Poll: Were/Are you a cheater? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: Were/Are you a cheater?

#51

Post by falien » Sat, May 30, 2009, 3:28 PM UTC

PieSquared wrote: post #39

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother going to school if this is how you view it? I think the problem with cheating is that it's fundamentally dishonest. It's not that you're using someone else's work to accomplish something, as we all do this every day in our jobs, it's that you're lying and presenting that work as your own.

Why bother going to school? Because some of us are legally obliged to, and not doing so would be breaking the law. It's dishonest, yes, but when you're in a situation where your two choices are spending time learning something on your own versus not copying a busywork homework assignment from a friend... the first stops seeming so unethical.

You may be legally required to be present, but that doesn't mean you have to do anything. I have no particular problem with copying busywork, but claiming you're required to do any such work is a cop out. (Also it is shockingly easy in the US to get out of the legal requirement of attending school, even of one's own volition when they've reached high school age.)

Re: Poll: Were/Are you a cheater?

#52

Post by unbannable » Sat, May 30, 2009, 3:28 PM UTC

No. I had a friend whose high school life was literally ruined by cheating.

He was a "pathological cheater": smart, and in the top 5 of the class by his own steam, but had a tendency to cheat on everything, even practice PSAT tests administered by the school. He cheated on an essay contest, his winning entry was published (oops!) and he was called out quite publicly when the paper published a retraction.

Rather than own up to it, he made up a bullshit story about how his story was only superficially similar. In fact, it was word-for-word identical, with the title changed.

He changed schools in order to avoid a failing grade for cheating on an exam (and mounting humiliation) to a Catholic school. He was supposedly kicked out of that school for (you guessed it) cheating.

He graduated from law school last summer.

Re: Poll: Were/Are you a cheater?

#53

Post by amalcon » Sat, May 30, 2009, 3:29 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #15

I'm a little appalled by the number of people who apparently think cheating is fine. Is integrity so uncommon? As I stated another comment, the problem I have with cheating is that it's dishonest, as you're passing someone else's work off as your own. It demonstrates a lack of respect for the person who did the work, the person you're doing the work for, every student who worked hard enough to do the work themselves,…

There are other classes of cheating beyond copying another's work. For example, in many of the pre-college math classes I had, looking up the answers to the odd-numbered problems in the back of the book was considered cheating. You couldn't necessarily complete a homework this way, as you had to show your work, but you could verify your own answers. While I never bothered to do this (I did fine in math at the level these started appearing anyway), I didn't care that others did.

Also, many of these classes considered it "cheating" to program your calculator to compute solutions for you. Usually, on a programmable calculator, the program would only substitute for memorizing formulas. Memorizing formulas is pointless, as if you eventually end up using one often enough, you'll memorize it anyway. Again, I never actually did this (I preferred to just learn how the formula was derived), but I occasionally helped others do it.

Re: Poll: Were/Are you a cheater?

#54

Post by neilk » Sat, May 30, 2009, 3:37 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #42

I cheated once (Data Structures II), and I feel no guilt about it. The homework: implement various data structures in C++. The professor then gave us a printed copy of a correct stack/vector/etc implementation. So the homework could properly be rephrased " type what you see on the page into the computer, then run gcc to catch typing errors. " He then threatened that he would catch us if one person transcribed the pri…

I don't think that's cheating. That's disobedience to arbitrary dictates. You didn't dodge the essential aspects of the exercise (learn what gcc does), just the accidental aspects.

That's like if a professor insisted that you use a particular brand of pen when writing the exam. Disobeying that order isn't cheating.

Re: Poll: Were/Are you a cheater?

#55

Post by zimbabwe » Sat, May 30, 2009, 3:40 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #17

zimbabwe wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far I have never found an instance in life where doing boring routine work was at all something I wanted to do. The boring routine work I do have to do I constantly try and figure out ways around.

Apparently even when those ways around it require you to lie and steal the work of others. What won't you do to avoid boring routine work? And isn't this the very definition of laziness? Being willing to cross ethical boundaries to avoid unpleasant work?

When did I say I wasn't lazy?

I see the sort of laziness that strives to avoid tedium and boredom as a virtue.

