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It was briefly discussed about 7 days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22045696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22045696 I posted there, same se

It was briefly discussed about 7 days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22045696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22045696 I posted there, same self-addressed question, that I cannot figure out the answer to... It seems that intensives to cheat, and environment where 'means justify the ways' -- are overpowering. For people who are naturally gifted, successful at young age -- why cheat? Was this historically, always like this? These insensitive to cheat, to gain unfair advantage, to treat life opportunities without any 'honor code' just seem to be so pervasive now, it seems. There is a cheating scandal every other week involving most prestigious institutions, competitions, and so on. These incentives to cheat, basically destroy from inside our commercial model, academics, judicial system, political system and probably military too. This also creates a new type of powerful currency, and therefore the 'billionaires' in that currency have infinite power -- and that currency is 'dirt on somebody'. Dirt on somebody who cheated before -- forever makes the cheaters into tools of injustice. --- Public shaming is reactive, there we need something more proactive at various points. There are needs to be incentives for work verification, as an example. I also think it is unfortunate but at least civil/commercial law in many countries is pretty much riddled with 'more expensive lawyers produce better results'. And it skews society into basically thinking 'anything goes, really. means justify the ways, and cheating something one can get away with'

Tenoke 7y ago
>Was this historically, always like this? Of course. 20$ bills left on the floor are bound to be picked by someone even if most won't. ..At least as long as the expexted punishment comes down to less than the value of said bills.
- jl2718 7y ago
  I have a 5€ note I found blowing in the wind while running at an abandoned construction site. I asked everybody in the vicinity if they dropped it, but I still feel awful about picking it up, because I didn’t and don’t feel I can do justice by dropping it. It’s made me realize I may have moral failures from earlier in my life that I never bothered to commit to memory because I wouldn’t have thought of them that way. A child would have felt glee, and I don’t know when that should have or did change in me.
  - cr0sh 7y ago
    I'm not sure why you should feel guilt here - you actually went above and beyond what most people would have done in the situation. Most people, finding money on the ground that nobody was trying to pick up themselves, would have just picked it up, pocketed it, and walked on. And honestly, there should be no guilt in that. Now, had there been someone going around saying "hey, I had this money here and the wind blew it out of my hand, have you seen it?" - and they named the denomination or something that made you know that the money you picked up belonged to them - and you didn't say "why yes, I found this over there; here you go!" and handed it back...well, you should feel guilty knowing you had taken their money - even if they didn't see you do it. But if nobody is actively looking for it, then heck - what can you do, and why feel guilt over it? Sure - you could have left it lying there, and if everyone did that, maybe somebody could retrace their steps to find where they dropped it? Or for all you know, it was dropped, not noticed, and the wind or a passing vehicle picked it up and flung it hither and thither and even if the person knew they had dropped it, they had no way of finding it. You could feel guilt - but now you are feeling guilty over something that is virtually unknown to you; you don't even know if the person who lost it even knows they did, or if they even care... But again - it's a different thing if you see it happening. As a kid (I was probably 12 years old), I was once in a bowling alley when I was walking behind a man, and I noticed a large amount of money (bills) fall out of his back pocket, and he didn't even notice one bit. We're talking several 50 dollar bills. I saw it. I saw him walk on. I went over to pick it up. It was a lot of money... I grabbed it all and ran to him, "Mr! You dropped all of this!" and handed it back to him; he was super thankful. I was glad I did it, because I know most other kids wouldn't have done that - heck, there are adults who wouldn't. But I had seen the money fall out of his pocket - I knew it was his. Had I kept it, I know I would have been stealing from him, and would have felt guilty. It was the right thing to return it without any expectation. To this day (decades later) I am glad I did what I did - that very well could have been his paycheck for all I know. Now - had (somehow) that pile of money been there and I saw it, and nobody else had claimed it? Well - even today I'd probably take it to the "lost and found" - somebody loses that kind of money (or item - like a wallet, phone, etc) - that's the right thing to do. Only if nobody ever claims it, and it's returned to you as "unclaimed" - should you take it. Even then, maybe it would be better to donate it to a good cause than to keep it. Definitely an ethical and moral dilemma - and here I don't know if I've just refuted myself, or whether I have helped anything for you, or if I've just made myself question my own failings or faults. Probably a bit of everything - and maybe that's for the best. So thank you for your post - I think.
archi42 7y ago
Hello fellow non native speaker. You don't mean "insensitive[s]", but " incentive[s]". On topic: My university offers "Ethics for Nerds [=CompSci]" lecture. The lecturers have degrees in both CS and Philosophy, and the stated goal is to make compsci students more aware of ethical implications - plus giving them some tools/thinking to assess these implications.
- 75dvtwin 7y ago
  ah, thank you for the correction. It seems that I miss-spelled it different ways too. I guess, my lack of attention to detail, could not be compensated by re-reading my post 3 times :-). I also took an ethics course, but in there it was mostly about AI impacts on society, and what will happen when people loose jobs that will be automated away... I should keep up to date on it, as mine was many years ago. After all, being a computer programmer has to be more than about VC funding, mobile apps, functional programming, AI and kubernetes. :-) To me, the seeming prevalence of cheating through out the society, and its tacit encouragement, by lack of effective proactive and reactive deterrence - is a cultural, as we well legislative problem.
cowsandmilk 7y ago
> For people who are naturally gifted, successful at young age -- why cheat? Many are used to being the best. There’s an old saying that 90% of students aren’t in the top 10% at Harvard. When your entire life, you’ve been the smartest kid in your class, it is a tough adjustment when that is no longer true. So they try to find ways to get that top rank again. How can you ensure your kid can handle this? Make sure they are exposed to situations where they aren’t the best and reward them for giving their honest best.
- throwaway100773 7y ago
  This is probably true but not an excuse for the perverted behavior and incentives that result. If 90% of the students at Harvard aren’t in the top 10% but feel entitled to be and thus cheating becomes a more attractive solution than taking the medicine of reality - clearly the penalties for cheating aren’t quite high enough.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    Penalties don't work when only a few cheats are found. In this case, the cheat was obvious, but how do you detection enrollment cheats or totally bought research projects? It's not even funny how little you can do here. Even plain and obvious plagiarism is being missed.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Tenoke 7y ago

