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Comment by brockshipalpha | Hacker News Reader

People who don't use AI will be better off. We all know people who cheated--heavily--really do get weeded out (unless they are super rich, in which case they get promoted). I worry about the young cheaters who are dooming themselves by squandering the one chance they get to really learn, and wish there was some way to make them see the long game they need to prepare for.

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One chance they get to learn? You can learn any time at any age... You should never stop learning and try to learning a little something every day or at least every week.

True - but you learn better when young and make use of it longer than if you learnt it later

Yes but dedicating the same amount of time as kids or young adults do to school while also working full-time as an adult is exhausting. I washed out on my first go at college, and going back several years later took me 6 years to finish what was 4 semesters of credits back when I wasnt having to work 40 hours a week AND squeeze in classes when I can at night or early morning.

First you need to learn how to learn. You are doing a survivorship bias: you already know how to learn.

Once you’re out on your own it’s very difficult to dedicate yourself to learning as a full time job for a decade plus. The world expects the foundation to already be in place.

It's not that simple, it's not just about the specific things they miss out on learning, they're not developing the framework for how to learn, and fundamentally they're not developing a positive relationship with curiosity, learning, and problem solving as valuable and desirable skills.

We know that behavioral and cognitive patterns develop at a very young age, soon become ingrained, and usually affect the rest of our lives in one way or another. Kids who are never disciplined grow up to be entitled spoiled brats, so what do you think will happen to kids who habitually delegate any work that requires even modest cognitive effort to a black box?

I don't buy the argument that this is just another technical development that makes things easier and more efficient. The WWW made information easier to find than searching for books in a library and reading them, but fundamentally you still have to read the material, understand it, and apply it to your work. LLMs can just finish students' assignments for them and they don't even have to read it or spend spend any energy thinking about it.

i personally disagree with this because i, along with many others, simply see school as a means of qualification for certain jobs and internships. sure, there is useful knowledge obtained along the way of a degree, but i think for many people theyd be better off spending less time on subjects that arent relevant towards their goals, which using AI can enable them to do.

for example: if you had repetitive busywork for homework assignments, it doesnt make sense to spend a lot of time on it, once you have proven to yourself that you know how to do it anyway.

that's a shame. because school is a lot more than that. learning a breadth of subjects has been shown to improve overall knowledge and learning skills. but i get it, you and your many others are not cut out for a broader education. that's what vocations are for. we aren't all the same clones, humans are diverse.

I want to upvote the first half of your post, the part about school being about learning a breadth of subjects. I believe that wholeheartedly, and I believe pursuing knowledge, thinking critically about the world, and engaging with your peers on an intellectual level makes for a more fulfilling "life," something more than just a way to pay the bills or becoming a good cog in the machine of the economy.

But the second half of your post is kind of mean-spirited. "You and many others are not cut out for a broader education," is a rude, elitist way to call someone stupid. With few exceptions, I think practically anyone is "cut out" for higher education. What that education looks like is obviously different for each person, but that's as it should be, as the world is so vast that the human race can only somewhat learn a significant portion of it all if we all learn something a little (or a lot) different.

The university system is a special time and place that society has carved out where individuals can prioritize learning and experimenting above all other considerations, including (ideally) their job or paying bills. It's amazing that society has prioritized this kind of self-actualization, and "societal-actualization." It's maybe one of our greatest achievements! Anything that cheapens that experience is a shame, whether that is the belief that one's primary value is only equal to what they contribute to the economy, the outrageous costs of college tuition, or the allure to use ChatGPT and similar tools to net easy wins at the expense of building a wonderful mind.

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