Comment by yholio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yholio | Hacker News Reader

I somehow decided I needed to cheat to pass a certain exam because I was basically crap at memorizing stuff. So I used an analogue wireless headphone, an induction loop around my neck and a mobile phone. Since I lacked an accomplice to dictate, I read aloud the hundreds of pages and recorded myself, careful to preserve and properly serialize things like complex formulas.

This was before the era of iPods and SDCard players, so I had my mobile phone in a setup where I would call back another phone connected to my Pentium MMX 233MHz at home, that ran a sort of audio directory that would playback a certain lecture recording I would select from the menu, using DTMF tones.

I had a small keyboard sewn into my sleeve that connected to the customized mobile phone via a DB9 plug and then to the numeric keyboard, allowing DTMF codes to be sent by gently and invisibly moving my fingers. The whole setup was hideous and had it's own dedicated jacket, with wires, phone, keyboard, audio amplifier, neckloop, the earphone... a complete cyborg for academic fraud.

Back on the PC side, I wrote a C++ application from scratch that would capture audio via the soundcard using Windows Wave API, decode the DTMF pulses using a couple of IIR filters then navigate the menu and playback the required file to the mobile phone connected to the soundcard. The C++ program and menu system was scripted using an .INI file that defined the structure with links to various ADPCM-compressed .wav files that represented the menu headings or the leaf content itself (a good structure was necessary to quickly access the correct lecture after receiving the exam subjects).

Work-wise, it was a lot more difficult then putting the effort in memorizing the stuff, but I rejected memorisation on principle, that's not what an university should be about. The whole thing turned out to be a massive learning project, but I obviously could not speak about it at interviews. It's the first time I mention it to anybody.

I used the setup for two exams that I aced, was never caught but it was nerve-wracking to use in close proximity to a teacher.

One thing universities should teach is efficient problem solving. If it was more work to cheat than to memorize, I'd say you might want to re-evaluate whether "not memorizing things" is a principle you should cling so dogmatically to.

I'm sure he learned much more useful stuff by coding up that monstrosity, and in the real world he can just google to look up those formulas he didn't memorize.

The fully elaborated version of the underlying principle is probably something like: "I have much better ways to spend my time than on memorizing formulas that I could easily look up later".

If an individual's philosophy is that you can always google stuff so you don't need to know anything, I don't see why that person should waste time in school.

There's more to learning than memorization.

There's more to exams than memorization too, and cheating because you don't like memorization is childish. If the exams really test only memorization, drop the class.

Some classes are on the critical path to graduation. I wouldn't suggest delaying an entire degree because one or two classes have bad exams.

Cheating to avoid memorization is childish, but let's not forget that students are usually children, or still in the process of maturing into adults.

It's already terrible enough the extent to which higher education has become an infantilizing scam in the US.

Failing to learn critical coursework should delay graduation, and cheating should result in expulsion. These are good things.

In a perfect university teaching environment, yes. However, in real life sometimes cheating is necessary. Real university environments are flawed, rules and requirements often stacked against the student. They have to pay up, get a massive loan, endure narcis/dumb teachers and stupid administratory requirements, and educate themselves despite that environment. After a lot of invested time and money donated by state/parents, if faced with particularly nasty course exam they are unable to pass in a legal way, it would be crazy to fold and waste all that investment.

University students are legally adults and we’re considered so until recently. I don’t thin infantalizing young adults is healthy.

In the US the legal age of adulthood is 18. This is very far from the actual maturity point. It's not infantalizing to be accepting and unsuprised when a 18-22 year old does something childish.

Edit: Being a child, and acting childish is an important part of the life cycle that allows development. We seem to be bumping into some biological limits on how late we can extend it, but if it were possible I would.

When I worked in baseball concessions as a teenager, the employees who were the most responsible and dependable were the university students. The older workers tended to be more experienced, but some of them were a little sketchy and a couple were fired for showing up drunk.

