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Cheating is pretty entrenched in Chinese culture. Sometimes I even wonder if they consider it's cheating at all or if it's just cleverness and they should be re

• peter303 11y ago
  Its pretty entrenched in US culture too. Example one, downloading "free" stuff off the Internet that used to have to pay for in a store. People make all kinds of rationalizations why this is not stealing. Example two is just about any US high school or college. The US Air Force Academy graduated a 20% smaller class than normal his year because so many were expelled in cheating scandals. A major sociology paper was just retracted in Science, on of the worlds leading journals, because a grad student faked the data.
  • kazinator 11y ago
    > People make all kinds of rationalizations why this is not stealing. Arguments that it is stealing are also nothing more than rationalizations. That's what both sides wield: it's a war of rationalizations. (I tend to be more convinced by the "it's not stealing" rationalizations myself, simply because stealing an object makes it unavailable. If someone stole my bicycle, I'd be upset. If they cloned it in a Star-Trek-style "replicator" and took the copy, I couldn't care less. If you lend a book or DVD or SD card or whatever to someone, upon it being returned, you have no way to test the hypothesis "a copy of this was retained by the borrower". Not testable is not real, for all practical purposes.)
    • jjaredsimpson 11y ago
      No, one side is an author/content creator who has not been compensated. The other side is a person who is capable of rationalizing theft because it is a minor theft. The theft isn't of an object, it is theft of compensation due to a creator. Duplication isn't the issue.
      • Joky 11y ago
        It's not because you're saying it like it's a fact that it will become one :/
      • carapace 11y ago
        And now you are rationalizing. Welcome to the mess/party.
      • Karunamon 11y ago
        Without derailing this into yet another "copyright infringement isn't stealing" thread, as far as the creator is concerned, they don't get compensated under other circumstances which are not commonly seen as infringement or even morally wrong. Example: A roommate watching a movie or playing a game with you. Spinning it as purely a compensation issue is being a bit reductive, IMO. And from there it leads directly into objectively unanswerable intent questions.
        • kazinator 11y ago
          Just wait; I'm going to obtain an exclusive distribution license on DNA from the oldest bacterium in the world. All life will then have to compensate me every time any cell divides. Also, since DNA controls what you look like, including your silhouette, you will have to pay me every time you allow a light source to cast a shadow of yourself onto a flat surface. Also, when you take a bath, you displace a volume of water corresponding to your shape. That is an unlicensed copy. Your footprints in the dirt or snow, ditto, not to mention the fingerprints you leave on everything you touch. --- Man, think about it. Millions of years of evolution (based on continuous unrestrained copying and alteration on a massive scale) lead to Man. What does man do? Put three guitar chords together with some puerile, hackneyed lyrics, and insist on compensation from everyone that hears the crap.
  • stephengillie 11y ago
    To put it the other way - all my life I've had free music. From the radio. In the car. In stores. Elevators. Birthday cards. Gas stations. Retail workplace. On the bus. Now even on Youtube and thousands of other streaming video sites. And now you suddenly want me to pay for it? Why, what changed?
    • noelsusman 11y ago
      You've never had free music (unless you stole it). Radio and YouTube are free due to advertisements. All of your other examples are either public domain or a business paying to play music for you.
      • kazinator 11y ago
        I don't think the liquor store pays the guitar bum loitering in front. :)
      • ghshephard 11y ago
        The United States and Canada allowed free music (for personal use) if you wanted to tape it off the radio - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act. I believe a portion of the cost of blank tapes was allocated to recording artists to cover this costs, so perhaps it wasn't entirely free...
        • stephengillie 11y ago
          The funds were allocated to recording companies, not directly to artists. Which means the artists rarely saw any of that money - the percentage of that payment to which they were entitled rarely rounded up to 1 cent.
      • discardorama 11y ago
        > You've never had free music ... Radio and YouTube are free ... So which one is it: was music free or not?
  • jordigh 11y ago
    It really isn't stealing. Not even legally, despite how how much people say it is. Copying is not theft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU7axyrHWDQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU7axyrHWDQ It might be cheating, it might be copyright infringement. Depending on the circumstances it may or may not be moral. But 1000 unauthorised copies do not mean 1000 lost sales. The situation is more nuanced than a simple 1-1 correspondence.
