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Comment by jordigh | Hacker News Reader

Cheating is pretty entrenched in Chinese culture. Sometimes I even wonder if they consider it's cheating at all or if it's just cleverness and they should be rewarded for it. I believe they feel that way about infringing copyrights too: why should they follow someone else's rules that puts them at a disadvantage when they can instead demonstrate cleverness and break those rules?

There was an interesting story recently about how a disproportionate amount of Chinese students are expelled from US universities for cheating.

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/05/29/u-s-schools-ex...

The problem is so entrenched that some students rioted when they were prevented from cheating, because they felt that this put them at an unfair disadvantage compared to other schools where cheating was tolerated:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/1013239...

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If you look at it another way, it's not so bizarre. The person is retrieving their information from another's head. They're using a social storage mechanism. This works fine in the classroom, it works OK in the workplace. It works well in most situations. The only place it breaks down is during testing.

Because standard testing is only supposed to verify that you're storing the data locally. Standard testing is designed in a way that only helps "local storage" people, and alienates these users who get their information from their environment.

Open-book, open-note, and open-internet testing removes this barrier and levels the playing field for these "network storage" learners.

Or am I completely out of touch?

That would be OK if the rules were the same for all teams. In any situation, classroom or not, if you're breaking the rules you are cheating. This doesn't mean that "network learning" is wrong, just that doing this without common approval of all participants is not socially acceptable.

Proctors rarely get a common agreement. They make the rules, then you're forced to either accept them or completely forego the examination - the equivalent of failure, it negates the time you've spent training.

To me, it's a form of duress.

You may be right, but huge problems arise with the open-everything-testing solution with regards to access to resources, especially with standardized testing. SATs (and standardized tests in general) are meant to be a blind test that objectively evaluates the abilities of any individual student anywhere the same way; if we allow external resources, this will undoubtedly be a huge disadvantage for students in lower income areas who don't have easy access to the Internet or a sufficient number of reference books and materials for all the students. Providing internet access at testing sites would help somewhat, but if you have grown up in an environment where the internet was not as ubiquitous as some of us are used to, you may not have the Google-fu or knowledge of Internet research methodology necessary to compete with those in wealthier areas. This is an issue that will hopefully be diminished over time, especially in developed nations, but it will be a very long time before Internet access is sufficiently widespread in what are now developing nations to prevent a huge barrier to entry for students in these places.

Maybe students who are disadvantaged on their internet access could test on other subjects, such as math or physics. It seems unfair to penalize the other people who have access to information and can use it.

As a child I was not allowed to use calculators in math - for the reason that "what if your computer breaks?" - well, it never broke. It was a stupid rule, especially after 4th grade.

Computer access will always be available, so why ban it during testing?

"what if your computer breaks?" is a poor reason. The real reason is to get an estimate of results in your head so you can cross-check the computer for mistakes. How much ice cream to feed my city of 30,000? If the computer says 7.336E9 kg, that's a problem.

Why is it even bizarre? Chinese people cheat for the same reasons anyone would cheat. Being chinese and born in America, I actually found it really surprising the first time I met software engineers who refuse to download even one copy of pirated software.

Culturally we just feel significantly less guilty about it. Doesn't mean we aren't aware that it's wrong. Chinese people are fully aware of what's right and wrong and we choose to deliberately cheat. Whether that's a cultural tendency or genetic one is another story.

> Chinese people are fully aware of what's right and wrong and we choose to deliberately cheat. Whether that's cultural tendency or genetic one is another story.

What?! Genetic?! There is very little, if any evidence to support the idea that genetics has anything to do with the Chinese propensity to cheat...

There's no evidence at all. Even when attempting to do research on this, the political backlash could destroy any scientist's career. No official evidence will ever be collected because of this.

I only speak from personal experience. I know many chinese people both born here and born abroad. I am also chinese and born in the united states. I am telling you, honestly, from a purely anecdotal standpoint: I think there's a chance it's genetic.

Edit: Just to keep things from getting out of hand, and more balanced I want to state this fact: Statistically, it is far more likely for a serial killer to be a white caucasian male then it is for a serial killer to be of any other race. Do I think this is a cultural thing? No. I'm leaning towards genetics. But that's a purely anecdotal opinion as there's no evidence pointing in either direction.

