"My writing is what I control."

in my life as a professor, i might want to say:

“The referee didn’t understand my paper.”

“My students didn’t follow the directions!”

It is easy to feel helpless in these scenarios. Nevertheless, these outcomes come from referees or students interacting with my writing. And my writing has a tremendous influence on that interaction. Moreover, that writing is something that I have complete control over. I am not helpless.

in my life extracting data from documents, i might want to say:

“The AI did something dumb here.”

“This document is not sufficiently clear.”

It is easy to feel helpless in these scenarios too. Nevertheless, these outcomes come from an AI reader interacting with my codebook. And my codebook has a tremendous influence on that interaction. Moreover, that codebook is something that I have complete control over. I am still not helpless.

In these notes, I want to share that feeling with you.

Sometimes students don’t read the syllabus, but the AI always reads the codebook.

@karlrohe