  • teacup50 11y ago
    It's disingenuous to equate fraud -- cheating in a zero sum game -- with violating a purely manufactured right like copyright. Unlike fraud, the ethics of violating copyright are highly situational and quite complex. A recent example of mine: I purchased a very expensive publication; my purchase included a PDF copy that was (unbeknownst to me) DRM-locked with very onerous DRM. - I fired up IDA Pro and broke the DRM so that I could read the PDF without their invasive DRM; I have no intention of distributing the results. This is actually illegal, and in violation of the license under which I was granted any rights to the PDF. Was this unethical? - If I couldn't break DRM on my own, would it be wrong to download a copy from the internet? - Given that I own the physical book, if my purchase hadn't included the PDF, would it be wrong to download a PDF of it? - If I wanted to know what was in the publication before I paid a great deal of money for it, would it be wrong to download it? - If I didn't have the money to pay for the PDF (as was often the case when I was a teenager and where I learned to crack software), would it be wrong to download for free -- but not distribute -- the PDF? How wrong? ... and so on ...
  • digler999 11y ago
    It's not stealing if another person isn't deprived of an object. That is the definition of theft. Not a certain series of bytes travelling into my NIC. IP zealots need to make all kinds of rationalizations for why this is "stealing". What is stealing, however, is the theft of rights perpetrated by the content industry by extending the terms of copyright so they can "own" ideas in perpetuity.
  • doodpants 11y ago
    When I (and many others) say "piracy is not theft", it's not to "rationalize" piracy. It's to fight incorrect terminology, because such loose, imprecise use of language muddies the discussion and hinders productive discourse. Piracy is not theft, nor is it murder, nor is it rape. It is a different crime, with different costs and repercussions.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • chrismcb 11y ago
    Most people don't realize what they are doing is wrong.
• stephengillie 11y ago
  If you look at it another way, it's not so bizarre. The person is retrieving their information from another's head. They're using a social storage mechanism. This works fine in the classroom, it works OK in the workplace. It works well in most situations. The only place it breaks down is during testing. Because standard testing is only supposed to verify that you're storing the data locally. Standard testing is designed in a way that only helps "local storage" people, and alienates these users who get their information from their environment. Open-book, open-note, and open-internet testing removes this barrier and levels the playing field for these "network storage" learners. Or am I completely out of touch?
  • coliveira 11y ago
    That would be OK if the rules were the same for all teams. In any situation, classroom or not, if you're breaking the rules you are cheating. This doesn't mean that "network learning" is wrong, just that doing this without common approval of all participants is not socially acceptable.
    • stephengillie 11y ago
      Proctors rarely get a common agreement. They make the rules, then you're forced to either accept them or completely forego the examination - the equivalent of failure, it negates the time you've spent training. To me, it's a form of duress.
  • kenbellows 11y ago
    You may be right, but huge problems arise with the open-everything-testing solution with regards to access to resources, especially with standardized testing. SATs (and standardized tests in general) are meant to be a blind test that objectively evaluates the abilities of any individual student anywhere the same way; if we allow external resources, this will undoubtedly be a huge disadvantage for students in lower income areas who don't have easy access to the Internet or a sufficient number of reference books and materials for all the students. Providing internet access at testing sites would help somewhat, but if you have grown up in an environment where the internet was not as ubiquitous as some of us are used to, you may not have the Google-fu or knowledge of Internet research methodology necessary to compete with those in wealthier areas. This is an issue that will hopefully be diminished over time, especially in developed nations, but it will be a very long time before Internet access is sufficiently widespread in what are now developing nations to prevent a huge barrier to entry for students in these places.
• deleted 11y ago
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  • jonknee 11y ago
    That they have access to power, money and influence? That they think they can do what they want?
• irl_zebra 11y ago
  This has also been a problem with the SAT for a long time in China. This one appears to be the most recent instance of the problem: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/02/yet-again-sat-scores-in-asia-withheld-because-of-cheating/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/... This same thing also continues and becomes ingrained in academia: http://www.economist.com/news/china/21586845-flawed-system-judging-research-leading-academic-fraud-looks-good-paper http://www.economist.com/news/china/21586845-flawed-system-j... I'm not sure if it's a cultural thing as you say or what, but I have heard of universities just assuming all numbers from Chinese national applicants have been doctored.
• backtoyoujim 11y ago
  The title of that wsj blog should be "U.S. Schools Expelled About 3% Chinese Students For Cheating Which Is Below National Average".
• Someone1234 11y ago
  > There was an interesting story recently about how a disproportionate amount of Chinese students are expelled from US universities for cheating. That's not what that article claims. You cannot conflate poor grades and cheating. The article intentionally misleads by just listing % for all reasons that Chinese student are expelled and then hints (without outright saying) the reason must be cheating, it couldn't be for example poor English skills? Or a ton of other problems international students might have (e.g. cultural adaption)? I don't know if Chinese students cheat more (I don't have that data, and the article doesn't supply it). But I do know that Americans spend a lot of time writing anti-Chinese stuff and it is getting pretty pathetic.
