Yes because Americans never cheat to get ahead and we are all morally superior…
Scarface just said "can't generalize to everyone" which is true and not the original point made.
Usually I try including at least a few links, but in this case I think anybody who has read these threads right here on HN should remember those numerous posts and discussions? I remember comments from educators who wanted to do something but the higher-ups prevented it, for example, or reversed the decision. Unfortunately I don't know what to search for to find these kinds of comments again.
EDIT: Found one very quickly after just a little cross-reading of one cheating related thread, the reply to this linked comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32533086
Quote:
> The amount of cheating was insane. He started academic dishonesty proceedings against many of the students but the department pressured him to "work it out."
It's not just the students either: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryancraig/2019/06/21/americas-l...
fwiw - I think Americans value integrity a lot more than most other places, and academic cheating is not nearly as common.
Of course, but the commenter I replied to made a specific statement, first sentence, making it sound to my reading - and I don't think I'm reading something into it that isn't meant to be there? - as if it's a lot less in the US. But even a little bit of searching, and every single time the topic comes up here, which usually is for higher education so I'm not making any statement about anything below, ends up with a lot of comments, and no opposition to them, saying there is a lot of cheating there.
Examples:
https://academicintegrity.org/resources/facts-and-statistics
> McCabe’s original research and subsequent follow-up studies show that more than 60 percent of university students freely admit to cheating in some form.
https://proctoredu.com/blog/tpost/5dk67zrns1-academic-dishon...
> The level of cheating in high school according to statistics is extremely high. One of the most thorough studies, carried out by Dr. Donald McCabe, reveals that about 95% of polled students (both undergraduates and graduates) admitted to having cheated in some form.
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/27/1031255390/reports-of-cheatin...
Therefore, it surprised my that the original commenter made such a strong statement.
The worse penalty possible for cheating (IF you get caught and IF the teacher/professor even cares, which was not by any means universal) is getting a grade of 1 (out of 10) on that specific item (exam, project etc. ).
This is even true for the national country-wide exams you take in 8th and 12th grades: if you are caught cheating, you get a 1/10 on that specific exam, but can still take all the rest, and will be forced to re-take the one you cheated on in the next session.
The only thing treated more seriously were bachelor's/master's/PhD theses, where you could face plagiarism charges. But even this is mostly theoretical, especially for the bachelor's, since only some cursory verification was ever performed, at least at my university (one of the biggest ones in the capital).
My impression from reading HN, where the topic came up numerous times over the years, was that that is not so. See the link I presented as example, I saw a lot such stories, right here in the discussions, but also in some articles. Not just the US, I also remember similar anecdotes about management preventing punishment from Canada even when a professor initially tried to do something.
If it is not representative I apologize, I go by what I read mostly here, and it was a lot over the years.
There certainly seems to be an official stance against cheating, e.g. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=201609211...
It's just that I saw so many stories from or about educators who tried and it went like in that link I included, especially when many students were caught.
"Why Professors Don’t Do More to Stop Students Who Cheat" - https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-professors-dont-do-mor...
> Some who have tried say that administrators, fearful of lawsuits, don’t back them up
> “In the majority of cases of trivial cheating, I think most professors turn a blind eye,” says Donald L. McCabe, the associate provost for campus development at Rutgers University at Newark, who has studied the issue. “The number who do nothing is very small, but the number who do very little is very large.”
That's usually why the first port of call when some corruption is detected is Finding What's Weird and the second is Not Like The Rest Of Us.
San Francisco's city government is hopelessly corrupt and visibly so for someone who has lived under other obviously corrupt governments. But that is not even apparent to faraway Republicans who are the only ones who will say it is.
But those people are similarly ignorant of the massive corruption of their own local government.
It has taught me a new path of success for corruption: that of hiding in plain sight among those of your identity.
It’s a xenophobic lie, like if Americans don’t celebrate lying on positive euphemisms like “fake it till you make it” or “being a good salesman”
For what it's worth, "fake it till you make it" is far from being universally seen as positive, and (car) salesmen are seen as one of the most untrustworthy and least liked professions (just above telemarketers and members of congress). [1]
1: https://thehill.com/business/3812900-here-are-the-most-and-l...
I mean, the whole reason why people also lie in other areas. Which also explains why people of “low trust” societies might lie more rather than “it’s in the culture of those dirty foreigners”.
Most Americans that I know don't consider those phrases to reflect positive values at all. They're used disparagingly against people who really think like that.
I assure you that “the good old days” weren’t so good for my still living parents growing up in the segregated south.
As far as “not everything being related to race”, tell that to my parents who grew up in the 60s and 70s when everything was related to their race there those were the good old days.
They literally weren’t “trusted” to drink out of the same water fountain, go to the same schools or swim in the same pool.
The only people who long for “the good old days” when “trust” was high are those who benefited themselves or whose parents benefited from systematic and de jure discrimination.
The good old days when you could live off of one income came about because Europe was recovering from a war and we dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan.
The Old Testament also offers an approach to dealing with rampant cheating in society: trust in God to provide you with what you need. It's not an exact match for classmates cheating, but David had to deal with a literal existential crisis by a king who believed falsehoods about him, and dealt with it by trusting God and refusing to kill the king (that is, using the king's methods to secure himself). Many of the psalms appear to record the emotional process he went through.
https://www.bible.com/bible/1359/1SA.15.3-23.ICB
Even with David, when David sent one of his soldiers to die on the front line so he could have the soldier’s wife, God let David’s baby die.
The Old Testament God wasn’t exactly the loving and forgive your neighbor type.
If that correlation exists, it may point to an alternative hypothesis to the GP claim that the issue is rooted in those coming from "low trust" societies and due to an internal mechanism.
By definition, being forced to drink out of separate water fountains is putting people on the opposite side - ie opposite poles.
That said, I don't really want American culture to continue down this "if the ends justify the means" trend that we've been on. We're not cut out for it! We'll get our lunch eaten.
The example of inter tribal slavery doesn't actually apply to what I'm talking about. Slavery, and highly destructive, unprovoked raids which sometimes concluded with massacres of women and children were normal in the Americas. Is enslaving a member of another band or tribe a violation of trust? Is engaging in unprovoked war raids a violation of trust? These practices would not come as a surprise to anyone living within raiding territory of a warlike people. Trust can only come into play when a party to an agreement, whether tacit or explicit, has an opportunity to violate what was agreed upon.
Saying "Every nation ever has always tried win zero-sum interactions with other nations" conceals that there were actually vast differences in the way colonialist powers conducted themselves in relations with Native American tribes. The (at the time British) Canadian government honored treaties much more often and in better faith than US authorities.
My point is that in-group relations is not the same as out-group relations. High trust is about how you treat members of your in-group. Enslaving foreign people is most certainly a "low trust" move (how can I possibly enter an agreement with you when I know you might just show up one day and enslave me?) but it's fully possible and consistent for the perpetrator to belong to a high trust society.
Your example of the Maori is perfectly analogous to what happened in Canada/ But regardless of how things turned out, why did the British honor treaties when they had no incentive to do so? How do you account for this difference in a world dominated by purely rational decision making when interacting with those outside of your culture?
The perfect storm of incompetence created the system we inherited from our forefathers. It benefits Americans, but maybe the wealth is also killing us due to massive obesity and sedentary lifestyles on top of a greedy litigious society.
No system is perfect.