Tough Workout

In the Metafilter AI thread that won’t die, one commenter asked, rhetorically: “Why do people have to learn how to write better? We have a finite amount of time in the universe that maybe people want to use to learn to do other things instead? Or maybe they want to idk chill with their family.” At least a few people in that thread come from a teaching background, dealing with students whose finite amount of time in the universe includes 30-40 hours a week of formal education, a lot of which is supposedly devoted to learning how to think critically, acquire knowledge, and write. So we see people for whom it’s the point of their entire working lives talking with people for whom writing is more often a functional task, a work email or whatever, or not something they feel comfortable with because they aren’t confident writers. It ends up like a thread full of Michelin Star chefs talking about the value of cooking with people who just want to put a TV dinner in the microwave or pick up a…