There is a tremendous variation between individuals. Part of the point of the university degree as a credential is to identify those people who are responsible enough to complete the program. I graduated at the age of 21 and immediately became an Engineer in Training, working on code that could kill people if it behaved improperly. I took that responsibility very seriously, and I'm thankful that my employer and coworkers took me seriously in return.

I fear that a focus on age tends to lead to prejudice. If you just want to ensure young adults can be allowed to make mistakes without ruining their lives, I would encourage you to expand your goal. There are many adults who could benefit from a bit more compassion and forgiveness. We don't need to restrict it to the young.

I strongly remember a mandatory English (literature) exam in Highschool where you had to write an essay in response to a question that was known beforehand, in relation to one of three or so books you had studied beforehand (You didn't know which on the day). The way this test was practiced was to get every student to write the full essay for all 3 books and then to memorize that. Most other English tests I had to take in Highschool were similar to this, but not quite as bad. I think you have too high of expectations from education systems to think that all tests test more than memorization or that people can simply "drop the class".

If a particular exam has more to it than memorization, then even open book you shouldn't be able to ace it without knowing the material!

I dislike open book exams so much that I took nothing into my last one. It was a unit without much memorisation that focused much more heavily on applying concepts, and I feel that having it as open book was a trap for ill-prepared students.

One of my highschool teachers mentioned that a book wouldn't help much before her first open-book test, then openly stated that afterwards that it was a small trick to see who wouldn't study. She was among the best and most-liked teachers in the school.

if only if it was that easy to just not take class

I'm not defending what they did, but it's worth pointing out that electives aren't exactly universal. During my university I was allowed to choose exactly 4 classes out of 6, in my last semester. Every single other course was compulsory. I never cheated, and looking back on it I'm glad I didn't, but I certainly did my share of useless learning.

Edit: that being said, in a system where there is such a thing as non-compulsory courses, and the critical path to graduation is sane, cheating on an exam on the critical path should definitely not be acceptable, even if it's "only" memorization. Some things really do need to be memorized.

Not every academic system allows to freely drop classes, to drop a class without an economic penalty, or to drop a class without falling behind in your studies.

There is not more to exams than memorisation thats their only function, they don't teach then exam.

Knowing and memorizing are not the same thing. I went to school to learn, not to memorize.

Yes, although a lot of thing can be learned much better by yourself rather than go to school, I think.

I had a programmable calculator during A Levels (UK sixth form college). Was talking Computer Science, Maths, Further Maths, a couple of others. These were not AS Levels, full A Levels.

I also had the seemingly good idea it would be nice to program the calculator, initially just writing algorithms like bubble-sort for CS that could be referred to, then extending to Statistics showing working for various statistical methods (the exam required steps showing working steps, learnt a little about data structures myself for that, then extending to matrix algebra and curvature). I also didn't go to most classes, only attending the ones that would be more useful than time in the library.

Typing character-by-character on a numerical keypad, getting a series of working systems. Was pretty fun.

And in the end, having working 'cheating systems'... I could do it faster in my head and never even took the calculator to the exam.

That's learning, I suppose. Did very well on the exams.

I also wrote programs to run long equations on my calculator. This wasn't forbidden at the time because it was too early, I suppose. Regardless, you had to show your work to get credit anyway so they just functioned as a way to check my work instantly.

I had a lot of fun writing little programs to help out on long arduous problems though. I wish I had all my TI programs.

Unless the exam allows notes, it can make sense to forbid using programs that are already stored and require to write the program during the time needed for the exam if you want to do that (even to program it to show the work if you want to add that into the program too; I think someone once did this), then it can be OK to allow it, I suppose.

I wrote a raster graphics editor for my Casio programmable graphing calculator. I also wrote it exclusively on the calculator. Did it to one-up my class mate, who had done one previously--mine had better features (no dot in the center of circles, could also do ellipses, had a spray function), and it was half the LOC.

Casio BASIC had subroutines in IIRC 36 registers ([A-Z0-9], conditional jumps and labels.

I wish I had that source code. I can't see how I would ever do something like it again.

its not work if its fun, which im sure this was

I would 100% talk about this in interviews depending on the interviewer. I can think of a couple interviews I had in SF that would probably be appreciative of this level of effort because you principally reject memorization.

Admitting to significant academic fraud during a job interview is a very, very bad idea. Furthermore, I would question the ethics and morality of any company that said "Wow, you solved an incredibly tough problem in order to commit fraud. Boy, are we the place for you!"

They wouldn’t actually say that of course. They would just think it.

Eh, probably some places (e.g. Uber) would love that kind of thing.

Hey, Kevin Mitnick still gets hired today, doesn't he?

As a public speaker and author mostly. He doesn't get access to state secrets and hasn't been employed by any other company. He wouldn't get a call back from McDonalds if he applied.

He's hired as a pen tester and gains access to companies, their secrets, etc. I have a sysadmin friend whose company hired him to pentest, and they kept in contact.

Like, I don't agree with you but I do see your point. I'd hope that a company would ask "and how do you feel about your choice to cheat?" open up a conversation about ethics and if you learnt from the experience. It's a can of worms and could result in a great interview.

> Admitting to significant ... fraud during a job interview is a very, very bad idea.

After serving his time, that's exactly how Frank Abagnale got a job in the FBI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale

Well, you need criminals to outsmart criminals.

I'm not sure why you need that trait in software. You're (usually) not trying to beat other programmers. So I suppose the parent comment should have added "except in adversarial situations".

Which means it does apply to cyber security. You need hackers to outsmart hackers. If that's the kind of industry you're applying for, it probably is a good idea to mention this actually.

Many EU startups won't be interested in your academic records but such a project would make them hire you on the spot.

That sounds interesting. Are EU startups known for less interest in uni credentials than US startups?

I'm not sure - but it became a meme in EU because other fields typically require good academical background, whereas IT is seen as done by punkers.

That's different. According to that page, Abagnale served 5 years in prison (6 months in solitary confinement), and had to work for the feds for a while "without pay". Then when he first got legitimate work, he was usually fired.

I'd be willing to hire someone who cheated and was caught and served time, but not someone who cheated without consequence and boasted about it.

The commenter here doesn't sound like they segued that into a career catching academic cheaters. They just used it as a stepping stone to their next personal accomplishment.

He’s the exception that proved the rule. The FBI never repeated that hiring process on anyone else.

> After serving his time

So there was nothing new to admit to, they already knew. Entirely different situation.

> Admitting to significant academic fraud during a job interview is a very, very bad idea.

Sure, it's a no go if you're looking for a job at an academic institution, and a big company will reject you because fraud of any kind is a huge HR liability, but I bet nose people would be impressed.

It might be well received at a startup, though. As long as you recognize your action was highly unethical.

Would be a fantastic answer to the YC interview question on how you've handed a system, though

I would allow it (if these kind of skills to design all of this system is the skills that is useful for this job). You are honest to admit it, and if you can make such thing, it is good. Of course that was cheating, but that does not mean that such thing is only to make fraud; you might do similar thing with other thing too.

Once you admit to fraud, though, they have no idea what else you might be lying about -- including the admission itself. They can't exactly call his old professor to confirm that he built and used a cheating machine.

Plus, after you admit to doing it once, if I weren't the sort to reject you outright, I'd still call every single person and institution on your resume to confirm all of those were real. Right out of the gate, you're proving yourself to be a lot more trouble than anyone else I'm interviewing.

It sounds like mostly luck that they weren't caught before. Are they going to try again, at my company? I don't want my company's legal footing to rest on one person thinking they'll never get caught.

Of course, that is true (although it is also possible to lie without admitting it!). I am only saying how I might do (depending the kind of job).

I find your point of view very narrow minded. I even admitted cheating in my bachelor's during my Master's thesis presentation.

It was in Switzerland, and culture is different; maybe we're less black and white.

If you cheated on an exam, it's a very bad negative signal for integrity there's no question about it.

This is not very grey.

If you were caught you would probably be kicked out of your Uni, this is a serious thing.

I understand there are extenuating circumstances, people are young, they do crazy things, we all have. But it's not something we run around talking about, certainly not in an interview.

It adds a human component to your interview. As the saying goes, programmers are lazy. Based on the components you describe, I think it's safe to say, that you're not an entry-level hire and you have experience in your field. It'll make for a great story and demonstrates passion.

I wouldn't talk about it, because it's a project that happened 10+ years ago. It's better to talk about more recent successes.

Amazing as this tale is, folks for anyone else who is sure that memorization is too hard don't do this. The real tip is:

Spaced repetition. Load up Anki or Mnemosyne and stick the info in there.

"Craig prepared for Jeopardy! by studying the online archive of past questions maintained on the J! Archive website. Using data-mining and text-clustering, he identified the topics most likely to occur in game questions,[9] then used the spaced repetition program Anki for memorization and tested himself using his own program.[10][11][12][13][14]

Craig played quiz bowl as a student at both Virginia Tech and the University of Delaware.[15] Before his Jeopardy appearances, he played numerous Jeopardy scrimmage matches against his friends with quiz bowl experience.[14]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Craig_(Jeopardy!_contest...

I was always tempted to modify a calculator to add Bluetooth, then I could stream over whatever data I wanted from a phone somewhere without any suspicion. Graphic calculators make this trivial as they often have a serial port, I just never got around to building it. I guess I didn't want to cheat that badly

That is unbelievable! How did you index the audio? What did you have to do to access them during a test, and how long did it take? Did you find that you had accidentally memorized some of the lectures after having read them aloud?

> I rejected memorisation on principle, that's not what an university should be about.

The lengths you went to to avoid doing it the easy way are incredible. You’re not alone, but I have to say I think this idea - that university should not involve memorization - is a common misconception. If you think about it, a good education requires memorization. What we’re learning in all fields in large amounts - even in math - is some degree of human history, and some degree of human notation and convention, neither of which can be derived by logic. Think about language, becoming a fluent speaker, especially the first time, is almost entirely learn by rote.

You rejected ethical behaviour 'on principle', you even seem proud of that. Have you kept doing that in life? Do you feel like an impostor, presumably with your degree that you didn't think you could acquire without cheating, or couldn't be bothered?

A surprising number of the replies to your comment also seem to think cheating like that at university is perfectly fine.

It was undoubtedly unethical behavior. But it's like... well it's like the story of Toshihide Iguchi, who accumulated over a billion dollars of trading losses and hid them successfully for 12 years. Sure you throw the guy in prison, but you have to hand it to him that what he managed to do is pretty damn impressive. After his release, finance CCOs might even want to hire him to audit their traders.

You can get off your high horse about not being able to acquire your degree without cheating, too. I never once cheated at any point in college, but if I had spent more time working on sick electronics projects and less time memorizing the years of significant 15th century battles, I'd be more qualified technically, not less. The ethics of it are problematic as I've said, but you seem to be going farther and implying something about his ability as well.

My humble opinion. University is about learning (not, for example, status). Learning is something strictly personal. There is nothing fundamentally universally wrong to cheat at an exam beside the fact you may be harming yourself.

Now since we need a little order for various secondary reasons, we promoted exam cheating to illegal and that's ok. We need order. But there is nothing someone should feel guilt for imho, assuming the person knows she may be harming herself.

I agree with this. I would further suggest that the modern conflation of two orthogonal functions (teaching and certification) in universities is rather misguided. These would be better served by two separate types of institution.

> These would be better served by two separate types of institution.

For a long time, they were. A technical school certifies someone to do something. A university teaches you how to think about hard things (supposed to, anyway).

I wasn't talking about law, I was talking about ethics.

"There is nothing fundamentally universally wrong to cheat at an exam beside the fact you may be harming yourself."

I don't understand that, I have no idea where you got that. Or what those words "fundamentally" and "universally" add. I say it's wrong, you say "Oh, but it's not fundamentally, universally wrong".. As if it's clear what that means.

For example: You may have harmed the people who didn't get good enough marks because you cheated your way into higher marks. Then you may harm people in your career that you're not qualified for, besides stopping properly qualified people from doing their jobs. I don't want an airlane pilot or doctor that bought their degree or cheated in exams, thanks. Anyway, it seems ridiculous that I have to explain to people why cheating's bad. Well, I don't know, maybe you are in a country where it's normal, perfectly fine, accepted, everyone does it. Where I come from, people don't have to have it explained to them why it's bad.

Yes, cheating is bad. But if you want to be interviewed to the job you need to see if is qualify to the job; some people can be good even if you have not went to the university or other schools, and even if you answered the exam it does not mean you are better at that particular job than another candidate but only that you know the answer of questions (or successfully cheating without being caught) and can be good at examsmanship.

If you are good at mathematics, you will invent a new theorem! If you are good at music, you will compose a new music! If you are good at chess, you can win! If you are good at exam answering, you can earn some more marks (guessing at answers if you do not know the answer)!

I guess you are right. It's ethically wrong but not morally wrong.

I guess you are right. It's ethically wrong but not morally wrong.

Huh? I don't see a significant difference between 'ethically wrong' and 'morally wrong', no idea why you would say that.

'Cheating at an exam' is transgressing a rule that doesn't "exist" in nature, it only exists in our social (if that's the right word) system. So if I cheat at an exam, I'm breaking a rule that's in the system that we made up (together), and therefore I can judge that, in some circumstances, I can break the rule without feeling morally wrong, without feeling guilt, because I, in some sense, made the rule myself. I'm breaking my own-making rule.

Another example of that could be: I want my kid to go to bed at 9pm. Sometimes I will break that rule. To some extend, because of the reasons I've advanced, I claim that cheating at an exam follows the same characteristic as the "kid go to bed at 9pm". Just not in the same magnitude if you will.

I then guessed that it may draws the limit between what's ethic and moral.

Hi again. I don't see how that draws any limit/distinction - it was 2 examples of rules that can be broken, not sure how that helps explain the difference, or why you said that. I wouldn't say bedtime is a moral rule/principle, or that breaking it is unethical. Maybe could make it clearer for me which one was supposed to illustrate what, if one was meant to be ethical, one moral, or something, I don't know. I really have never heard the words used with much or any difference. (I'm no expert, but have read dozens of ethics books, studied ethics/moral philosophy at uni etc)

I'm just guessing here, but maybe you have a religious value system, with absolute moral commandments or something? All I have (as an atheist) are ethical/moral principles exactly like 'cheating is wrong'.

You say 'cheating is wrong'. Fair enough, you can see 'right or wrong' as binary. Or you can live in the real world and understand that things are a little more complicated than that. With all the information you have out here (more than your hypothesis) you can make a fairer judgement. And you don't do judgement without introducing the living anyway because only what's living can judge and be judge-able. It's a social thing to judge right or wrong. So you have to take into account all the system. The living.

Now I'm not going to do the math for you.

Yes. Learning is yourself. (University is also supposed to be about learning, although this is only partially true as it is implemented.) They have exam you can test, but that is difference from learning, although if you know the answer then you can see if you know the subject being learned. But you do not have to learn only that way; you can do many thing such as to read a book, figure out by yourself, or in this case, to attend the lecture. If you have a question because you do not understand the lecture, then you should ask, and that is how you can learn. Also, examsmanship is not same as learning the other subject, but, still you can learn examsmanship too. Noticed I mentioned before, I might to accept if the stuff you did for the cheating is subject of the class anyways such that it mean is good at it, then perhaps you can earn "SG" (meaning that, you pass regardless of what is your mark).

But still, memorization is not the same as learning. That is one thing that the test is not always so good; whether or not is "ethic" and/or legal is independence from that, because if you understand, then you can do, but if you know the word but don't actually know what is the significance, then you might answer the question same like that one but not the difference question that you can actually use.

(I remember once on one exam, the last question I did not know, and cheated off of someone who also didn't know and was cheating off of me (I don't know if they were cheating on other questions too or not, only that it is for last question), so in this case we cheat off of each other. Of course it is no good compared to all of the effort they mentioned above, but still you can see, you can be cheating off of each other the same question. I think this is the only instance of cheating on exams I have done, although once I tried to use the "coughing code" (without telling anyone!!!) just to see if I can, and not because I actually wanted to cheat, because I don't want to cheat.)

Ethics is not something that gets decided by the Dean and laid down in a code of academic ethics. The University is just a part of society and it has it's own perverse and quite unethical practices; for example, the tendency to grab one's money and time and not provide any substantial education in return. Furthermore, the university might be perfectly aware that it provides crap services and that fraud is rampant, yet enforce it's own rules selectively just to the point where fraud is hidden away and not damaging to it's reputation.

So while I agree with you in the abstract, I believe it's hard for people in the western system to relate and make moral judgements about the experiences of a student in post-communist Eastern Europe, where the rules were often gray. Fellow students were cheating on a grand scale, and up to that point, I had the same principled attitude towards cheating as yourself. Part of the reasons for creating "the system" was my revolt towards what I saw around me - the tacit acceptance that those with good cheating skills, which I lacked and did not develop early in my academic career, should be allowed to cheat their way to a degree, while I was supposed to memorize garbage.

Sure, my "rebellion" was unethical and compounded the social problem around me. But what could I realistically do, could I have changed anything? At least I saved me from myself, because otherwise I would have dropped-out. In the grand scheme of things, impeccable ethics is often a luxury and could have the exact opposite effect, letting only those with no ethics whatsoever to graduate.

If you sign a code of ethics swearing you won't cheat and you do anyway, that's unethical. Even without an actual signature, the social contract is implicit. The fact that the university exploits athletes and postdocs is unrelated. You can break out the "I did what I had to do to survive" argument but then you're just conceding the point that you abandoned ethics out of necessity or simple mercenary desire for a better position.

I don't think it's a huge deal and wouldn't personally let it negatively affect a hiring decision provided you made the right noises about how it was dumb in retrospect and you were young, etc, but your comment here is pretty much the opposite of that. Who could possibly employ someone with your attitude? Even a gas station wouldn't want to hire a cashier who steals money from the register when they can get away with it just because the petroleum industry is destroying the environment, or whatever.

As I anticipated, it's hard to relate to somebody living in a profoundly corrupt society. My gripe with the university was not that it was exploiting postdocs or killing the environment; rather, that it failed to setup and enforce a system of rules where my extant academic ethics mattered.

The social contract includes not just what's written or implied, it's also what people do in practice, what is acceptable. If cheating is acceptable and required to get a tech job, then I can do that, in fact I can do it better than most. That says very little about my profound sense of ethics.

To counter your analogy: what if you are indicted of a crime you did not commit in North Korea? You surely accepted their rules when entering the country, but would you trust their judicial system to do the right thing? Would you bribe your way out if you were given the chance? Would you ask your country to put diplomatic pressure on your behalf, a clearly unethical advantage no Korean has? Would you consider escaping from prison if wrongfully convicted?

In a narrow definition of ethics as "whatever the current rules are" (typical, I would say, for somebody living their whole life in a state with strong rule of law), the only ethical behavior is to subject yourself to whatever abuse NK decides for you.

That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's true that law and ethics aren't always aligned, especially in authoritarian regimes. But basic things like integrity are essential for any human society.

Also, I'm not convinced that growing up in the former Soviet bloc necessarily means that honesty isn't the best policy. If everyone around you is corrupt, being the one dependable person around is a differentiator. Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems like that reputation could have some real world value to you.

By the way, it doesn't matter what your classmates are doing. Comparing myself to the average was horribly destructive to my college education. It turns out, everyone around me putting in average amounts of studying and getting average grades ended up getting average jobs with average pay! The one or two people in class that always aced everything, about whom I thought "well I don't have to be as good as them" - those were the ones who ended up having a real shot at grad school or dat $100k Facebook new-grad signing bonus. It's just like when you move from high school to college and suddenly you're not the smartest person in the universe anymore. Your cheating classmates are bozos - stomp them with harder work and keep moving up. Don't sink to their level.

> If you sign a code of ethics swearing you won't cheat and you do anyway, that's unethical

If you do not sign such a document, does it make a difference? Of course not. Getting massive advantage by extraordinary cheating is still unacceptable. However, cheating a little when stakes are very high, or cheating for 'greater good' may be acceptable. Cheating is a personal decision and whether it is acceptable depends on the situation the cheating person is in, and the person doing the judgement.

Thanks for explaining further, that's a finer reply than I deserved. Well, I didn't know where that was, or the wider story. What do I know, I've never been in that situation. Good luck, I hope to read your book one day. :-)

Why isn't it fine, though? What serious damage did his actions cause? Which important societal construct rests solely on the assumption that no students cheat and, once this is violated by a single student, comes crashing down? I would suggest that if such a construct exists, then maybe the problem is its very conception and this is what should be rethinked.

I think the implication that he should feel like an impostor for cheating on two exams is a very large over-reaction on your part.

"Which important societal construct rests solely on the assumption that no students cheat "

Society does not depend on wether or not a few students cheat.

But society definitely depends on the social and moral contract that we do not cheat, and that it is wrong. If most of us cheated, the system would definitely fall apart.

Have you ever visited a developing nation? Where outside of small villages it seems like everyone is cheating at everything, all the time?

It's like pouring sand into the gears of an engine: everything starts to break down.

I would not hire someone who admitted cheating during an interview unless they talked at length at their remorse, how they learned from it, how they grew from the experience, and there were exceptional circumstances.

> It's like pouring sand into the gears of an engine: everything starts to break down.

While true in general, cheating in that environment is also sometimes necessary to get on with your life unharmed. And sometimes cheating the system is actually regarded highly by the fellow citizens, because the people do not believe in the imposed system. Cheating is not beneficial to the system, but it often is to the people. Now, what is more ethical, doing what benefits the people or doing what benefits such system?

"And sometimes cheating the system is actually regarded highly by the fellow citizens, because the people do not believe in the imposed system. "

If you live a totally corrupt system, maybe.

But functional societies are based on the notion that cheating is bad, immoral, and nobody should do it.

"Now, what is more ethical, doing what benefits the people or doing what benefits such system?" - ha ha ... this sounds like how psychopaths in prison justify their crimes!

"I robbed the bank because the bank is evil, now who's more important, the people or the evil bank?"

No way around this one: cheating is bad.

People who rob banks are not necessarily psychopaths. For a good (fictitious but convincing) example, see Toby Howard in the film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_or_High_Water_(film) Robbing a bank is universally illegal, but it is not regarded as unethical in general.

>Robbing a bank is universally illegal, but it is not regarded as unethical in general

Erm, no, it is regarded as unethical by almost everyone except bank robbers.

Have you heard of the Robin Hood legend? It says the man was robbing the rich, and was very popular with the populace. I find it hard to believe that his robbing activity was regarded as 'unethical' by 'almost everyone'. Or a recent example, the sci-hub and libgen projects. They are robbing publisher shareholders of their profits. Do you think those projects are regarded as unethical by 'almost everyone'?

"but it is not regarded as unethical in general."

Yes it is.

Maybe you live in an interesting developing nation?

Robbing banks, stores, anyone - is considered basically immoral in all of civilization, thankfully.

Yes - not all bank robbers are psychopaths - probably not the majority.

But prisons are fully of people bending reality to justify their crimes.

Robbing average Joe is universally considered wrong. Robbing bankers, insurance companies or other powerful subjects, I don't think so. It depends on the circumstances - for a good example, see the movie, that is, if you like such a mental challenge.

Robbing banks, bankers, insurance companies and other 'powerful people or companies' is wrong, basically universally.

There is no ned to see any film about this.

If you'd told me this in an interview, I'd have hired you on the spot. The biggest issue with cheating, IMO, is that it can indicate laziness, but in your case it definitely doesn't - the story is great and says you're a highly creative person who gets things done and doesn't have to follow norms.

How did the teacher not notice the headphones and question you about it during the exams?

Personally for theses kind of things I used to use one earphone in my left hand, wearing a long sleeve shirt and laying my head over my left hand, covering the whole operation :)

The headphone was a very small analogue receiver that had it's own micro-battery, an inductor and amplifier - all about 4mm wide and 8mm long. You would place it deep inside the ear channel and it was invisible even to a person standing right next to you. The signal was induced by a coil you would wear around you neck and you would pipe raw audio into it.

Similar systems are even now on sale: https://www.olx.ro/oferta/sistem-de-copiat-casca-invizibila-...

A scriptwriter could make a movie out of that!

To work as a (commercial) movie, the stakes would have to be phenomenally high. I can't imagine the scene without the viewers saying "he did all that ... just to pass a test he objected to?".

That's creative AF.

IMO if you can get around a system that's as good as going through it. It usually takes a certain kind of ingenuity to be able to do, so I can't be mad at it.

Damn, man. You're hired.

In the workplace, no amount of technical ability can compensate for a lack of ethics.

Cheating on an exam does not always mean one has 'lack of ethics'. It may mean the opposite - say, "my parents aren't paying out of their veins for me to waste time on this nonsense."

So drop out of college then. No-one is forcing you to take the exam.

I am not talking about myself. Young people are strongly forced to pass the exam by multitude of strong incentives, including societal pressure and prospects for their financial well-being.

It's interesting to me that everyone here seems hellbent on ethics yet at the same time all of the big companies that we work for are some of the most unethical beasts in modern society.

I'm probably going to regret asking but how long did this take you? It is quite incredible.

A few weeks in total, but it was a labor of love so it was quite fun. The hard part was reading all the lectures out loud, it took about a week during which my family, probably hearing my from my room, was impressed of my new found and never since matched learning zeal.

This is one of the most interesting comments I've read in a while, thanks for sharing!

Crafty. Well done.

Similar (kind of) trick depicted in 1965 Russian comedy movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDn174Mf9PY

If it is exam about computer programming, then I might say, that is very good and I will not disqualify you for cheating in that way that you have managed that (although still the answers must be given correctly, like any exam).

That's quite impressive setup. I've used programmable calculator with text storage capability for my chemistry exam. I was correct that I will not need chemistry knowledge in all my life.

I was also cheating on my chemistry exam, but as your life is over yet I wouldn't be so sure. As I'm getting older it's getting more and more important for me to understand the biochemical processes that are going on (or going wrong) in my body.

>I somehow decided I needed to cheat to pass a certain exam because I was basically crap at memorizing stuff.

...

> but I rejected memorisation on principle

If only the prof had said "Good news, everyone! I’ve decided to make this an open-book test."

This is incredible, but seems more time consuming than studying. Cheers to you!

It might be a good test of a company to see if they were impressed and amused enough by this story to hire you because of it, rather than rejecting because of it.

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