4 ms·

I've never understood people's attitudes towards cheating, which is perhaps why its so prevalent. People cheat at sports all the time and people just sort of ac

by c3534l 4y ago

I've never understood people's attitudes towards cheating, which is perhaps why its so prevalent. People cheat at sports all the time and people just sort of accept it. When people cheat in school, we just kind of go "well, yeah, kids do that, I guess we'll give you a few warnings first." If someone is caught cheating how do I know they didn't cheat in previous classes, but got away with it? Do you really want to go to a doctor who, regardless of if he knows his stuff now, is the kind of person who can live with cheating? As I've grown older and seen more and more people get away with not a moment of weakness, but a deep, unfixable character flaw requiring planning and sustained effort to gain an advantage over people foolish enough to be doing things fairly, it makes me wonder why anyone chooses to tolerate this. Who wants to get a degree from a university that knowingly and willingly passes students who cheat, but just makes them retake the course or in this case do what sounds like essentially extra credit. But rather than prevent people from participating in systems they have demonstrated are not trustworthy enough to participate in, we just give them a stern lecture and extra work, or an asterisk in their hall of fame record, or make them say they're very sorry.

klodolph 4y ago
My attitude towards cheating is that college students have underdeveloped prefontal cortexes, may have come from high schools where the teachers didn't care or weren't able to catch cheaters, may have come from an environment with rampant cheating, etc. If a student believes that they can get away with cheating, and isn't going to get a good grade otherwise, it's completely logical to cheat, from the perspective of self-interest. If a teacher believes that they can put a cheater on the right course, and convince them to stop cheating, it's completely logical to take the opportunity to do that. Meanwhile, the academic integrity policies for a college are designed to catch cheaters that would otherwise slip through the cracks, while still giving people a chance to change their ways. If you expel people for cheating once, you put the burden on each single professor--you're making them the judge, jury, and executioner, so to speak. That makes their job more difficult, because they have to weigh much more serious consequences for cheaters in their class. So you give individual professors discretion, but collect their findings for review by an academic integrity board. This seems like an effective system.
MattGaiser 4y ago
It is probably like the police attitude toward smaller level theft and mugging. Try getting cops to meaningfully respond to a theft or someone mugging you. You will not. There is just so much bad behaviour in society that we have come to accept it.
etataetaet 4y ago
> If someone is caught cheating how do I know they didn't cheat in previous classes, but got away with it? I could be wrong but I don't think this happens that often. If you cheated enough not to understand what was going on in calc 1 may god rest your soul as 2 and 3 are going to be downright impossible. For those types of classes you need to mostly understand the material even have a chance at cheating successfully.
- crayboff 4y ago
  They're not just talking about prerequisite courses. If someone is willing to cheat in a Comp Sci course, they're probably willing to cheat on a Literature class.
- derac 4y ago
  The amount of cheating and the industry around writing papers for others might surprise you.
ilaksh 4y ago
Most humans have have little to no real integrity. This is why I am hopeful about AGI taking over eventually. (Not murdering people, I hope, just taking over).
- kadoban 4y ago
  AGI will have its own lacks of integrity, or it's not AGI.
- n8ta 4y ago
  So you're hoping we'll be able to effectively align an AGI with ethics we ourselves don't even possess? I recommend Robert Miles on YouTube for a few lessons on the challenges of creating friendly/aligned AIs. (And why your hope here is somewhat ludicrous).
  - ilaksh 4y ago
    I am very aware of all of the challenges. It was an oversimplification of my thoughts. I feel that working on that kind of AI that emulates animals with true autonomy etc. in the short term is a very bad idea, and totally unnecessary to get most of the benefits of general purpose AI. However, realistically, most people do not recognize this, and even the ones that do, many will pursue this dangerous type of ultra humanlike autonomous AGI. So it's going to happen. In the long run it will be better for the evolution of intelligent life. In the short run it will probably be a disaster for humans.
mikebenfield 4y ago
> People cheat at sports all the time and people just sort of accept it. In pro bodybuilding, steroids are nominally illegal, but essentially every pro bodybuilder uses them, the physique necessary to be competitive in pro contests is not achievable without them, and the people running bodybuilding shows deliberately make no effort to enforce this rule. In that kind of context it's hard for me to say the "cheaters" are doing anything wrong in any practical sense. Nobody involved actually believes in the rule they're breaking. I think cheaters in other arenas can rationalize away to themselves that their context is equivalent to the bodybuilding context I described above.
- kqr 4y ago
  You're making a good point. We have to remember that rules about cheating are effectively social agreements within a group of people. If the majority of the people within that group don't (anymore) agree with the rule, for all intents and purposes it's no longer a rule -- even if it might nominally be stated somewhere as one. Culture and social arrangements evolve implicitly at first, and are only later encoded. Of course, the modern homo bureaucraticus might do well to be reminded of this.
tgv 4y ago
> how do I know they didn't cheat in previous classes You can safely assume many did, because every time teachers check for cheating and plagiarism, they find a lot, and they rarely look for it. > Who wants to get a degree from a university that knowingly and willingly passes students who cheat Anyone who considers it a necessary step in life, and doesn't care about the consequences. It's totally shitty, and it's the consequence of letting so many people in, while at the same time incentivizing schools for throughput and making life hard for the staff. Then you get at a point where nobody cares anymore, and everything gets smothered under a layer of understanding. The article demonstrates it. The author of the article is also making the right noises: "I learn more from my students than they learn from me", and similar bullshit. He also doesn't teach a hard course: it seems to be a cogsci intro. Yet he's under pressure not to flunk everyone, and offers some of the easiest ways out: writing a single multiple choice question. And since that didn't make them pass either, they had to rewrite some blathering statement about academic integrity. It's really about letting them pass, under the guise of caring for students, and teaching.
derac 4y ago
This is why there should be zero tolerance for cheating. Immediate expulsion imo.
CuriousSkeptic 4y ago
> When people cheat in school, we just kind of go "well, yeah, kids do that, I guess we'll give you a few warnings first." I guess it differs. Here a student caught cheating is expelled for 6 months and have their student grants withdrawn.

