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Comment by gosub100 | Hacker News Reader

Why is it a moral outrage when students do it, but universities cheat students in many ways and we just grumble and accept it as a necessary evil. Just accept cheating as the same, maybe attack financial aid itself instead of the students. Say "this money is disproportionately being siphoned directly into the organizations coffers and very little of it is being used to teach anyone anything whatsoever. Therefore we are restricting access to financial aid, capping it to $X million total" etc. What's the point of a scholarship if there's no "school" being taught?

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The person you responded did not frame this in moral terms, but emotional terms. I'm not here to grandstand about the morality of anyone's behavior, but knowing students can't engage with long-form written content is depressing to me. Knowing that many (most?) will not teach themselves how to engage in critical thinking and work through frustration is also depressing.

Part of this is empathy, just knowing they are depriving themselves of skills they don't even realize the importance of. Part of is selfishness, feeling like our next generation of thinkers and creators are potentially self-sabotaging.

I don't know, I'm out of the prediction game, I don't really want to get drug into utilitarian arguments about the place of AI, or debates on what was wrong with education, etc. Frankly, I'm out of my league there. I'm just sad to see people lose the ability to think for themselves and struggle through hard problems.

Yes, I use generative AI myself, I'm not a luddite or anything.

There's a huge leap (a chasm, really) between depressing and moral outrage, and I am not attacking anyone. This comment is a complete non-sequitur from mine.

So there's something depressing about cheating but not from a moral basis? What's depressing about people who want to minimize work and maximize profits?

even the way you're framing the question is depressing to me, not everything is about profit.

Where's the profit in answering your question? Where's the profit in writing it even?

Karma points! Duh

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