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I am constantly surprised that we have a 'moral' aversion to cheating. IMO school teaches two strategies for success. 1.) work hard within the rules and 2.) c

I am constantly surprised that we have a 'moral' aversion to cheating. IMO school teaches two strategies for success. 1.) work hard within the rules and 2.) cheat but don't get caught. Each is equally valid in society, even without a 'moral' component.

icegreentea 13y ago
The 'moral' aversion to cheating I believe comes out the very game theory and evolutionary behavior that this post talks about. When society sets up rules and systems, there is a maximum amount of cheating/parasitism that it can withstand before the system breaks down, and everyone (at least the majority of the non-cheaters) loses out (assuming a 'good' system). I think we all know/feel this at a very deep level, and understand that if we want to set up and maintain cooperative systems, cheating and parasitism must be kept to a sufficiently low level. Cheaters and 'goodies' all know this. That our western civilization morality tends to align with the interests of large-scale cooperative systems is probably no accident. I limit this to western cause I have no clue about any other cultures and I don't want to make an ass of myself. Of course, this in itself says nothing about the goodness of the system. Cheating a bad system is always an interesting thought experiment. Breaking bad systems and replacing with a new, better one often requires a great degree of 'cheating'. All sorts of interesting things here.
- guimarin 13y ago
  I think this is a complex and naunced issue. I have a number of thoughts on your arguments. Society doesn't set up rules and systems, they seem to emerge as a consequence of beneficial cooperative behavior towards a 'goal'. When it's no longer beneficial to cooperate towards a goal, over say other strategies like cheating, the rules are overlooked, passed, or changed as quickly as they emerged. The prevalence of War as a way to 'rebalance' resources comes to mind immediately, but so too does the reality that only 2% of people pay use taxes. To your point about parasitism. Human societies are always in a state of change with respect to sociological and technological concerns, and the success of a society in achieving its 'goals' seems largely dependent on how well it adapts to this change. The parasitism you've described seems to be more a reality of economics than society in general, and though your point seems valid on its face, You wouldn't say that the success companies like Uber, which are cheating parasites by your definition, is really a net negative for the society. to your point about morality. I believe morality is really orthogonal to this issue and should be considered from different viewpoints in different contexts because humans can hold contradictory points of view and still remain 'functioning'. History holds many examples of individuals who challenge what is 'moral' in a society through cheating, and they are sometimes lauded, sometimes not. I think of the narrative surrounding Rosa Parks on one side ( in support of cheating ) and the story of Cincinnatus ( in support of not cheating ) when considering morality in the context of the cooperation cheating dichotomy. and you're right, this is a very interesting topic, definitely outside the scope of this small classroom experiment.
  - icegreentea 13y ago
    I think we're really agreeing on your first point, and really just have a difference in choice of language. I was kind of sloppy, and used society as kind of a shorthand for the type of emergence you describe. In fact, I would go as far to say that a given society is the very type of emergent phenomena that you describe, and exists as a kind of a high (perhaps highest?) level system that we tend to exist and work within. Regarding the second point, I really tried to cover this angle with my little bit about 'goodness' of a system, and also vastly over simplified things. Obviously different people in a system are effected by it to different extents, and can play vastly different roles. Many of the statements I was making were with regard to systems with all members are on roughly the same footing. Imagine an honour system for paying for soda, an agreement that everyone on a street clears their own segment of sidewalk of snow, that type of thing. My assumption was that systems and agreements where everyone is more or less on the same footing are generally beneficial to everyone. Obviously, the situation with regards to taxis and Uber is different. The majority of people are just consumers. They don't really care as long as they are provided the same benefit (reasonably priced, safe, quick, point to point transport). The taxi companies on the other hand are in a completely different position, and in fact, from their position, Uber is definitely a cheating parasite, and a net negative for the taxi companies. I think this falls under my lazy little blurb regarding 'breaking bad systems'.
pkteison 13y ago
It's not some invented moral perspective, it's also a very practical concern about what is being taught. Cheating in the form of copying other people's work only works in an artificial environment where everybody is doing the same work - you can copy somebody else's answer because somebody else is doing the exact same thing you are doing. Hopefully later in life these students will be doing something new and original where nobody else in the world is doing the exact same thing - which means they will naturally end up with nobody to copy off of. If they didn't learn how to figure things out for themselves, they'll end up useless for doing anything new.
jacquesm 13y ago
Work hard within the rules and cheat but don't get caught are definitely not equally valid. Cheating has a risk of getting caught long after the moment of cheating and getting caught even decades later can undo a lifetime of otherwise hard work within the rules. Check out the recent scandals in Germany regarding politicians plagiarizing writings during their education. Don't get caught has an indefinite possible downside to it, you can still get caught even if you weren't caught so far. That's a permanent risk and work hard within the rules has no such downside. Whatever is achieve that way stays achieved.
btilly 13y ago
There should be no surprise here. Strategy #1 (follow rules) only works if you make strategy #2 (cheating) costly. That requires that there are people follow strategy #A of wanting to punish cheaters rather than strategy #B of not punishing cheaters. (From the point of view of someone following #A, someone following #B is cheating, since they are a free rider off of the efforts of people like you.) The problem is that strategy #A is costly. But following it is more tenable if other people who follow the same strategy actively reward people who demonstrate that they follow strategy #A by outing cheaters. However when people who follow strategy #A become either too common (there are not enough cheaters to catch to reward the vigilance) or too rare (you're overwhelmed by cheaters), then #A becomes not worthwhile, which increases the prevalence of cheating. This proceeds until either there are enough cheaters that vigilance is worthwhile, or until that rule breaks down entirely. Therefore you can only observe #1 (rule following) being a successful strategy when there are people around following #A (moral outrage at cheating). In real life people switch between these strategies depending on the rule. For example I get morally outraged at people who cheat in school. I cheat on the speed limit (but within the limits that I think the police will accept). However when you compare societies, you can clearly see that ones which discourage cheating, have far, far better outcomes than ones that broadly accept it. In that note, my brother made a recent observation that I like. He's lived both in the USA and in China, and has dealt with people at various levels of society in both countries. His observation is that the broad mass of Americans tend to be relatively moral, but the people at the top in the USA tend to be corrupt. But China is reversed - the average citizen will gladly cheat you if they can, yet the people at the top genuinely want to do what they think is best for the country. (Note, my brother got to personally know many people who are highly placed in the Chinese government while he worked at Lovells and was putting together the Sino-Global Legal Alliance. His opinion of their characters is based on personal interaction, not media accounts.) His personal opinion is that this is going to be a net positive for China going forward.
- guimarin 13y ago
  I am shocked by your comment, and I disagree with your implicit definition of cheating on multiple levels. Your miss-application of 'morality' in the US/China example is blatant racism, and should not be tolerated. It's also completely false, and the worst kind of personal conjecture. Just because you have been socialized from a Judeo-Christian/Greek Moral traditione and Western does not give you the right or the authority to make such a judgment on another culture. I can't even respond cogently to your arguments on cheating my computer is smoking so hard.
jeffbarr 13y ago
Cheating means that you get the reward (the good grade in this example) without earning it in the prescribed way (by learning the subject and using your knowledge to get the good grade). That's not a good life lesson and leads to entitlement issues and a society where you can't take any statement of accomplishment at face value.

