There are a lot of strange courses that make it into a college course catalog. What would artificial intelligence make of them?
I train machine learning programs called neural networks to try to imitate human things – human things they are absolutely are not prepared to understand. I’ve trained them to generate paint colors (Shy Bather or Stanky Bean, anyone?) and cat names (Mr. Tinkles is very affectionate) and even pie (please have a slice of Cromberry Yas). Could it have similar “success” at inventing new college courses?
UC San Diego’s Triton alumni magazine gave me UCSD’s entire course catalog, from “A Glimpse into Acting” to “Zionism and Post Zionism”, a few of which I recognized from when I was a grad student at UCSD. (Apparently I totally missed my opportunity to take “What the *#!?: An uncensored introduction to language”) I gave the course catalog to a neural network framework called textgenrnn which took a look at all the existing courses and tried its best to figure out how to make more like them.
It did come up with some intriguing courses. I’m not sure what these are, but I would at least read the course description.
Strange and Modern Biology Marine Writing General Almosts of Anthropology Werestory Deathchip Study Advanced Smiling Equations Genies and Engineering Language of Circus Processing Practicum Geology-Love Electronics of Faces Marine Structures Devilogy Psychology of Pictures in Archaeology Melodic Studies in Collegine Mathematics
These next ones definitely sound as if they were written by a computer. Since this algorithm learns by example, any phrase, word, or even part of word that it sees repeatedly is likely to become one of its favorites. It knows that “istics” and “ing” both go at the end of words. But it doesn’t know which words, since it doesn’t know what words actually mean. It’s hard to tell if it’s trying to invent new college courses, or trying to make fun of them.
Advanced Computational Collegy The Papering II The Special Research Introduction to Oceanies Biologrative Studies Professional Professional Pattering II Every Methods Introduction study to the Advanced Practices Computer Programmic Mathematics of Paths Paperistics Media I Full Sciences Chemistry of Chemistry Internship to the Great The Sciences of Prettyniss Secrets Health Survivery Introduction to Economic Projects and Advanced Care and Station Amazies Geophing and Braining Marine Computational Secretites
It’s anyone’s guess what these next courses are, though, or what their prerequisites could possibly be. At least when you’re out looking for a job, you’ll be the only one with experience in programpineerstance.
Ancient Anthlographychology Design and Equilitistry The Boplecters Numbling Hiss I Advanced Indeptics and Techniques Introduction in the Nano Care Practice of Planetical Stories Ethemishing Health Analysis in Several Special Computer Plantinary III Field Complexity in Computational Electrical Marketineering and Biology Applechology: Media The Conseminacy The Sun Programpineerstance and Development Egglish Computational Human Analysis Advanced A World Globbilian Applications Ethrography in Topics in the Chin Seminar Seminar and Contemporary & Archase Acoa-Bloop African Computational for Project Laboration and Market for Plun: Oceanography
Remember, artificial intelligence is the future! And without a strong background in Globbilian Applications, you’ll be left totally behind.
Just to see what would happen, I also did an experiment where I trained the neural net both on UCSD courses and on Dungeons and Dragons spells. The result was indeed quite weird. To read that set of courses (as well as optionally to get bonus material every time I post), enter your email here.
This is a summary of college only using two pictures; expensive as hell.
That’s my Sociology “book”. In fact what it is is a piece of paper with codes written on it to allow me to access an electronic version of a book. I was told by my professor that I could not buy any other paperback version, or use another code, so I was left with no option other than buying a piece of paper for over $200. Best part about all this is my professor wrote the books; there’s something hilariously sadistic about that. So I pretty much doled out $200 for a current edition of an online textbook that is no different than an older, paperback edition of the same book for $5; yeah, I checked. My mistake for listening to my professor.
person with a degree in a field: *says something accurate about said field* someone who has never even had a high school course in said field: wow you should really take a class in that field because you sound like an idiot. even I, someone who has never studied this in my life, know you’re wrong. person with a degree in a field:
my favorite out of context quotes from my archeology professor so far in no particular order
and floridians are just as human as you and me!
and the moral of the story is that there are no deadly snakes native to alaska
you might know this guy as one of the only archaeologists cool enough to be mentioned by indiana jones
it’s my dream to have my name said by harrison ford
i’m not going to apologize for having this class at 6am because you paid for it and it’s your fault.
we don’t all dress like lara croft. i tried to get it to be a thing on a dig and my colleagues yelled at me.
they were pretty good archaeologists except they were too racist to realize anything they found.
i take back what i said about us not dressing like lara croft because lewis binford here is wearing nothing but short shorts and a cowboy hat. take notes for an academic halloween costume!
archaeologists can be good artists! not me, though. or anyone i know. but if you can draw just know you have options.
sometimes you find dead bodies when you dont really expect it and you just have to deal with it
archaeologists are the only people allowed to get exited when they find corpses.
once i ruined thanksgiving dinner when i told my family i had gotten my degree in archaeology and my uncle commented he liked dinosaurs too
the closest i’ve ever been to a grizzly bear is when i left my glasses in my tent on a dig in alaska, saw a big rock in the distance, and almost screamed
additional quotes
ah yes. archaeologists. or, as i love to call us, pottery analysts
i mean he was kind of a good guy for helping us beat britain but he owned slaves so that really cancelled it out.
