8 ms·

> You shouldn’t punish the innocent majority for the transgressions of the guilty minority. Have you stopped to think about just how much stuff we have to do a

• vharuck 5y ago
  >We have to have locks on the doors to our homes and vehicles, because people might trespass. But most of us don't have metal bars over our homes' windows. There's a middle ground of making bad behavior mildly inconvenient. Also, all of your examples are precautions born from experience. There have been burglars and shoplifters for centuries, so it makes sense to have some preventions. When deciding whether to try something new, it can be counterproductive to focus a lot on preventing cheating. I'd suggest seeing if it ever becomes a problem worth addressing.
  • dolni 5y ago
    People have been cheating on tests for as long as tests have been around. That is born from experience. You haven't made any compelling argument to support why a job interview would be different in that regard.
    • avianlyric 5y ago
      At a certain point you just have to accept it happens, and build systems the deal with it in a reasonable way. With some imagination you can build systems that handle it without punishing minorities. To do otherwise just shows a lack of imagination and compassion. Personally I think we can do better, and that is enough of a reason.
    • icedchai 5y ago
      I remember taking some online test for a freelance job site that stated they had mechanisms in place to detect cheating. So I googled a bunch of stuff in Javascript then translated it into a different programming language (they wanted Python, I think.) This cheating was not detected. I didn't want the job anyway, so I bailed out after I "passed" the test.
    • ipaddr 5y ago
      The cost benefit ratio would show it would be wasteful to throw out 20% more diverse candidates for 5% false positives. Much cheaper to deal with those 5%.
      • MichaelZuo 5y ago
        Is that just your opinion or do you actually have numbers to show? Your comment isn’t clear.
• avianlyric 5y ago
  Yes I have, to take your examples. > We have to have IDs, because people might lie about who they are. Not every country makes these mandatory. Additionally there usage is usually directly tied to risk associated with someone lying. I don’t need to prove who I am every time I sign up to a new service. I would argue the risk of large numbers of people cheating this specific interview step is quite low. > We have to have an entire (very expensive) criminal justice system because people might commit crimes. Yes, a system designed to deliver justice, not punishment. In most countries that means a systems that takes extreme measures to avoid punishing the innocent, even if it means allowing some guilty to go free. A perfect example of what I mean about not punishing the innocent minority. > We have to have locks on the doors to our homes and vehicles, because people might trespass. People can choose not to use these. No one compels me to lock my front door, it might be unwise, but I’m not going to be denied employment because of it. > We have to have cashiers and overly-complicated automated registers (with someone watching) because people might not want to pay for everything that they are taking out of a store. How do these systems punish the innocent? Apart from the occasional complaint about the wrong item in the bagging area? They’ve certainly never prevented me from buying groceries. > You show up at a closing for a new home, they want a cashier's check, not your personal one. Why? You might not actually be good for the money. Plus they do all the title work. Again risk weighted. Also in my country we just do instant bank transfers. None of this old fashioned paper gubbins. > Every bank has a giant safe. Every country has some weapons of war. Again all of these things are heavily risk weighted, and cause little to no impediment to innocent parties. I’ve certainly never needed to manually open the vault at my local bank. As for war, the US is the king of defence spending. > It's very idealistic to say "well only a few people will cheat so it's fine." It isn't, and it never has been. It’s perfectly fine to say this. The entire world is built in the premises that a small amount of crime will always happen, and systems should be robust to it. There’s no point spending ludicrous resources trying to prevent a minuscule amount of crime. Everything is, and should be, risk weighted. Just like when you build a distributed system you expect parts to misbehave or fail. Why would you expect any human based system to be any different?
  • dolni 5y ago
    It would be just as easy to take your entire argument and frame it as such: If we have an interview system that works for the vast majority of people, why do we need to introduce risk by substantially changing it to help very few people? If cheating becomes possible to do easily, your system has disadvantaged people who are honest and refuse to cheat. What are you going to do to ensure that people who are honest are not discriminated against for their honesty? Information technology is already home to a bunch of neurodivergent people. You run into them _way_ more often in IT than you do in just about any other line of work. Do they really need more help getting tech jobs?
• micromacrofoot 5y ago
  Most of these situations you've presented aren't actually necessary, and are arguably harmful.