Why would those things be genetic? If there were a "serial killer gene" or a "cheater gene", those traits should manifest themselves in all kinds of obvious differences in behavior - which we do not see. It's hard to imagine a protein causing such complex differences in behavior while affecting nothing else.

What's the other explanation then? Culture? Why don't we see higher rates of serial killers in other races born in the United States?

It's very possible for many differences in behavior between races to be genetic in origin, in fact it's the more logical hypothesis versus the alternative which states genetics doesn't influence behavioral differences between races.

Think about it. If genetics influences physical traits from height, skin color, facial features, and even athleticism, what black magic in this world makes it so that genetics doesn't even touch behavior or intelligence?

>It's hard to imagine a protein causing such complex differences in behavior while affecting nothing else.

It's impossible to logically deduce a conclusion from the bottom up. We simply currently don't have enough knowledge to know how proteins scaffold the entire human neural network. With highly limited knowledge, we can only look at the problem from the top down. That being: genetics is known to influence physical traits, therefore it is logical to conclude that it also influences mental traits.

> If genetics influences physical traits from height, skin color, facial features, and even athleticism, what black magic in this world makes it so that genetics doesn't even touch behavior or intelligence?

Because we have no evidence that such is the case on a culturally grouping level.

There is no genetic concept of "Chinese". It literally doesn't exist.

You're making this about the possibility of genetics impacting behavior, when the real issue is you thinking cultural boundaries exist in genetics. They don't.

There's no concept of humanity on the atomic level. It literally doesn't exist. One configuration or mishmash of atoms we call rocks are no different then the mishmash we call humans. Try, without using any high level concepts or groupings, to define what configuration of atoms signifies a rock and what configuration signifies a human.

If you go low enough on any topic the boundaries between categories become vague and the definitions become extremely complex. It's very hard to define what a human is in terms of atoms. The same goes for race, it's very hard to define, at the genetic level what is chinese, and what is not, but the category and boundary exists at all levels, and we can't ignore it.

I've heard of your argument before. They say that the delta in genetic differences between two people of different races is the same as the delta of two people, of the same race, therefore race doesn't exist. This argument is flawed. I believe the "genetic" definition of race is immensely more complex than simply the delta of genetic differences. Here's a more accurate definition: People of the same race have a higher probability of sharing certain genetic traits.

So let me redefine my argument in way you can understand. The people who we label as "chinese" who share similar physical/genetic traits, I believe will be more likely to also share a behavioral genetic trait that makes them more likely to cheat.

I'm sorry, you misunderstand -- the people we label as "Chinese" do not share similar physical/genetic traits.

Common misconception that they do, but there is very little genetic consistency across cultural boundaries, and when such a thing does exist, it's quite noteworthy.

> the people we label as "Chinese" do not share similar physical/genetic traits.

This statement is utterly and completely incorrect. It is a common myth in the social sciences.

Please read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_genetics#Population_ge...

first paragraph from above page: "The relationship between race and genetics is relevant to the controversy concerning race. In everyday life many societies classify populations into groups based on phenotypical traits and impressions of probable geographic ancestry and socio-economic status - these are the groups we tend to call "races". Because the patterns of variation of human genetic traits are clinal, with a gradual change in trait frequency between population clusters, it is possible to statistically correlate clusters of physical traits with individual geographic ancestry. The frequencies of alleles tend to form clusters where populations live closely together and interact over periods of time. This is due to endogamy within kin groups and lineages or national, cultural or linguistic boundaries. This causes genetic clusters to correlate statistically with population groups when a number of alleles are evaluated. Different clines align around the different centers, resulting in more complex variations than those observed comparing continental groups."

In short it's saying genetic traits can be statistically correlated with population groups (race) but variations of traits that are different within population groups can actually be more complex than those observed when compared with people outside of their race.

This is literally exactly my argument. Supported by wikipedia at the very least.

I do not accept the given definition of race from this page, as it presumes the term "race" is in any way scientific or rigorously defined when in actuality it is not.

