What We Talk About When We Talk About Anything: A Sketch of a Philosophy of Language.

But being exposed at 14 to the idea, “the people who exercise power over you can be loudly and confidently incorrect,” actually had a strong effect on who I am today. It’s encouraged me to admit when I make mistakes in class, and it’s encouraged me to think critically about the information I’m presented with. But I think this is also the genesis of a fairly important idea for me, but not for the above reasons. You see, it’s also where I discovered that being correct or incorrect doesn’t always matter.

Analysis, Written by: CameronCameron SummersOctober 2, 2024Language, Analysis, TeachingComment

Nobody's Smart: Intelligence Doesn't Actually Exist

This, I think, is what we call “talent” really is: if you are enthusiastic enough about something that practicing it becomes as regular as a heartbeat, then “practice” becomes invisible.

Commentary, Written by: CameronCameron SummersAugust 28, 2024Intelligence, Education, TeachingComment

The Decompositive Move (Contraslop, Part 3)

LLMs are among other things predicated on an atomistic logic of language. Because they simply work by predicting the next symbol in a sequence based on a large repository of statistical data, they cannot actually create a functional top-level structure except incidentally.

Written by: Cameron, AnalysisCameron SummersJuly 24, 2024Large Language Models, Teaching, AnalysisComment

On Bias

Regardless of whether a student agrees with my worldview, I want them to be biased at the end of their research process. I want them to have strong opinions about a subject and to be skeptical of uninformed pronouncements about it. Think about it: if you’ve been researching a subject for eight or ten weeks, using academic resources and doing primary research – that is, research out in the field – on a subject, shouldn’t you have a strong, informed opinion?

Commentary, Written by: CameronCameron SummersJanuary 24, 2024bias, Teaching, Ludo-analysisComment

What is Left Unsaid

As I hit “publish”, I hear Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s voice in my head, saying “You understand, of course, that everything I say is horseshit.”

Written by: Cameron, CommentaryCameron SummersNovember 8, 2023Teaching, Lacan, PoliticsComment