Sickfluenza
A lot of knowledge is a dangerous thing
I semi-regularly take part in a local pub quiz, a form of competition in which the ability to cheat is easily available to anyone who wishes. When smartphones first became widespread, it was assumed by many that this would be the death of the quiz, as everyone now carried the answers in their pockets.
They survive because of the honour system, so that cheating carries the risk of disgrace within quite a small community, and that is a terrifying thought to most human beings. It is also because the rewards are so low: on the rare occasion when our team has won, the individual prize money was barely enough to cover the price of a London pint. But outside of these limited, high-trust circles, where individual reputation matters more than financial reward, the proliferation of knowledge has been catastrophic for social norms.
In a recent essay for Engelsberg Ideas, education specialist Daisy Christodoulou argued that the democratisation of cheating had placed an impossible strain on the school system. She wrote how, in her previous role as a secondary English teacher, she had her experience of pupils copying essays, usually from Wikipedia, and used as an example how ‘in 2014 a university lecturer complained about students who overused the thesaurus function on their word processors and ended up with absurdities like “sinister buttocks” replacing “left behind”.’
Large Language Models have changed all this, however, and now everyone is cheating. Perhaps not everyone, but enough to make coursework impossible to assess. ‘Institutions can cope with elite rule-breaking,’ Christodoulou wrote: ‘When everyone breaks the rules, it causes a crisis. It is theoretically possible that there will be students graduating with good degrees this summer who have not written a word of their own during their entire degree course. What should universities do in response?’
I was quite surprised to learn that my eldest daughter is still expected to do a large amount of coursework for her A-Levels. I can’t imagine that this will continue much longer, either at sixth form or university level, because coursework has become an unreliable measurement of knowledge and merit.
The democratisation of cheating goes way beyond education. There is a sense that much of the apparatus put in place over the past 70 years or so is now undergoing systems failure, most notably the welfare state and asylum system - and a huge part of this is due to freely available communication technology which allows far more people to benefit from the system.
In a Bagehot column last year, Duncan Robinson wrote how: ‘The British government has long assumed people are, in general, ignorant about the state’s obligations. Increasingly, the opposite is the norm: people know too much. The knowledge comes from peculiar sources. TikTok is a font of information for people trying to claim asylum. Reddit forums, such as r/DWPhelp, offer expert guidance to people navigating the Department for Work and Pensions. Memes about welfare entitlements, shared on WhatsApp and Facebook, which is increasingly an old-people’s home, cut through better than any government campaign. What happens when people are savvier than the state assumes?’
He noted that the number of people signing up to pension credit increased by 81 per cent in just one year, a result of older people being more informed through social media, and that the number of children on learning difficulties plans ‘has risen from under 240,000 in 2014 to nearly 600,000 in 2024. Partly, this is due to an increase in cases. Often, it is awareness. People have realised help is on offer. They are guided on their way by a slew of advice, from Reddit to Mumsnet, an influential messageboard, to TikTok. The result? About 20 councils are at risk of bankruptcy solely from special-needs provision.’
In Britain the cost of disability benefits to taxpayers has grown by 45 per cent in real terms since Covid, and the number of young people unable to work because of ‘mental health’ has rocketed. The cost of the state’s Access to Work programme, designed for people with mental health problems and other disabilities, is now £321 million a year, twice what it had been before lockdown.