What we "tend to call" race is not defined, despite this wiki page's attempt to do so.

This wiki page is the reflection of the general opinions of the scientific community. You can redefine any word to have any definition that fits your universe, but when communicating with other people, we must go with general consensus.

> This wiki page is the reflection of the general opinions of the scientific community.

It isn't. The concept of "race" is not rigorously defined.

A word not having a rigorous definition does not make the concept non-existent among scientists. "Life" is not rigorously defined.

Life is very rigorously defined, however it's not unequivocal:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life#Definitions

A word not having a rigorous definition means it cannot be discussed scientifically. Hence the actual problem of studying the existence of life, e.g. is a virus alive?

please note. Unequivocal and rigorous are synonyms.

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/unequivocal/4

>A word not having a rigorous definition means it cannot be discussed scientifically.

Life is discussed scientifically in many contexts yet it is not unequivocally or rigorously defined. In fact there's an entire field based on the study of life. It's called biology, aka the study of life. If a scientific field can stem from a word that does not have a rigorous or unequivocal definition, then it can be discussed scientifically.

I'm getting tired of this conversation, so I'll just leave you with the idea that words carry different definitions in different contexts. There is no scientific context by which "race" is currently known. You can choose to accept that, or you can continue to deny that, it doesn't really matter to any of the folks who work in this field.

@dimino

I'm getting pretty tired too. You choose not to accept the facts even when a scientific description proving my point is thrown in your face. Ideas need evidence for support, you have presented me with ideas, but no evidence.

The folks in the field are in agreement with me, (see the old wikipedia link I sent you). You got nothing, only empty claims.

You don't have to go to the absurd "cheater gene" degree. Note this is not at all scientific, but rather trying to point out how easy some small genetic things might push society and culture in particular directions.

Suppose instead that a few traits like: - Social Intelligence - Impulse Control - Desire for Retribution

have normal distribution with slightly different peaks in different populations.

A population with high social intelligence and low desire for revenge might tolerate more cheating(since people only cheat when they can get away with it) than one with low impulse control and high desire for revenge, where cheating might spark a shootout.

You probably don't have to move those distributions much to start seeing pretty large changes in things like mass shooting demographics, or who cheats.

> Even when attempting to do research on this, the political backlash could destroy any scientist's career. No official evidence will ever be collected because of this.

This is really offtopic, but I think you're wrong. There are two ways to do such research - the proper one and the racist one.

The proper one is to link specific genes to specific behavior. This presumes that you screen individuals in the study for those genes. Then you are not being racist, because existence of those genes is rarely 100% coinciding with culture or skin color. Research like that is quite common, if there is a reason to think there is indeed a link (for example there is a genetic study of above average intelligence in Ashkenazy Jews, they were extremely homogenous group and yet they don't all share the genes that has been shown to have the link).

The racist way is to match skin color or culture to behavior. This is scientifically useless, because you don't show any actual genetic link, and it only serves for stirring racial hate (you could pick any indirect attribute from many, like eye color or facial hair, so why pick skin color?). Such studies are rightfully being rejected by real scientists.

> Chinese people are fully aware of what's right and wrong and we choose to deliberately cheat.

I personally got bit by this in my work. This is exactly why I'm never ever going to work with a Chinese again in my life time. I should also tell about this to people I care about.

It's the unfortunate truth, imo, that chinese people are more likely to cheat. This does not preclude other races from cheating though, and it does not mean ALL chinese people cheat.

Yes, the point of testing is to know whether the person being tested actually knows anything. Your example is of someone who does not.

No - what's happening here is we're disagreeing on the meaning of the verb "to know".

> The person is retrieving their information from another's head. They're using a social storage mechanism. This works fine in the classroom, it works OK in the workplace. It works well in most situations. The only place it breaks down is during testing.

Many tests verify a skill rather than knowledge. If you're cheating then you're masking your lack of skill by using another person's skill as a crutch. If you're later given the relevant qualifications and end up in a situation where other people expect to be able to rely on you having the said skill then you're likely to fail these people. Bad.

