Societal Nihilism and Motivation - Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

Argument that students cheat because traditional career paths seem obsolete with AI and climate doom. Rational response to broken social contracts about hard work leading to success, home ownership becoming unattainable.

The prevailing sentiment among these perspectives is that student cheating is a rational response to a broken social contract where traditional milestones, such as home ownership and career stability, no longer seem attainable. Faced with the "looming specter" of climate doom and AI-driven industry disruption, many students view conventional education as a scam that justifies being "counter-scammed" through shortcuts. Because AI can produce superior results in less time, the intrinsic value of deep, effortful thinking has been replaced by a pragmatic focus on end results as a means of survival. Ultimately, this shift is framed not as a widespread moral failing, but as a systemic "disease" reflecting a generation's logical adaptation to a future that feels increasingly hollow and uncertain.

View on HN · Topics

I wonder if AI or something else changing (developing anxiety, etc) has made the pay-off of the degree less certain. If you're confident that your years of effort will pay off, it's probably easier to see it through. If you're worried that AI will wreck your industry before you hit the workforce, maybe the equation changes and you're more inclined to gamble with shortcuts?

View on HN · Topics

The LLMs will gradually cramp more and more adds in their responses in an effort to make a profit.

At least now we know why we will start watering our plants with Brawndo.

View on HN · Topics

The kids don't care about the integrity of the systems or their educations because they can see that all the benefits of a traditional education and career are predicated on a future that probably won't exist.

It's a rational response to entrenched elites that prevent realization of the very social contracts they push on the youth (hard work will equal success, home ownership is a fundamental, etc).

Combined with the looming specter of climate doom, and watching the adults do nothing about it, treating preparation for a conventional career as a scam to be counter-scammed makes a certain sense.

View on HN · Topics

It’s not that they can’t think deeply, these are smart people.

It’s that there is no reward for doing so and in fact there is punishment .

The punishment is that for all the thinking you do, someone else will arrive at the same result as you in less time, or maybe even a better result. You don’t get rewarded for the effort of thinking, only for the end result.

Naturally, even if you are an intelligent individual, you can still be conditioned in this way to take the easy way out, unless you purposely like to suffer. But suffering is only worth it if you know in the end you come out ahead.

But now, you do not come out ahead. People will be using AI in the workforce for the rest of your life anyway, might as well just join the trend.

It’s like if everyone started taking a magical steroid and growth hormone to build muscle and look great instead of actually working out in a gym and possibly getting worse results anyway.

View on HN · Topics

I don't like the framing of calling it academic dishonesty. If it were one or two students doing it, sure. But there is no reason to believe that 2026 Berkeley freshmen are fundamentally more dishonest than 2025 Berkeley students. When so many are doing it, it suggests a sea change in the understanding of what is honest or dishonest in that particular community. That sort of thing should be treated more like a "disease": something that should be treated, than a "crime": something that will be punished.