Re: Poll: Were/Are you a cheater?

#56

Post by Unomi » Sat, May 30, 2009, 3:48 PM UTC

If the journey is more important than the destination, knowing shortcuts doesn't bring you any experiences. You would want to prolong the journey more and more and avoid shortcuts altogether. I wouldn't listen to the anecdotes of a known 'adventurer' who only took shortcuts. I like to listen to somebody who has been there, done that and bought the t-shirt, not to someone who only bought the t-shirt.

Likewise, if your 'friends' from school enter the same job market and get the job you could have instead, you pitty them for cheating and even helping them. You know what you're worth and can withstand the tasks they throw at you. While cheaters don't know and don't understand the world they operate in. They probably keep on cheating....

- Unomi -

Re: Poll: Were/Are you a cheater?

#57

Post by Retric » Sat, May 30, 2009, 3:56 PM UTC

neilc wrote: post #28

Confusion wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have different opinions on what is ethical. Disregarding the terms of a contract, or the law for what that matters, may be perfectly ethical in my book. There is always a difference between the letter of the contract and the intention of the contract. The letter is the same for everyone, but the intention isn't. For instance, the law must forbid jaywalking, to be able to punish those that jaywalk and endanger them…

So you're basically arguing that there are situations when cheating is ethical if it wasn't the intent of the academic honestly policy to disallow it. Let's suppose that is true: what is a case of cheating that academic honesty policies aren't intended to disallow? Certainly a student cheating because they find the assignment "ridiculous" is very much what an academic policy is explicitly designed to outlaw. The same…

From a Yale's perspective they don't mind that some rich student is cheating if they are not blatant, because it does not harm the school's reputation to let them relative to the benefit of having that type of student graduate. Having an football player cheat at Virginia Tech is inline with the schools larger goals relative to having that student fail.

Now all schools are going to make a pretense of an academic honesty policy, but some schools actively use that as a screen to let students cheat their way to C's.

Edit: I still think cheating harms fellow students, but plenty of schools let fairly rampant cheating go on for years.

Re: Poll: Were/Are you a cheater?

#58

Post by lutorm » Sat, May 30, 2009, 4:03 PM UTC

Confusion wrote: post #23

neilc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can perfectly understand people saying 'this assignment/test is ridiculous. I'm not going to put any effort in it and rather copy/cheat and spend my time in a more productive way'. I can understand why someone might say that, but it would still be immoral and dishonest of them to cheat. When you take a class, you enter into a contract (often an explicit academic honesty policy) to not cheat. If you find the assignm…

We have different opinions on what is ethical. Disregarding the terms of a contract, or the law for what that matters, may be perfectly ethical in my book. There is always a difference between the letter of the contract and the intention of the contract. The letter is the same for everyone, but the intention isn't. For instance, the law must forbid jaywalking, to be able to punish those that jaywalk and endanger them…

The difference between a law and a contract is that you can choose to not sign the contract if you don't agree with the terms, so arguing after the fact that you will only obey the terms of the contract that you like makes me hope I never have to do business with you.

Re: Poll: Were/Are you a cheater?

#59

Post by bayareaguy » Sat, May 30, 2009, 4:10 PM UTC

You should be a little more clear about what you consider cheating. I voted "no" because I never did anything clearly unethical or in violation of any rules but there were times when I had opportunities to make use of resources in ways that other people may have considered unfair.

Re: Poll: Were/Are you a cheater?

#60

Post by PieSquared » Sat, May 30, 2009, 4:36 PM UTC

falien wrote: post #51

PieSquared wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother going to school? Because some of us are legally obliged to, and not doing so would be breaking the law. It's dishonest, yes, but when you're in a situation where your two choices are spending time learning something on your own versus not copying a busywork homework assignment from a friend... the first stops seeming so unethical.

You may be legally required to be present, but that doesn't mean you have to do anything. I have no particular problem with copying busywork, but claiming you're required to do any such work is a cop out. (Also it is shockingly easy in the US to get out of the legal requirement of attending school, even of one's own volition when they've reached high school age.)

You can do nothing, but if you're the type that wants an education (i.e. a decent university with math, physics, bio, cs, or etc courses available), you have to comply with the demands of the system.