In today's world, remembering specific pieces of information locally is less of a concern, I agree, but for basics it still applies: you may be able to learn it from colleagues or internet when you need it, but there is still a limit on your "input bandwidth".

I was once in an exam hall and middle-aged female primary school teachers were in the next row writing a trivial (non-degree) exam on primary school mathematics education or something [^]. They were brazenly passing notes to each other even though the exam was open-book. Cheaters gonna cheat.

[^] With teachers like that, it isn't surprising that South Africa is so poorly ranked at maths.

Testing allows people to have an objective means of determining others' worth as external storage in specific situations.

This has also been a problem with the SAT for a long time in China. This one appears to be the most recent instance of the problem:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/...

This same thing also continues and becomes ingrained in academia:

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21586845-flawed-system-j...

I'm not sure if it's a cultural thing as you say or what, but I have heard of universities just assuming all numbers from Chinese national applicants have been doctored.

Someone who's actually Chinese, and went to school in China, would know best, but my feeling is that it's more simple - Chinese culture just places a really high value on results, as opposed to broader goals like learning, advancing a field, etc. If the grade/win is all that matters, then cheating is just a way to get there.

> There was an interesting story recently about how a disproportionate amount of Chinese students are expelled from US universities for cheating.

That's not what that article claims. You cannot conflate poor grades and cheating. The article intentionally misleads by just listing % for all reasons that Chinese student are expelled and then hints (without outright saying) the reason must be cheating, it couldn't be for example poor English skills? Or a ton of other problems international students might have (e.g. cultural adaption)?

I don't know if Chinese students cheat more (I don't have that data, and the article doesn't supply it). But I do know that Americans spend a lot of time writing anti-Chinese stuff and it is getting pretty pathetic.

A related article that helps quantify things more: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/america...

>Demand for an overseas education has spawned a cottage industry of businesses in China that help students prepare their applications. The industry is poorly regulated and fraud is rampant. According to Zinch China, an education consulting company, 90 percent of Chinese applicants submit fake recommendations, 70 percent have other people write their essays, 50 percent have forged high school transcripts, and 10 percent list academic awards and other achievements they did not receive. As a result, many students arrive in the U.S. and find that their English isn’t good enough to follow lectures or write papers.

EDIT: The white paper linked in the WSJ article leads to a 404, but here is the link: http://www.wholeren.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-Whit...

Google Translate provides the following:

>In the survey, we found that the main reason was expelled classified into the following nine kinds: poor academic performance (57.56%), academic dishonesty (22.98%), attendance problems (9.67%), misconduct (3.87%), international student identity (2.96%), in violation of the law (1.93%), psychological problems (0.57%), financial problems (0.23%) and Shen learn material legacy issues (0.23%). Some were expelled from reason There is a causal relationship between the links. But the statistics, we tend to count the cause and expelled most direct contact.

> it couldn't be for example poor English skills?

How did they even get admitted into university in the first place in that case? TOEFL cheating.

Its pretty entrenched in US culture too. Example one, downloading "free" stuff off the Internet that used to have to pay for in a store. People make all kinds of rationalizations why this is not stealing. Example two is just about any US high school or college. The US Air Force Academy graduated a 20% smaller class than normal his year because so many were expelled in cheating scandals. A major sociology paper was just retracted in Science, on of the worlds leading journals, because a grad student faked the data.

> People make all kinds of rationalizations why this is not stealing.

Arguments that it is stealing are also nothing more than rationalizations. That's what both sides wield: it's a war of rationalizations.

(I tend to be more convinced by the "it's not stealing" rationalizations myself, simply because stealing an object makes it unavailable. If someone stole my bicycle, I'd be upset. If they cloned it in a Star-Trek-style "replicator" and took the copy, I couldn't care less. If you lend a book or DVD or SD card or whatever to someone, upon it being returned, you have no way to test the hypothesis "a copy of this was retained by the borrower". Not testable is not real, for all practical purposes.)

No, one side is an author/content creator who has not been compensated.

The other side is a person who is capable of rationalizing theft because it is a minor theft.

The theft isn't of an object, it is theft of compensation due to a creator. Duplication isn't the issue.

