Can’t we use LLMs as models to study delusional patterns? Like, try things that are morally questionable to try on a delusional patient. For instance, LLM could come up with a personalized argument that would convince someone to take their antipsychotics, that’s what I’m talking about. Human caretakers get frustrated and burned out too quickly to succeed
Like I always say to my friends & family who are complaining about Duolingo not really teaching anything: it beats doomscrolling, what else do you want?
People just need to properly set expectations. I've been using Duolingo for about 15 mins per day on average for a few years now. What I've found is that my reading skills are actually pretty good (roughly A2/B1 level), for instance I can open up a Spanish language subreddit and mostly make out what's going on. My listening is rudimentary at best, I can generally have a vague idea of what people are talking about if I listen to a Spanish conversation. My speaking is almost nonexistent.
But you know what? That makes sense. I'm mostly just reading text and clicking words to fill in the blanks. And the listening component is so unrealistic that it barely builds anything up. And I don't do speaking at all.
As you say, it beats doomscrolling. For a free service I'm not expecting that I can parachute into a Spanish speaking country and be fluent. At the same time, I'm a lot better in terms of my skill level than I would have been otherwise.
Exactly, that's a big part of my issue. I'll catch some words & phrases so can sometimes catch a big picture view of what they're saying, but that's it. If I watch a video intended to be educational & at a slower speed, then I'm much better off.
And that's not a surprise to me. 95+% of my listening experience is listening to Duolingo's unnaturally slow, computer generated voices and that's a poor substitute. But hey, I can also do it quickly while drinking my morning coffee instead of putting a lot of effort into it, so it is what it is.
I have friends and family who earnestly desire to learn a language, and ask me what to use. They often end up choosing Duolingo and make no progress toward fluency in the subsequent years. The criticism is that it subverts their goal, preventing their success by replacing learning with addictive behaviors that don't educate (like someone wanting to enter a new field and getting hooked on "educational" YouTube Shorts podcast clips). It also spoils their ability to focus on alternative learning methods as none deliver as much of an immediate dopamine rush as Duolingo. These alternatives could do better at that, sure, but it doesn't change that Duolingo fries their brains preventing them from adopting productive methods without therapeutic interventions.
That's why people advocate against it and advocate for alternatives.
Their goal wasn't to defeat doomscrolling, it was to learn a language!
I've been doing "Dreaming Spanish", which is a comprehensible input service, and using Duolingo as a self-test of sorts. Watching a lot of curated spanish-language content is very engaging, and I believe this method will work (for some definition of work), but it is nice to have duolingo as a fancy flash card system. I think duolingo by itself probably isn't very effective, but it serves as a motivator and i think it's useful as part of a more complete language learning strategy.
Yes and mine say things like "why pay 500 for a language course when I can do this?" Of course they ignore me when I say language meetups are free, because "im not at that level yet." It's usually anxiety.
It’s a bar that every Duolingo user is hopping over while a bunch of procrastinators are making excuses about why they haven’t started yet.
Duolingo is not a complete solution and I don’t think they or anyone else claims that it is. What it solves fantastically well is the zero-to-habit transition.
Duolingo should have been that. Founded by a professor who wanted to make language learning free for the world, funded by a MacArthur fellowship and a National Science Foundation grant. When they rejected making it a non-profit, it lost its potential to be that platform IMO.
It's not much better for language learning than just playing Candy Crush. As long as you don't delude yourself into thinking this is time spent productively, then sure.
I disagree. Duolingo will never make you fluent, but you'll at least learn some vocabulary. Even setting Candy Crush to a different language won't really teach you much.
