6 ms·

That is a great system, but unsustainable for the volume, you are right. As a non-cheater who has been blessed with a lot of academic success, this article upse

That is a great system, but unsustainable for the volume, you are right. As a non-cheater who has been blessed with a lot of academic success, this article upsets me so much. my academic success has been dearly earned and I feel like cheaters completely undermine my efforts. True, cheaters don't have the knowledge and maybe I am a step ahead of them, because I actually put in the effort. But still, it feels like someone stole a taxi medallion and I bought one.

ishansharma 13y ago
Same here! It feels bad when people think that cheating is a RIGHT! I'm from India and 70% of people in my class think that cheating is fine. They'll copy assignments, cheat in tests and even exams. Though situation is not so bad here that people DEMAND for cheating but everything else is same. I guess this is because of society and pressure. I don't know about China but in India, professions are like fashion. When doctors seem to be making money, there is a large portion of students wanting to be doctors and there is pressure from parents and society as a whole. Academic qualification is treated as the ONLY thing that one will be judged on and this also leads to parents stopping kids form going into sports, music and arts. And poor kids who can't cope up with all this have to cheat.
- ttflee 13y ago
  Ironically, in this case, the Chinese students who demanded rights to cheat were about to compete opportunities to enter SPORTS, MUSIC and ARTS colleges. The way many things work in Chinese societies is deviated far away from common knowledge, moral standard and laws. It is an eternal mystery how and why something is done for anybody outside of certain society. Although schools I attended never encouraged cheating, but the teachers did mention that gaps existed between the social reality and textbooks.
- miguelrochefort 13y ago
  How does it feel like when people think that privacy is a RIGHT?
calibraxis 13y ago
I get the impression that these people are fighting for the right to have more decent lives and better schools. If so, organized cheating is a cost of the unequal system they live under. Reminds me of Basho's chief architect (the Riak company), who advised at Ricon's closing keynote that you should lie and misrepresent yourself to anyplace doing interesting things, as he did at Apple (where he got to write a distributed filesystem), Akamai, etc. Once in "the real world", we discover that corporations and governments routinely lie, cheat and steal. Because it's effective. Does anyone honestly think Steve Jobs was averse to sociopathic behavior, or went unrewarded for it? We live in institutions which reward such sheer winning over obeying rules. (Regardless whether those rules are important or terrible.) The people who make the rules themselves are subject to such pressures. The mass of cheaters here on HN simply are too wise to speak up and admit it. I say that as someone who never cheated on a school test or homework. I don't begrudge those who did, because the mainstream educational systems are disgusting. I have no fear that a cheater will make my worklife hard, because that's what interviews are for. I'm more concerned about play-by-the-rules people who've stuck to conventional wisdom all their lives, and defer to bosses.
- timthorn 13y ago
  > Once in "the real world", we discover that corporations and governments routinely lie, cheat and steal. Really? I'm not sure I've experience of this. Might be a geographic/cultural thing, I guess, but business and governance in the UK doesn't seem to be particularly corrupt.
  - waveman2 13y ago
    You may need to get out more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC See "Money Laundering".
  - calibraxis 13y ago
    I wouldn't use the term "corrupt". For example, a mafia's members can be quite upright in following the institution's rules. Likewise, at the height of when the UK sent legions of killers outside its island, to terminate and replace the rules other people must live under, it's not important if anyone was particularly corrupt. When an institution is at its core about lying, cheating and stealing, then it redefines the rules to make these actions just and moral... part of its own natural functioning. This filters down into all its sub-institutions, like its economic and educational systems. (Then "lying, cheating and stealing" becomes anything which goes against its functioning. For instance, "terrorism" is redefined to include defending your country against the terrorists some foreign power sent to control you.)

ishansharma 13y ago

Same here! It feels bad when people think that cheating is a RIGHT! I'm from India and 70% of people in my class think that cheating is fine. They'll copy assignments, cheat in tests and even exams. Though situation is not so bad here that people DEMAND for cheating but everything else is same. I guess this is because of society and pressure. I don't know about China but in India, professions are like fashion. When doctors seem to be making money, there is a large portion of students wanting to be doctors and there is pressure from parents and society as a whole. Academic qualification is treated as the ONLY thing that one will be judged on and this also leads to parents stopping kids form going into sports, music and arts. And poor kids who can't cope up with all this have to cheat.

ttflee 13y ago
Ironically, in this case, the Chinese students who demanded rights to cheat were about to compete opportunities to enter SPORTS, MUSIC and ARTS colleges. The way many things work in Chinese societies is deviated far away from common knowledge, moral standard and laws. It is an eternal mystery how and why something is done for anybody outside of certain society. Although schools I attended never encouraged cheating, but the teachers did mention that gaps existed between the social reality and textbooks.
miguelrochefort 13y ago
How does it feel like when people think that privacy is a RIGHT?

calibraxis 13y ago

I get the impression that these people are fighting for the right to have more decent lives and better schools. If so, organized cheating is a cost of the unequal system they live under. Reminds me of Basho's chief architect (the Riak company), who advised at Ricon's closing keynote that you should lie and misrepresent yourself to anyplace doing interesting things, as he did at Apple (where he got to write a distributed filesystem), Akamai, etc. Once in "the real world", we discover that corporations and governments routinely lie, cheat and steal. Because it's effective. Does anyone honestly think Steve Jobs was averse to sociopathic behavior, or went unrewarded for it? We live in institutions which reward such sheer winning over obeying rules. (Regardless whether those rules are important or terrible.) The people who make the rules themselves are subject to such pressures. The mass of cheaters here on HN simply are too wise to speak up and admit it. I say that as someone who never cheated on a school test or homework. I don't begrudge those who did, because the mainstream educational systems are disgusting. I have no fear that a cheater will make my worklife hard, because that's what interviews are for. I'm more concerned about play-by-the-rules people who've stuck to conventional wisdom all their lives, and defer to bosses.

timthorn 13y ago
> Once in "the real world", we discover that corporations and governments routinely lie, cheat and steal. Really? I'm not sure I've experience of this. Might be a geographic/cultural thing, I guess, but business and governance in the UK doesn't seem to be particularly corrupt.
- waveman2 13y ago
  You may need to get out more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC See "Money Laundering".
- calibraxis 13y ago
  I wouldn't use the term "corrupt". For example, a mafia's members can be quite upright in following the institution's rules. Likewise, at the height of when the UK sent legions of killers outside its island, to terminate and replace the rules other people must live under, it's not important if anyone was particularly corrupt. When an institution is at its core about lying, cheating and stealing, then it redefines the rules to make these actions just and moral... part of its own natural functioning. This filters down into all its sub-institutions, like its economic and educational systems. (Then "lying, cheating and stealing" becomes anything which goes against its functioning. For instance, "terrorism" is redefined to include defending your country against the terrorists some foreign power sent to control you.)