It's not because you're saying it like it's a fact that it will become one :/

And now you are rationalizing. Welcome to the mess/party.

Without derailing this into yet another "copyright infringement isn't stealing" thread, as far as the creator is concerned, they don't get compensated under other circumstances which are not commonly seen as infringement or even morally wrong. Example: A roommate watching a movie or playing a game with you.

Spinning it as purely a compensation issue is being a bit reductive, IMO. And from there it leads directly into objectively unanswerable intent questions.

Just wait; I'm going to obtain an exclusive distribution license on DNA from the oldest bacterium in the world. All life will then have to compensate me every time any cell divides.

Also, since DNA controls what you look like, including your silhouette, you will have to pay me every time you allow a light source to cast a shadow of yourself onto a flat surface.

Also, when you take a bath, you displace a volume of water corresponding to your shape. That is an unlicensed copy.

Your footprints in the dirt or snow, ditto, not to mention the fingerprints you leave on everything you touch.

---

Man, think about it. Millions of years of evolution (based on continuous unrestrained copying and alteration on a massive scale) lead to Man. What does man do? Put three guitar chords together with some puerile, hackneyed lyrics, and insist on compensation from everyone that hears the crap.

Absent piracy, the money in the pirate's pocket would not magically have been in the content producer's pocket, which is the assumption underlying your ostensibly factual statement.

> The theft isn't of an object, it is theft of compensation due to a creator. Duplication isn't the issue.

Based on my limited understanding of copyright law, it does in fact concern itself with actual duplication, and is rather mum about compensation.

You can infringe by, say, altering something that is freely distributed in a way that is not permitted by its license (for instance changing the copyright notice to say that you created that work, rather than the author). The author could be adamant that permission to do that is not granted at any price (so that it's not an issue of compensation, but purely about unlicensed duplicates with unauthorized alterations).

But I do have a way to test for it. I can break into their house and (properly) steal their computer, then analyze its contents. I'm just not supposed to. That hardly makes their copy "not real, for all practical purposes."

I don't think your analogy makes a lot of sense

Breaking into a house - we have a name for that - it's called "breaking and entering" and "trespass".

However, going along with your analogy, say you're in my house - from my perspective, I would care about what you did.

If you took something that was mine, and denied it to me, I'd be quite annoyed. (I've had a expensive road bike stolen, so yes, I know what it feels like).

However, say you took photographs of everything I owned, to copy my packing style and organisational techniques? Or took them so that you could re-buy everything I have for yourself off Amazon? I probably wouldn't be annoyed, so much as think you odd...

> That hardly makes their copy "not real, for all practical purposes."

Your example of how it's "practically" impacting your life is that if you happen to commit a felony against the person and then analyze their computer explicitly looking for it, you'd happen to find out?

I think that's the very definition of "not a practical difference in my life", given the distinctly low likelihood that series of events would ever happen.

Would you care to try again?

The parent claimed that it was impossible to test for the existence of a copy and that therefore its existence or lack thereof is not relevant. I claimed that it is possible to test for the existence of the copy. I would further claim that there absolutely is a practical difference as far as a renter is concerned, whether or not they test for the existence: The person who copied the rented DVD is very unlikely to rent it again when the want to watch it later. Which I presume they intend to do given that they went to the (admittedly minimal) trouble of copying the movie in the first place. I suppose that in the scenario where it is a lent item, the argument of lost revenue is slightly less strong.

To put it the other way - all my life I've had free music. From the radio. In the car. In stores. Elevators. Birthday cards. Gas stations. Retail workplace. On the bus. Now even on Youtube and thousands of other streaming video sites.

And now you suddenly want me to pay for it? Why, what changed?

You've never had free music (unless you stole it). Radio and YouTube are free due to advertisements. All of your other examples are either public domain or a business paying to play music for you.

I don't think the liquor store pays the guitar bum loitering in front. :)

The United States and Canada allowed free music (for personal use) if you wanted to tape it off the radio - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act.

I believe a portion of the cost of blank tapes was allocated to recording artists to cover this costs, so perhaps it wasn't entirely free...

