing and feeling, it'll regurgitate our best ideas in an earnest but hollow approximation of our species.

and it'll be the best thing we ever made. the last thing too.

I don't really believe in fate or destiny, I think all of this was a spectacular bit of luck, but that's a poetic end for us.

chatgpt does poetry.

[olderthannetfic]

I really hate how "Victim blaming" started out as "You're literally blaming the innocent party in this for being victimized by an offender, and trying to remove blame from the offender." Eg: A woman gets raped, and then blamed because "You must have done/worn something to deserve it."

Now it gets used when you hold people accountable for their own dumb fucking decision and the consequences they reap from it. No it's not fucking "victim blaming" to call out people who fall for fucking fundraiser scams, and then cry woe is me because they actually just funded some scammers new diamond bedazzled speedos. Doing dumb shit and getting called out for falling for blatant bullshit is not victim blaming. It's rightfully calling you an idiot because you literally didn't even bother to take 10 seconds to double check if "Hmmm maybe all these copy paste ass looking E-begging posts with stolen photos aren't real. Maybe it's a bit suspicious that people in active war zones would make specifically tumblr accounts and then send it to hundreds of random ass users to fundraising websites that don't even offer their services in these countries. Maybe it's a bit suspicious that these fundraisers always seem to have the exact same makeup, and sob story. Maybe I should use a bit more critical thinking when these things are posted on social medias like twitter and facebook where Scammy McScam pants run rampant. Maybe I shouldn't donate to individual fundraisers because there's literally no proof they're real, and the chances are higher for active scams going on? Maybe I should have keyed in that this might be a scam considering that some of these pictures are from complete different decades. Maybe trusting in random as fuck "vetting" accounts isn't the best when the vetting accounts themselves are completely random fuck nuggets with no credentials, and they don't even show their mode of operating in figuring out the legitimacy of these fundraisers, and maybe it's a bit suspicious that these vetters still claim that obvious fake fundraisers are "legit"." It's not victim blaming dumbasses, it's holding you accountable for your absolute lack of critical thinking skills and your complete refusal to turn on your brain in favour of patting yourself on the back because you're so "righteous" and noble giving your money.

If some idiot runs a red light and gets T-boned, then it's not victim blaming to call them a dumbshit for running a red light, it's calling it as it is. Dangerous negligence and a natural and predictable consequence of your own stupidity. Not to mention the harm you do to everyone else involved.

You're not a fucking victim, you're supporting the offenders.

--

[damnfandomproblems]

7342

Re Lolita.

Maybe it's because I went to an IB school that nailed critical thinking skills into you from a young age (seriously- the difference I see is night and day), but we actually read Lolita in eleventh grade English, and none of us walked away thinking it was a good relarionship. The whole reason they even taught it to us was because it bucks the pervasive stereotype of these people being basement dwelling, slobby freaks, and it shows, like domestic abusers often are, these people are often hiding in plain sight. If that's not a deeply important lesson, I don't know what is.

As far as "I'm grossed out by this, it's fucking pedophilia", good for you, I suppose? Do you want a gold star? I'm pretty sure everyone agrees with you, even the people who have certain kinks related to adult/child relationships. But we're not talking about real pedophilia, we're talking about fictional, and you can't even differentiate between the two which is telling enough of how unable you are to think with your brain.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.