icegreentea 13y ago

The 'moral' aversion to cheating I believe comes out the very game theory and evolutionary behavior that this post talks about. When society sets up rules and systems, there is a maximum amount of cheating/parasitism that it can withstand before the system breaks down, and everyone (at least the majority of the non-cheaters) loses out (assuming a 'good' system). I think we all know/feel this at a very deep level, and understand that if we want to set up and maintain cooperative systems, cheating and parasitism must be kept to a sufficiently low level. Cheaters and 'goodies' all know this. That our western civilization morality tends to align with the interests of large-scale cooperative systems is probably no accident. I limit this to western cause I have no clue about any other cultures and I don't want to make an ass of myself. Of course, this in itself says nothing about the goodness of the system. Cheating a bad system is always an interesting thought experiment. Breaking bad systems and replacing with a new, better one often requires a great degree of 'cheating'. All sorts of interesting things here.

guimarin 13y ago
I think this is a complex and naunced issue. I have a number of thoughts on your arguments. Society doesn't set up rules and systems, they seem to emerge as a consequence of beneficial cooperative behavior towards a 'goal'. When it's no longer beneficial to cooperate towards a goal, over say other strategies like cheating, the rules are overlooked, passed, or changed as quickly as they emerged. The prevalence of War as a way to 'rebalance' resources comes to mind immediately, but so too does the reality that only 2% of people pay use taxes. To your point about parasitism. Human societies are always in a state of change with respect to sociological and technological concerns, and the success of a society in achieving its 'goals' seems largely dependent on how well it adapts to this change. The parasitism you've described seems to be more a reality of economics than society in general, and though your point seems valid on its face, You wouldn't say that the success companies like Uber, which are cheating parasites by your definition, is really a net negative for the society. to your point about morality. I believe morality is really orthogonal to this issue and should be considered from different viewpoints in different contexts because humans can hold contradictory points of view and still remain 'functioning'. History holds many examples of individuals who challenge what is 'moral' in a society through cheating, and they are sometimes lauded, sometimes not. I think of the narrative surrounding Rosa Parks on one side ( in support of cheating ) and the story of Cincinnatus ( in support of not cheating ) when considering morality in the context of the cooperation cheating dichotomy. and you're right, this is a very interesting topic, definitely outside the scope of this small classroom experiment.
- icegreentea 13y ago
  I think we're really agreeing on your first point, and really just have a difference in choice of language. I was kind of sloppy, and used society as kind of a shorthand for the type of emergence you describe. In fact, I would go as far to say that a given society is the very type of emergent phenomena that you describe, and exists as a kind of a high (perhaps highest?) level system that we tend to exist and work within. Regarding the second point, I really tried to cover this angle with my little bit about 'goodness' of a system, and also vastly over simplified things. Obviously different people in a system are effected by it to different extents, and can play vastly different roles. Many of the statements I was making were with regard to systems with all members are on roughly the same footing. Imagine an honour system for paying for soda, an agreement that everyone on a street clears their own segment of sidewalk of snow, that type of thing. My assumption was that systems and agreements where everyone is more or less on the same footing are generally beneficial to everyone. Obviously, the situation with regards to taxis and Uber is different. The majority of people are just consumers. They don't really care as long as they are provided the same benefit (reasonably priced, safe, quick, point to point transport). The taxi companies on the other hand are in a completely different position, and in fact, from their position, Uber is definitely a cheating parasite, and a net negative for the taxi companies. I think this falls under my lazy little blurb regarding 'breaking bad systems'.

