[ilamont]

> I’m a software engineer at major US research university developing AI-powered software to improve critical reading and writing skills in higher ed.

Oftentimes, the root cause of the critical reading problem is the quality of the writing that students are subjected to. My daughter recently showed me one of her economics readings, and said she couldn't understand it. It was 40 pages of convoluted academic writing like this:

Wibbels argues that developing countries face an inherently disadvantaged position in the world economy due to their dependence on foreign capital and an undiversified base of commodity exports as primary sources of hard currency. This dependent position relative to capital markets prevents developing countries from borrowing to engage in counter-cyclical aggregate demand management.

Is such language the optimal way to express ideas for comprehension by peers, students, and policymakers?

I hope your mission to improve writing skills in higher ed addresses the source of output - professors, teaching assistants, journal editors, and others who continue to promote outdated, inconsistent, and counterproductive academic writing styles.

[Merik]

Claude 3.5 to the rescue:

“Wibbels claims that developing countries are at a disadvantage in the global economy for two main reasons:

1. They rely heavily on foreign investment.

2. They depend on exporting a limited range of raw materials to earn foreign currency.

Because of this weak economic position, developing countries struggle to borrow money when needed. This makes it hard for them to boost their economies during economic downturns, unlike wealthier nations that can more easily borrow and spend to stimulate growth. “

[notachatbot1234]

Are those really the same?

- "commodity exports" -> "raw materials"?

- "hard currency" -> "foreign currency"?

[corimaith]

This does illustrate a problem when talking about complex topics or mechanisms is the need for specificity. Using short, simple sentences comes at the risk of making things seem overly vague and hand wavey, or worse, misrepresent the concept.

In continental philosophy or mathematical papers this gets all too apparent, as alot of argument hinge on very fine differences and nuances that need to specified else people get the wrong idea.

[pants2]

Wow, I would have killed to have access to something like Claude when I was in school. I would have spent a lot less time stuck on problems or topics.

[km3r]

As an interesting example, i passed that passage to chatgpt3.5 with the prompt "make the following passage much simpler to understand"

Wibbels says that poorer countries are in a tough spot in the global economy. They rely a lot on money from other countries and mainly sell raw materials to get cash. Because they're so reliant on foreign money, they can't borrow much to manage their economy when things are going bad.

This is a pretty basic prompt too, you can add qualifiers to fit your general audience: "easier to understand for a high school student". You could provide context of previous and subsequent passages as well. Yeah its not perfect, but the right prompt could provide at least a consistent output style.

[freejazz]

>Is such language the optimal way to express ideas for comprehension by peers, students, and policymakers?

Those are three completely different groups with completely different needs.