  • DanAndersen 11y ago
    A related article that helps quantify things more: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/american-universities-are-addicted-to-chinese-students/394517/ http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/america... >Demand for an overseas education has spawned a cottage industry of businesses in China that help students prepare their applications. The industry is poorly regulated and fraud is rampant. According to Zinch China, an education consulting company, 90 percent of Chinese applicants submit fake recommendations, 70 percent have other people write their essays, 50 percent have forged high school transcripts, and 10 percent list academic awards and other achievements they did not receive. As a result, many students arrive in the U.S. and find that their English isn’t good enough to follow lectures or write papers. EDIT: The white paper linked in the WSJ article leads to a 404, but here is the link: http://www.wholeren.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-WhitePaper_CN.pdf http://www.wholeren.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-Whit... Google Translate provides the following: >In the survey, we found that the main reason was expelled classified into the following nine kinds: poor academic performance (57.56%), academic dishonesty (22.98%), attendance problems (9.67%), misconduct (3.87%), international student identity (2.96%), in violation of the law (1.93%), psychological problems (0.57%), financial problems (0.23%) and Shen learn material legacy issues (0.23%). Some were expelled from reason There is a causal relationship between the links. But the statistics, we tend to count the cause and expelled most direct contact.
  • jordigh 11y ago
• thibautx 11y ago
  The culture doesn't provide an association between cheating and punishment but only academic success and reward. Anecdotally speaking, a lot of international Chinese students cheat blatantly - i.e. comparing answers with the person beside them at the end of the exam when people are turning in (and often get caught doing so).
• chvid 11y ago
  Besides this not being true. Can we please try to be a little political correct? Imagine someone writing "Crime is pretty entrenched in Black American culture" or "The feeling of superiority is entrenched in Jewish culture" - that would not be so nice, right?
  • lallysingh 11y ago
    Seriously.
  • toomim 11y ago
    It's better to be true than politically correct.
    • chvid 11y ago
      But it is worse to be politically incorrect and false - which is the case here.
      • jerf 11y ago
        I can't help but feel that your evidence that it is false is that it is politically incorrect. Prove me wrong? (Bear in mind that one can not have both "There's a lot of diversity in the world, and that's a good thing, and we should seek more diversity" and "All cultures are precisely the same". Pick at most one.)
      • d9h549f34w6 11y ago
        Can you provide some support for your assertion that this is false -- that there are no cultural differences between Chinese cultures and Western cultures in terms of attitudes of what is "right" in terms of cheating, plagiarism, or copycat/shanzhai goods? Note that this is not just a matter of whether a culture has cheaters or not, but to what degree it is tolerated in either practice or in the stated beliefs of a culture. Culture is not just cuisine and costumes -- it is also how one interacts with the world and others in one's society. There's a certain arrogance in assuming that all people in the world must obviously approach things in the same way that you do.
• userbinator 11y ago
  I'd say it has a lot to do with the collectivism of the culture - there, sharing and "standing on the shoulders of giants" is emphasised more than independent thinking.
  • jordigh 11y ago
    Yeah, I think that may be it. It's not really seen as cheating, but as cooperation and community.
  • a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
    I think it has more to do with the guilt vs. shame culture metric anthropologists and psychologists talk about and have documented at length. Guilt gnaws at you even when nobody else knows you've done wrong. Westerners score relatively highly for it. People in East Asian societies tend to have a less developed sense of guilt. Instead, they feel bad for having done wrong to the extent they are shamed and shunned by the surrounding society (loss of face). For things like cheating on tests it's easy to see how it's more difficult to maintain standards by shaming mechanisms.
    • notsony 11y ago
      > Guilt gnaws at you even when nobody else knows you've done wrong. Westerners score relatively highly for it. Except when it comes to stealing land, right?
• manish_gill 11y ago
  Generalizations like these piss me off to no extent. Because students have been expelled, therefore, it must be true that Baidu tried to cheat and there can be no other possible explanation? The first conclusion you jump to is "because Chinese culture"? Really?
• yashap 11y ago
  Someone who's actually Chinese, and went to school in China, would know best, but my feeling is that it's more simple - Chinese culture just places a really high value on results, as opposed to broader goals like learning, advancing a field, etc. If the grade/win is all that matters, then cheating is just a way to get there.
  • notsony 11y ago
    Lance Armstrong was Chinese?