archaeology is like cultural anthropology, except after you interview the person you turn around and shoot them in the head.
do not use trees! trees are bad! don’t do it!
usually you find shards, but it’s super exciting when you find a really big shard
it’s basically like a waterpark, except you’re fully clothed and walking through a dark tunnel knee deep in muddy water. so, basically splish splash.
i dont believe in curses but my colleagues and i like to encourage the idea of them so people stop touching our stuff
usually, you would find a knife in a kitchen. or underneath your pillow to really freak out your roommate who is a history nerd and has no idea why you would sleep with a knife under your pillow and he’ll get really scared and freaked out and okay i’m getting off topic
no matter what the other scientists say, archaeology is a real science.
don’t worry, i promise you, and whatever government agency that’s spying on me right now, that i’m not a crazy communist trying to overthrow the government
by now you’ve noticed the big “POP QUIZ” written on the board. there isn’t one, but i wanted to see the looks on your face when you saw it. but you’re all dead inside so it’s not really funny.
everything was fine except the citizens of pompeii just woke up dead the next day
the number one question you should ask when you read old archaeology papers is “how the hell do you know?”
nothing pisses off old men more than young people asking “why” and “prove it” so do that as often as possible
this is incredible! all it takes is a computer the size of this room!
even more from the margins of my notebook!
when in doubt, it’s ritualistic
coprolites are the only shit archaeologists get excited over
i know the only reason you’re not laughing at my hilarious jokes is because it’s early
they called it the garbage project. which is also what people call the projects i work on when we apply for funding.
what you have to realize is that people are fundamentally weird. they do weird stuff now and they have done it thousands of years ago.
things come and go but pottery is forever
i dont know if you all know this but moose are terrifying abominations.
and today’s lesson is about the difference between dirt and soil!
please, please, please do not eat old butter you found buried in a bog.
normally i would say this blackboard is a feature because it isn’t portable and can’t be moved but this is a community college so who knows
one of my biggest fears is that this will get so many notes that someone in the class will see it and show it to the professor and he’ll realize half the notes ive been taking in class are jotting down the weird shit he says
This was the most magical thing I’ve ever read.
I would have loved this class. There are some good nuggets in there, among the weird. I’ve told my students a variant of this one:
“nothing pisses off old men more than young people asking “why” and “prove it” so do that as often as possible”
why is there such a stigma against wearing pads? like why is it that people who wear tampons are seen as ‘strong’ and ‘cool’? y’all know that someone people can’t wear them bc it hurts them or that they just don’t like them? stop making it seem like people who wear pads are childish and weak compared to those who wear tampons
Ok kids buckle up because I know the answer to this question because I am a bitter, vindictive person.
So my first semester of PhD work in a musicology program involved this horrible class with a professor that wanted to suck the life out of all of his students by constantly belittling them. We had to write a short paper each week and present them conference-style and then he would tear us to shreds and do it all over again next week. The purpose of the class was supposedly to have us write papers about materials that hadn’t really been looked at by musicologists yet, and my class had music in advertisements. I was also the only woman in the class and the prof was lowkey sexist so I kept trying to do feminist topics without losing my entire will to live.
So we get to the end of the semester and I am just completely out of fucks, I have one paper left to write and I say fuck it, let’s write about pads and tampons, there must be something there, right? It turns out there IS something to be said there (and this gets back to OP’s question). Early pad and tampon commercials were very similar to each other; basically here’s a product to help you stay clean during your period. But around 1980, suddenly there’s public outcry and panic over tampons due to TSS (Toxic Shock Syndrome). At that point no one really understood how TSS worked but they knew it had to do with tampons. So women freaked out and started switching to pads instead. Now the worst offender, Rely, was taken off the market and other tampon commercials got slapped with little warning signs like “This product could cause TSS” so women bought even fewer tampons. This is when the advertising strategies for the two products changed.
Pad advertisements were now about “cleanliness” and “purity” – they knew you couldn’t get TSS from pads and they were going to emphasize that fact. You’ve got women in white dresses with long hair slowly walking through fields of flowers with pastoral-y flutes in the background. And to fight back, tampon companies take it the complete opposite direction – they ignore TSS entirely and start showing businesswomen running to catch the subway, sporty women riding bikes, basically any sort either high-powered position or active woman showed up in these commercials with contemporary pop-song type music over the top. The clear intention was “yeah we know that these could cause TSS but they’re much better for your mobility, both physically and career-wise.”
I got done giving this paper and I look up to see my four male classmates and one male professor in varying shades of pale-ness and they just all sort of looked at me for a couple minutes without knowing how to respond. It’s one of the proudest moments of my PhD career so far.
Anyway the two products have been advertised basically the same ways ever since then. Now pads are much more comfortable and discreet, and we understand how TSS works and how to avoid it, but the commercial strategies are cemented. If you want to be a strong, on-the-go woman of COURSE you’ll wear a tampon because you don’t want to be one of those sissy ladies in the pastoral field of flowers over in pad-land, do you?
Haha okay, the teacher I have for YA Lit is amazing. I had her for Sci-Fi Fiction before. But the thing is she was given this class five days before it started since she’s taking over for another teacher.
Steel Phoenix Studios 