pkteison 13y ago

It's not some invented moral perspective, it's also a very practical concern about what is being taught. Cheating in the form of copying other people's work only works in an artificial environment where everybody is doing the same work - you can copy somebody else's answer because somebody else is doing the exact same thing you are doing. Hopefully later in life these students will be doing something new and original where nobody else in the world is doing the exact same thing - which means they will naturally end up with nobody to copy off of. If they didn't learn how to figure things out for themselves, they'll end up useless for doing anything new.

jacquesm 13y ago

Work hard within the rules and cheat but don't get caught are definitely not equally valid. Cheating has a risk of getting caught long after the moment of cheating and getting caught even decades later can undo a lifetime of otherwise hard work within the rules. Check out the recent scandals in Germany regarding politicians plagiarizing writings during their education. Don't get caught has an indefinite possible downside to it, you can still get caught even if you weren't caught so far. That's a permanent risk and work hard within the rules has no such downside. Whatever is achieve that way stays achieved.

btilly 13y ago

There should be no surprise here. Strategy #1 (follow rules) only works if you make strategy #2 (cheating) costly. That requires that there are people follow strategy #A of wanting to punish cheaters rather than strategy #B of not punishing cheaters. (From the point of view of someone following #A, someone following #B is cheating, since they are a free rider off of the efforts of people like you.) The problem is that strategy #A is costly. But following it is more tenable if other people who follow the same strategy actively reward people who demonstrate that they follow strategy #A by outing cheaters. However when people who follow strategy #A become either too common (there are not enough cheaters to catch to reward the vigilance) or too rare (you're overwhelmed by cheaters), then #A becomes not worthwhile, which increases the prevalence of cheating. This proceeds until either there are enough cheaters that vigilance is worthwhile, or until that rule breaks down entirely. Therefore you can only observe #1 (rule following) being a successful strategy when there are people around following #A (moral outrage at cheating). In real life people switch between these strategies depending on the rule. For example I get morally outraged at people who cheat in school. I cheat on the speed limit (but within the limits that I think the police will accept). However when you compare societies, you can clearly see that ones which discourage cheating, have far, far better outcomes than ones that broadly accept it. In that note, my brother made a recent observation that I like. He's lived both in the USA and in China, and has dealt with people at various levels of society in both countries. His observation is that the broad mass of Americans tend to be relatively moral, but the people at the top in the USA tend to be corrupt. But China is reversed - the average citizen will gladly cheat you if they can, yet the people at the top genuinely want to do what they think is best for the country. (Note, my brother got to personally know many people who are highly placed in the Chinese government while he worked at Lovells and was putting together the Sino-Global Legal Alliance. His opinion of their characters is based on personal interaction, not media accounts.) His personal opinion is that this is going to be a net positive for China going forward.

guimarin 13y ago
I am shocked by your comment, and I disagree with your implicit definition of cheating on multiple levels. Your miss-application of 'morality' in the US/China example is blatant racism, and should not be tolerated. It's also completely false, and the worst kind of personal conjecture. Just because you have been socialized from a Judeo-Christian/Greek Moral traditione and Western does not give you the right or the authority to make such a judgment on another culture. I can't even respond cogently to your arguments on cheating my computer is smoking so hard.

jeffbarr 13y ago

Cheating means that you get the reward (the good grade in this example) without earning it in the prescribed way (by learning the subject and using your knowledge to get the good grade). That's not a good life lesson and leads to entitlement issues and a society where you can't take any statement of accomplishment at face value.