Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Here's my problem with what the professor did, and my problem whenever a professor tries to get "clever" to catch a whole class cheating -- it's selective enforcement.

My problem is that the incentives at school mostly encourage students to cheat. They have learned, class after class, semester after semester, that cheating is widespread and that therefore the only way to get a fair reward-to-effort ratio is to cheat.

Then, they happen to get unlucky by taking a particular class a particular semester, they get caught, and get punished. Yet 99% of the other students at the institution never get caught.

That's not fair. That's not just. What isn't right here is for a professor to go on a private crusade that isn't aligned with the university's enforcement policies generally.

I'm all for it if the university wants to stamp out cheating completely, so anti-cheating measures are utilized in every class, so 85% of cheaters ultimately get caught, and students overwhelmingly stop cheating. Then it's a level playing field again.

But a situation where the university's official policies are against cheating yet their minimal and lax actions allow it to flourish, and then one professor decides to punish just a tiny number who get bad luck... there's nothing fair, just, or ethical about that.

EDIT: there seems to be some deep misinterpretation of what I said in some replies. Perhaps this analogy will help: there's a 55 mph speed limit in a state, but everybody knows that everywhere in the state cops don't stop you unless you're going over 65. Except for one village where the cops ticket everyone going just 56, and because locals know but nobody else does, all town revenue comes from speeding fines and the locals pay zero local taxes. Does anybody here this that is fair? Think that is just?

The principle here is that it's unethical to enforce policy/laws to such a small extent that they fail to deter behavior in general, but still punish a small group of people who are simply unlucky. Either strengthen enforcement so it deters, or don't enforce it at all. Because sporadic enforcement that fails to deter is the worst of all possible outcomes. There's nothing just about it whatsoever.

Nonsense. "Everyone does it" is a lousy defense, and all laws are selectively enforced.

They cheated. Period.

Nonsense back at you. Because laws that are selectively enforced to an extreme degree are unjust. Period.

Tons of students cheat. The solution is effective policy at an institutional level to actually deter cheating overall, not to catch a tiny subset of individuals that accomplishes nothing in the broader picture.

It's called "setting an example." Like catching a few speeders on the freeway: deters the rest.

> accomplishes nothing in the broader picture

not quite nothing. Those bad students got caught.

But it's not setting an example if it doesn't deter the rest, that's the point.

There's nothing good about punishing students if the punishment is too infrequent to deter. And one profesor acting alone isn't enough to deter.

Pure conjecture.

If the Chicago cops catch two murderers, that's several people who don't get shot. Even if they don't catch ALL of them.

Wow... we can't catch every criminal so we should just allow everyone to commit crimes.

Every class I took in college made at least some attempt to prevent cheating but it can certainly be tough. Not every subject even lends itself to evaluation by in class exam - especially when the point is to teach people how to research the subject. To suggest that simply because schools are unable to catch every act they should essentially give up is the most backwards answer I can think of.

Absolutely not. Nowhere did I say if we can't catch "everyone" then catch no one. I literally gave an example of catching 85% as good policy. 50% is more than fine too, and even much lower depending on the situation.

In fact, it's the very opposite -- I said if we're already catching almost nobody (think 1%) then incentives have been set up in a deeply unfair way.

I added an "edit" to my comment that hopefully explains further. The point is to deter broadly. If that's not happening, then policy is total failure already. Because the point is deterrence, not individual cruelty.

I don't think the enforcement is all that selective - any time I took an exam in a large hall, there were professors and TAs pacing around on the lookout. In smaller settings, it might have been just the professor but they all seemed to be trying to enforce the code. Many people may slip through the net but that's different than selective enforcement. If the rules have been communicated, I see no problem having a severe penalty as a deterrent.

Also, you may consider that it's because you're a cheater that you think everyone else is doing it. I made it out of a couple elite colleges with a good GPA and no cheating.

Your proposal is to castigate those who take a step in the right direction simply because they are out of step with the rest. This is, to put it gently, not how we get a better world.

No, it's that those who want to take a step in the right direction to coordinate to create a uniform policy.

Because that is how to get a better world. People all doing their own thing in different directions is not how to improve things. It's when people are acting together to enforce in the same way.

Are students to blame when they're receiving hugely mixed messages?

Yes. Right and wrong are invariant under incentives to do the wrong thing. That's why we call them right and wrong, rather than optimal or not.

You will never get everyone moving in the right direction if you dogpile the first one to take a step. In practice, these changes almost always require someone to do it on their own before anyone else takes the idea seriously.

Except that different people call different things right and wrong. There are no absolute rights and wrongs, people disagree deeply over ethics.

Which is why you need to work on convincing people to come around to your idea. Then you can implement it through university policy, law, etc.

We didn't come up with speed limits because a bunch of people decided to drive slower on their own and then the idea caught on. No, we came up with arguments as to why speed limits save lives, made it legislative policy with enforcement mechanisms, and then it works.

Effective change is coordinated. People going rogue on their own gets you nowhere.

Except no one actually disagrees that cheating is wrong, including the cheaters, so none of that "convincing others" stuff is relevant here. I don't know why you and so many other people in these threads want to pretend cheating is ethically complicated. It's not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com