I think the main subject of that hole is objectivity, and it affects much more than education.

By obsessively structuring education around measurement, we have implied that what is taught is objective fact. That's always been bullshit, but - for the most part - it's been consistent enough with itself to function. The more strict your presentation of knowledge is, the more it can pretend to be truly objective. Because a teacher has total authority over the methodology of learning, this consistency can be preserved.

The reality has always been that anything written is subjective. The only way to learn objective fact is to explore it through many subjective representations. This is obvious to anyone who learns mathematics: you don't just see x^2+y^2=z^2, and suddenly understand the implications of the Pythagorean theorem.

Because objectivity can't be written, objectivity is not computable. We can't give a computer several subjective representations of a concept, and have it figure it out. This is the same problem as ambiguity: there is no objectively correct way to compute an ambiguous statement. This is why we write in programming languages: each programming language grammar is "context-free", which means that everything must be completely and explicitly defined. To write a computable statement, we must subject the abstract concept in mind to the language (grammar and environment) we write it in.

Most of the writing in our society is done with software. Because of this, we are implicitly encouraged to establish shared context. If what we write is consistent with the context of others' writing, it can pretend to be objective, and be more computable. Social interactions that are facilitated by software are also implicitly structured by that software's structure. There can be no true free-form dialogue in social media.

The exciting thing about LLMs is that they don't have this problem. They conveniently dodge it, by not doing any logic at all! Now instead of the software subjecting you to a strict environment, it subjects you to a familiar one. There is no truth, only vibes. There is no calculation, only guesses. This feels a lot like objectivity, but it's just a new facade. The difference is that the boundary is somewhere new and unfamiliar.

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I think the death of objectivity is good progress overall. It's been a long time coming. Strict structure has always been overrated. The best way to learn is to explore as many perspectives as you can find. We humans can work with vibes and logic, together.

AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder