Comment by mruts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mruts | Hacker News Reader

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I mean, I don’t think if I lost a programming conpetition to someone who was taking adderall I would feel any different about it. If it’s a conpetition, let’s just have the best person win and not impose arbitrary limitations on people.

A good example is the South African women who the olympic committee told to take a testosterone lowering drug in order to compete.

Competitions aren’t fair and there’s no such thing as “natural” in the first place. If the purpose of competitions is to find the absolute limit od human ability, it’s seem silly to me to ban steroids or long legs or too much testosterone.

I guess this is a different point that cheating, though.

Moreover, life is about bettering yourself and winning. That’s why I’ve always thought that cheating in college say is irrelevent. Unless the students are being graded on a curve, I don’t think academic cheating is a big deal.

tl;dr: By cheating you are only short changing yourself and no one should care about it.

> If the purpose of competitions is to find the absolute limit

Not everyone shares that assumption. If you think there should be races where the only goal is to get from point A to point B in the minimum time with whatever aids are available, go ahead and organize one. See who comes. I suspect that the vast majority of people would prefer races where competitors stay on the course and eschew most forms of mechanical aids. Opinions on chemical aids are more mixed, but that's not at all the kind of cheating at issue here.

> Unless the students are being graded on a curve, I don’t think academic cheating is a big deal.

Again, you're ignoring some effects of cheating. Students are often competing for admissions to graduate school (including e.g. medical or law school) so even if the grades themselves aren't on a curve the students are still being compared to each other. Those who don't cheat therefore are harmed. Also professors are graded too, so there's harm there. The purpose of the exercise is learning, which often means doing exercises as laid out. You don't learn calculus by letting a calculator or program do it for you. You don't learn programming by installing prepackaged software. When students take shortcuts, those paying for their education - usually not the students themselves - are not receiving the service they paid for. There's harm all around, and no amount of rationalization by those who can only keep up by cheating will change that.

I think your attitude is abhorrent.

Cheating matters. The purpose of going to college, or recording track times is for measurement and comparison. Allowing cheaters isn't just cheating yourself, it devalues the meaning of the measurement. It is inherently selfish and shows a lack of ethics that is detrimental to society as a whole.

It absolutely is not "only short changing yourself", as it also has very real, direct effects when a cheater displaces an honest hard-worker for a job or college acceptance.

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