By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Believing without evidence is always morally wrong
Francisco Mejia Uribe, Aeon, 2018/11/12

In ‘The Ethics of Belief’ (1877)  William Kingdon Clifford gives three reasons for believeing that belief without evidence is morally wrong (quoted from the article):

• every single belief has the capacity to be truly consequential
• poor practices of belief-formation turn us into careless, credulous believers
• we have the moral responsibility not to pollute the well of collective knowledge

I am always wary of arguments that conclude that we have a 'duty' or 'responsibility' because these are easily abused by others and almost always require that we act against our own self-interest, sometimes in devastating ways. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The future of work won't be about college degrees, it will be about job skills
Stephane Kasriel, CNBC, 2018/11/12
This feels like a paid placement on CNBC from a job skills company (but it's real news, so they wouldn't deceive is in this way, right?). It's based on a (sponsored) survey Freelancing in America 2018, released Wednesday, that says "freelancers put more value on skills training." I think it's true that the jobs of the future don't exist today, but the same could be said for any number of skills! Like, say, newsreader. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. ‘The Academy Is Largely Itself Responsible for Its Own Peril’
Evan Goldstein, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018/11/14
This is an excellent interview with historian Jill Lepore, who has just released These Truths, a sweeping history of the United States from Columbus to Trump "asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them" (of course one truth would have been to start a few centuries earlier, but I digress). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How Much Do You Rely on Research About Teaching?
Dan Berrett, Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018/11/15
In this article Dan Berrett and Beckie Supiano respond to readers "asking us to cite research more often, and lean a little less on anecdotal classroom experiences." It's a good discussion, but I would want to shift the perspective. Consider this: "if journalism is already several degrees removed from scholarship, the newsletter is further still." It's a world view where research is the foundation, and everything flows from that. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Meet the AI-Chatbot Bandwagon Which Shows no Sign of Slowing Down
Vikash Kumar, ReadWrite, 2018/11/13
Wikipedia tells us that "The concept of the uncanny valley suggests humanoid objects which appear almost, but not exactly, like real human beings elicit uncanny, or strangely familiar, feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers." That's where we are with chatbots now, and why it still seems reasonable to suppose we'll want to interact with a human for things that require that personal connection, including learning and education. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Fixing Mathematical Notation with Computing, and “Proving” It with Education
Mark Guzdial, Computing Education Research Blog, 2018/11/13
This article is a few days old but I want to make sure I don't miss it, as it makes a point that (to my mind) challenges the idea that there is one set of basic 'foundational' principles in mathematics. Mark Guzdial introduces us to the work of Kenneth E. Iverson on a computing language called J (more here). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Single Cell Hints at a Solution to the Biggest Problem in Computer Science
Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, 2018/12/31
This post is a bit technical but it's pretty interesting. In essence, scientists use slime mold to solve a hard mathematical problem. What's special is that the problem is NP-Hard - that is, it gets exponentially harder the more possibilities you add - but the slime mold solves it in about the same amount of time each time. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here, and it is changing everything
Colleges and Institutes Canada, Desire2Learn, 2018/11/09
Desire2Learn has updated and published a Canadian edition of its report on the future of learning (28 page PDF) (and you don't even have to give them information to read it; well done D2L). The premise is that the nature of work is changing and that therefore "societies must embrace new or hybrid learning models to allow individuals and economies to thrive going forward." A challenge is coming from automation and AI, "putting cognitive jobs at risk." There's also the rise of "the gig economy". More...