    • hyperbovine 11y ago
      "Cheating is rampant in China" != "only the Chinese cheat"
      • notsony 11y ago
        Origin poster wrote: "Cheating is pretty entrenched in Chinese culture." Translation: "Sick man of Asia is a cheat"
    • yashap 11y ago
      Reading my post again, it was way too black-and-white. I was typing it out on a phone, so it's hard to express anything in detail. Of course cheating is decently common in all cultures, my point was that I didn't feel that cheating was respected as a sign of cleverness in Chinese culture, more that if there's just huge pressure on you to get high marks, win, etc., and little focus on other side goals, then cheating is sort of a natural side effect. For example, in high school and university, most of my friends had parents who wanted them to do well grades-wise, but also wanted them to focus on other things like their social life, hobbies, and developing a passion in a specific area. Low grades wouldn't draw any more concern than not socializing much, not having hobbies, etc., and a "well rounded" life with mediocre grades was general seen as "my kid's doing well." Among my Chinese friends, it was more common for their parents to focus on grades above all else. The parents weren't that interested in the side goals, they really just applied huge pressure to their kids to get the highest grades. The kid could be doing all sorts of awesome things, but if their grades were mediocre, their parents were generally pretty disappointed. I figure it's more likely something like this with the Baidu team - major pressure to win, above all else, that would drive the cheating, vs. cheating being seen as some positive sign of cleverness.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• notsony 11y ago
  Sounds like you want to bring back the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act "One of the critics of the Chinese Exclusion Act was the anti-slavery/anti-imperialist Republican Senator George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts who described the Act as "nothing less than the legalization of racial discrimination."[13] The laws were driven largely by racial concerns; immigration of persons of other races was unlimited during this period."
  • jordigh 11y ago
    Well, that escalated quickly...
  • a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
    Without the exclusion acts the American West coast would probably have become majority asian a century ago. It's doubtful the territory would have remained American.
    • GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
      Where would it have gone?
  • orbitur 11y ago
    > Sounds like you want to bring back the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. ... No, it doesn't. OP was pointing out a difference in culture, not calling for whatever you're referring to.
• compbio 11y ago
  Not that you are incorrect or that this is not an interesting aside, but I find these conclusions a bit dreadful. "American dies after eating 400 hotdogs in eating competition" = "unhealthy fastfood is pretty entrenched in American culture". The article uses another hyperbole. "But [about Baidu cheating] artificial intelligence researchers have a more basic concern: that their work will once again fall short of expectations, leading to yet another fallow period for their field.". There are now Machine Learning PhD. thesis on the frontpage of HackerNews. This field is not going anywhere barren soon. Researchers are not worried about their own work in response to Baidu being caught out for cheating. The Rosenblatt quote was after a question by the NYT journalist, he did not give that forecast in a paper. I also think he did not specify a timeline of less than a year. Most if not all forecasts have come true by now. His claims got vindicated.
  • dimino 11y ago
    > "American dies after eating 400 hotdogs in eating competition" = "unhealthy fastfood is pretty entrenched in American culture". Not for nothing, but I'd actually agree with that conclusion, based on your example. If a culture promotes fast food to the point where competitions related to the rapid consumption of the fast food causes a death, I'd consider it a symptom of the larger "fast food culture" problem for that society.
    • SoftwareMaven 11y ago
      Competitive eating (including stuffing 110 hot dogs down your throat[1]) is popular in Japan. Is "unhealthy fastfood pretty entrenched in Japanese culture"? 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeru_Kobayashi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeru_Kobayashi
      • lotsofcows 11y ago
        Normally when you cite a source, the source is supposed to support your argument. A Japanese man who wins predominately USAian eating contests does support the statement "Competitive eating is popular in Japan".
• ProAm 11y ago
  > Sometimes I even wonder if they consider it's cheating at all or if it's just cleverness and they should be rewarded for it. There is a quote that comes from sports but I think is more apt for business, "If you're not cheating, you're not trying" and ties well with "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission". This is a competition so they cheated and lost, but their gains from the work itself will/should pay dividends in the real world.
• the8472 11y ago
  It's not really cleverness if you break the rules so obviously that you get caught and disqualified. Clever would be finding a loophole in the rules, a way to run your tests without it getting counted as task submission, make it look like a bug or something like that.
• ken47 11y ago
  The naked racism of this comment is saddening. I'm sure we all know pockets in our societies where cheating runs rampant. Thankfully, people aren't regularly trying to act as though those pockets represent the whole.
  • efraim 11y ago
    The post says Chinese culture, not Chinese people. Discussing traits of a certain culture is not racist in my opinion.
    • ken47 11y ago
      So if someone were to say that Spanish culture is X, where X was negative, you wouldn't consider that racist either? Perhaps 'racist' isn't exactly the right word, but that seems like splitting hairs.
      • abroncs 11y ago
        Of course it's not racism. You can absolutely discuss the negative aspects of a culture. This bending over backwards to be PC is truly absurd