6 ms·

Your comment basically reads, "I cheated and got away with it, and I'm proud of it too. I'm so awesome! Take that, stupid professor!"

sergiotapia 11y ago
Don't hate the programmer, hate the tools. ;)
- wfunction 11y ago
  Or how about: don't hate the tools; hate the cheaters?
  - sergiotapia 11y ago
    ~ oh you Sweet summer child.
mikecmpbll 11y ago
and what is wrong with that?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- philh 11y ago
  Finding the exploit and taking advantage of it are different. "I discovered that if you rip the tags out of a library book, you can just walk out with it and the alarm won't go off!" For some people, that would be a significant "a-ha!" moment. That doesn't mean they should go around stealing library books.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - philh 11y ago
      It hurts, to a small extent, the people who don't cheat. They have six fewer hours to work in, their work gets compared to work which was created under different (easier) conditions. Even if there's no curve, it increases your grade (in expectation), and that higher grade means slightly less (in expectation). It increases what's expected of people next year. None of this is a large effect when a single person does it, but the same is true of taking notes into exams. Would you do that? Zooming out slightly: if you think cheating doesn't hurt anyone, why do you think there are rules against it?
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        philh 11y ago
        Zooming back in, do you disagree with the mechanism I described, by which your cheating hurts people?
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        philh 11y ago
        If everyone drives a car, people on average are better off. If everyone cheats, people on average are worse off. That's a very different tradeoff.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        philh 11y ago
        In a ten-player game, (a) stealing one utilon from everyone else and getting 20 for yourself is one kind of selfish tradeoff; and (b) stealing one utilon from everyone else and getting 5 for yourself is another kind of selfish tradeoff; and (c) giving one utilon to everyone else while gaining 10 for yourself is also a kind of selfishness. Cheating is (b), driving is (a). (You seem to be arguing that driving is (b) - I disagree, but it's beside the point.) Capitalism mostly tries to encourage (c). We put some selfishness to work, yes; but we harness the selfishness of Henry Ford, and we punish the selfishness of Bernie Madoff.
  - dingaling 11y ago
    > "I discovered that if you rip the tags out of a library book, you can just walk out with it and the alarm won't go off!" I recently went on a tour of my former university's new library building. One thing that surprised me was that all the upper floors are set about six feet back from the exterior windows ( leaving an internal building-height vertical gap all the way around, so you can look over the railing down to the ground floor ). When I enquired about this, the response was that it was to prevent the throw-book-out-of-window-and-collect-it-later trick that was apparently common with the old building!

sergiotapia 11y ago

Don't hate the programmer, hate the tools. ;)

wfunction 11y ago
Or how about: don't hate the tools; hate the cheaters?
- sergiotapia 11y ago
  ~ oh you Sweet summer child.

mikecmpbll 11y ago

and what is wrong with that?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

philh 11y ago
Finding the exploit and taking advantage of it are different. "I discovered that if you rip the tags out of a library book, you can just walk out with it and the alarm won't go off!" For some people, that would be a significant "a-ha!" moment. That doesn't mean they should go around stealing library books.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - philh 11y ago
    It hurts, to a small extent, the people who don't cheat. They have six fewer hours to work in, their work gets compared to work which was created under different (easier) conditions. Even if there's no curve, it increases your grade (in expectation), and that higher grade means slightly less (in expectation). It increases what's expected of people next year. None of this is a large effect when a single person does it, but the same is true of taking notes into exams. Would you do that? Zooming out slightly: if you think cheating doesn't hurt anyone, why do you think there are rules against it?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
      - philh 11y ago
        Zooming back in, do you disagree with the mechanism I described, by which your cheating hurts people?
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        philh 11y ago
        If everyone drives a car, people on average are better off. If everyone cheats, people on average are worse off. That's a very different tradeoff.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        philh 11y ago
        In a ten-player game, (a) stealing one utilon from everyone else and getting 20 for yourself is one kind of selfish tradeoff; and (b) stealing one utilon from everyone else and getting 5 for yourself is another kind of selfish tradeoff; and (c) giving one utilon to everyone else while gaining 10 for yourself is also a kind of selfishness. Cheating is (b), driving is (a). (You seem to be arguing that driving is (b) - I disagree, but it's beside the point.) Capitalism mostly tries to encourage (c). We put some selfishness to work, yes; but we harness the selfishness of Henry Ford, and we punish the selfishness of Bernie Madoff.
- dingaling 11y ago
  > "I discovered that if you rip the tags out of a library book, you can just walk out with it and the alarm won't go off!" I recently went on a tour of my former university's new library building. One thing that surprised me was that all the upper floors are set about six feet back from the exterior windows ( leaving an internal building-height vertical gap all the way around, so you can look over the railing down to the ground floor ). When I enquired about this, the response was that it was to prevent the throw-book-out-of-window-and-collect-it-later trick that was apparently common with the old building!