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Comment by OrigamiPastrami | Hacker News Reader

Hating cheaters does nothing to change the reality of it being an effective method for getting ahead.

Only in narrow circumstances and only to a point. Or at least that's my (limited) understanding of game theory.

You're a caricature of my original point and you don't even realize it.

IME the reality is that trust erodes as cheating becomes widespread. The consequences of less trust are significantly higher costs and more stress and fear.

FWIW, I don't advocate blind trust.

Perhaps you meant to say we should teach the reality that cheating exists and is bad; not to pretend it doesn't exist? Or that it's hopeless to be honest and trustworthy because some others may not be? Which leads to ... apathy or more cheating and less trust.

I never said cheating is moral. I said cheating is advantageous. You think cheaters care that they're hurting society? You can't be a cheater without being selfish.

It would if said cheaters were socially ostracized. Instead we make big budget movies about them, they get famous, and then earn money from the newfound attention.

And who’s fault is that exactky

Presumably people that break the rules in a high-trust society, or at least those that enable the rule-breaking.

So…. everyone?

Do you have a particular answer in mind, or a point to your question? Yes, societal rules in some sense depend on everyone enforcing them. But there are also people/organizations/etc. with more power to fund or support these violations of social rules, so presumably they’re more at fault too.

So your point is that if we fundamentally change society, ignoring the fact that this is integral to human nature itself, then we can fix this problem? That's about as helpful as saying we can have peace in the Middle East if we all just got along. It's comical how disconnected from reality it is, and yet you seem to think people should take it seriously.

No, I’m saying that people have stopped enforcing social rules and therefore cheating is increasingly a valid way to succeed. That’s what the point of the thread was about. Lots of things are fundamental to human nature; society is the process of controlling and channeling them.

Fair enough.

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