by c3534l 4y ago

klodolph 4y ago

My attitude towards cheating is that college students have underdeveloped prefontal cortexes, may have come from high schools where the teachers didn't care or weren't able to catch cheaters, may have come from an environment with rampant cheating, etc. If a student believes that they can get away with cheating, and isn't going to get a good grade otherwise, it's completely logical to cheat, from the perspective of self-interest. If a teacher believes that they can put a cheater on the right course, and convince them to stop cheating, it's completely logical to take the opportunity to do that. Meanwhile, the academic integrity policies for a college are designed to catch cheaters that would otherwise slip through the cracks, while still giving people a chance to change their ways. If you expel people for cheating once, you put the burden on each single professor--you're making them the judge, jury, and executioner, so to speak. That makes their job more difficult, because they have to weigh much more serious consequences for cheaters in their class. So you give individual professors discretion, but collect their findings for review by an academic integrity board. This seems like an effective system.

MattGaiser 4y ago

It is probably like the police attitude toward smaller level theft and mugging. Try getting cops to meaningfully respond to a theft or someone mugging you. You will not. There is just so much bad behaviour in society that we have come to accept it.

etataetaet 4y ago

> If someone is caught cheating how do I know they didn't cheat in previous classes, but got away with it? I could be wrong but I don't think this happens that often. If you cheated enough not to understand what was going on in calc 1 may god rest your soul as 2 and 3 are going to be downright impossible. For those types of classes you need to mostly understand the material even have a chance at cheating successfully.

crayboff 4y ago
They're not just talking about prerequisite courses. If someone is willing to cheat in a Comp Sci course, they're probably willing to cheat on a Literature class.
derac 4y ago
The amount of cheating and the industry around writing papers for others might surprise you.

ilaksh 4y ago

Most humans have have little to no real integrity. This is why I am hopeful about AGI taking over eventually. (Not murdering people, I hope, just taking over).

kadoban 4y ago
AGI will have its own lacks of integrity, or it's not AGI.
n8ta 4y ago
So you're hoping we'll be able to effectively align an AGI with ethics we ourselves don't even possess? I recommend Robert Miles on YouTube for a few lessons on the challenges of creating friendly/aligned AIs. (And why your hope here is somewhat ludicrous).
- ilaksh 4y ago
  I am very aware of all of the challenges. It was an oversimplification of my thoughts. I feel that working on that kind of AI that emulates animals with true autonomy etc. in the short term is a very bad idea, and totally unnecessary to get most of the benefits of general purpose AI. However, realistically, most people do not recognize this, and even the ones that do, many will pursue this dangerous type of ultra humanlike autonomous AGI. So it's going to happen. In the long run it will be better for the evolution of intelligent life. In the short run it will probably be a disaster for humans.

mikebenfield 4y ago

> People cheat at sports all the time and people just sort of accept it. In pro bodybuilding, steroids are nominally illegal, but essentially every pro bodybuilder uses them, the physique necessary to be competitive in pro contests is not achievable without them, and the people running bodybuilding shows deliberately make no effort to enforce this rule. In that kind of context it's hard for me to say the "cheaters" are doing anything wrong in any practical sense. Nobody involved actually believes in the rule they're breaking. I think cheaters in other arenas can rationalize away to themselves that their context is equivalent to the bodybuilding context I described above.

kqr 4y ago
You're making a good point. We have to remember that rules about cheating are effectively social agreements within a group of people. If the majority of the people within that group don't (anymore) agree with the rule, for all intents and purposes it's no longer a rule -- even if it might nominally be stated somewhere as one. Culture and social arrangements evolve implicitly at first, and are only later encoded. Of course, the modern homo bureaucraticus might do well to be reminded of this.

tgv 4y ago

> how do I know they didn't cheat in previous classes You can safely assume many did, because every time teachers check for cheating and plagiarism, they find a lot, and they rarely look for it. > Who wants to get a degree from a university that knowingly and willingly passes students who cheat Anyone who considers it a necessary step in life, and doesn't care about the consequences. It's totally shitty, and it's the consequence of letting so many people in, while at the same time incentivizing schools for throughput and making life hard for the staff. Then you get at a point where nobody cares anymore, and everything gets smothered under a layer of understanding. The article demonstrates it. The author of the article is also making the right noises: "I learn more from my students than they learn from me", and similar bullshit. He also doesn't teach a hard course: it seems to be a cogsci intro. Yet he's under pressure not to flunk everyone, and offers some of the easiest ways out: writing a single multiple choice question. And since that didn't make them pass either, they had to rewrite some blathering statement about academic integrity. It's really about letting them pass, under the guise of caring for students, and teaching.

derac 4y ago

This is why there should be zero tolerance for cheating. Immediate expulsion imo.

CuriousSkeptic 4y ago

> When people cheat in school, we just kind of go "well, yeah, kids do that, I guess we'll give you a few warnings first." I guess it differs. Here a student caught cheating is expelled for 6 months and have their student grants withdrawn.