>Was this historically, always like this? Of course. 20$ bills left on the floor are bound to be picked by someone even if most won't. ..At least as long as the expexted punishment comes down to less than the value of said bills.

jl2718 7y ago
I have a 5€ note I found blowing in the wind while running at an abandoned construction site. I asked everybody in the vicinity if they dropped it, but I still feel awful about picking it up, because I didn’t and don’t feel I can do justice by dropping it. It’s made me realize I may have moral failures from earlier in my life that I never bothered to commit to memory because I wouldn’t have thought of them that way. A child would have felt glee, and I don’t know when that should have or did change in me.
- cr0sh 7y ago
  I'm not sure why you should feel guilt here - you actually went above and beyond what most people would have done in the situation. Most people, finding money on the ground that nobody was trying to pick up themselves, would have just picked it up, pocketed it, and walked on. And honestly, there should be no guilt in that. Now, had there been someone going around saying "hey, I had this money here and the wind blew it out of my hand, have you seen it?" - and they named the denomination or something that made you know that the money you picked up belonged to them - and you didn't say "why yes, I found this over there; here you go!" and handed it back...well, you should feel guilty knowing you had taken their money - even if they didn't see you do it. But if nobody is actively looking for it, then heck - what can you do, and why feel guilt over it? Sure - you could have left it lying there, and if everyone did that, maybe somebody could retrace their steps to find where they dropped it? Or for all you know, it was dropped, not noticed, and the wind or a passing vehicle picked it up and flung it hither and thither and even if the person knew they had dropped it, they had no way of finding it. You could feel guilt - but now you are feeling guilty over something that is virtually unknown to you; you don't even know if the person who lost it even knows they did, or if they even care... But again - it's a different thing if you see it happening. As a kid (I was probably 12 years old), I was once in a bowling alley when I was walking behind a man, and I noticed a large amount of money (bills) fall out of his back pocket, and he didn't even notice one bit. We're talking several 50 dollar bills. I saw it. I saw him walk on. I went over to pick it up. It was a lot of money... I grabbed it all and ran to him, "Mr! You dropped all of this!" and handed it back to him; he was super thankful. I was glad I did it, because I know most other kids wouldn't have done that - heck, there are adults who wouldn't. But I had seen the money fall out of his pocket - I knew it was his. Had I kept it, I know I would have been stealing from him, and would have felt guilty. It was the right thing to return it without any expectation. To this day (decades later) I am glad I did what I did - that very well could have been his paycheck for all I know. Now - had (somehow) that pile of money been there and I saw it, and nobody else had claimed it? Well - even today I'd probably take it to the "lost and found" - somebody loses that kind of money (or item - like a wallet, phone, etc) - that's the right thing to do. Only if nobody ever claims it, and it's returned to you as "unclaimed" - should you take it. Even then, maybe it would be better to donate it to a good cause than to keep it. Definitely an ethical and moral dilemma - and here I don't know if I've just refuted myself, or whether I have helped anything for you, or if I've just made myself question my own failings or faults. Probably a bit of everything - and maybe that's for the best. So thank you for your post - I think.

archi42 7y ago

Hello fellow non native speaker. You don't mean "insensitive[s]", but " incentive[s]". On topic: My university offers "Ethics for Nerds [=CompSci]" lecture. The lecturers have degrees in both CS and Philosophy, and the stated goal is to make compsci students more aware of ethical implications - plus giving them some tools/thinking to assess these implications.

75dvtwin 7y ago
ah, thank you for the correction. It seems that I miss-spelled it different ways too. I guess, my lack of attention to detail, could not be compensated by re-reading my post 3 times :-). I also took an ethics course, but in there it was mostly about AI impacts on society, and what will happen when people loose jobs that will be automated away... I should keep up to date on it, as mine was many years ago. After all, being a computer programmer has to be more than about VC funding, mobile apps, functional programming, AI and kubernetes. :-) To me, the seeming prevalence of cheating through out the society, and its tacit encouragement, by lack of effective proactive and reactive deterrence - is a cultural, as we well legislative problem.

cowsandmilk 7y ago

> For people who are naturally gifted, successful at young age -- why cheat? Many are used to being the best. There’s an old saying that 90% of students aren’t in the top 10% at Harvard. When your entire life, you’ve been the smartest kid in your class, it is a tough adjustment when that is no longer true. So they try to find ways to get that top rank again. How can you ensure your kid can handle this? Make sure they are exposed to situations where they aren’t the best and reward them for giving their honest best.

throwaway100773 7y ago
This is probably true but not an excuse for the perverted behavior and incentives that result. If 90% of the students at Harvard aren’t in the top 10% but feel entitled to be and thus cheating becomes a more attractive solution than taking the medicine of reality - clearly the penalties for cheating aren’t quite high enough.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Penalties don't work when only a few cheats are found. In this case, the cheat was obvious, but how do you detection enrollment cheats or totally bought research projects? It's not even funny how little you can do here. Even plain and obvious plagiarism is being missed.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]