The funds were allocated to recording companies, not directly to artists. Which means the artists rarely saw any of that money - the percentage of that payment to which they were entitled rarely rounded up to 1 cent.

> You've never had free music ... Radio and YouTube are free ...

So which one is it: was music free or not?

Free.

When an ad comes onto one radio station, you switch to another without ads. Redundant array of independent radio stations. Advertising is damage. So advertisers coalesce their ad timing, so the damage happens on all independent channels simultaneously, so you turn off the radio for several minutes, maybe switching to Pandora or another stream.

When Youtube plays ads, you mute it and goto another tab, and keep watching a different video. When the ad is done (such nice ads for telling you their duration), you simply return to the tab and watch your content.

There's always another service that's looking to hook you before they advertise. So you can just switch between them.

If everyone did that, advertisers wouldn't make money. That only works because most people do listen to the ads.

Then maybe everyone would find a less invasive monetization means.

It really isn't stealing. Not even legally, despite how how much people say it is. Copying is not theft:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU7axyrHWDQ

It might be cheating, it might be copyright infringement. Depending on the circumstances it may or may not be moral. But 1000 unauthorised copies do not mean 1000 lost sales. The situation is more nuanced than a simple 1-1 correspondence.

It's disingenuous to equate fraud -- cheating in a zero sum game -- with violating a purely manufactured right like copyright.

Unlike fraud, the ethics of violating copyright are highly situational and quite complex. A recent example of mine:

I purchased a very expensive publication; my purchase included a PDF copy that was (unbeknownst to me) DRM-locked with very onerous DRM.

- I fired up IDA Pro and broke the DRM so that I could read the PDF without their invasive DRM; I have no intention of distributing the results. This is actually illegal, and in violation of the license under which I was granted any rights to the PDF. Was this unethical?

- If I couldn't break DRM on my own, would it be wrong to download a copy from the internet?

- Given that I own the physical book, if my purchase hadn't included the PDF, would it be wrong to download a PDF of it?

- If I wanted to know what was in the publication before I paid a great deal of money for it, would it be wrong to download it?

- If I didn't have the money to pay for the PDF (as was often the case when I was a teenager and where I learned to crack software), would it be wrong to download for free -- but not distribute -- the PDF? How wrong?

... and so on ...

It's not stealing if another person isn't deprived of an object. That is the definition of theft. Not a certain series of bytes travelling into my NIC. IP zealots need to make all kinds of rationalizations for why this is "stealing".

What is stealing, however, is the theft of rights perpetrated by the content industry by extending the terms of copyright so they can "own" ideas in perpetuity.

When I (and many others) say "piracy is not theft", it's not to "rationalize" piracy. It's to fight incorrect terminology, because such loose, imprecise use of language muddies the discussion and hinders productive discourse. Piracy is not theft, nor is it murder, nor is it rape. It is a different crime, with different costs and repercussions.

Most people don't realize what they are doing is wrong.

The title of that wsj blog should be "U.S. Schools Expelled About 3% Chinese Students For Cheating Which Is Below National Average".

Not that you are incorrect or that this is not an interesting aside, but I find these conclusions a bit dreadful. "American dies after eating 400 hotdogs in eating competition" = "unhealthy fastfood is pretty entrenched in American culture". The article uses another hyperbole. "But [about Baidu cheating] artificial intelligence researchers have a more basic concern: that their work will once again fall short of expectations, leading to yet another fallow period for their field.". There are now Machine Learning PhD. thesis on the frontpage of HackerNews. This field is not going anywhere barren soon. Researchers are not worried about their own work in response to Baidu being caught out for cheating. The Rosenblatt quote was after a question by the NYT journalist, he did not give that forecast in a paper. I also think he did not specify a timeline of less than a year. Most if not all forecasts have come true by now. His claims got vindicated.

> "American dies after eating 400 hotdogs in eating competition" = "unhealthy fastfood is pretty entrenched in American culture".

Not for nothing, but I'd actually agree with that conclusion, based on your example.

If a culture promotes fast food to the point where competitions related to the rapid consumption of the fast food causes a death, I'd consider it a symptom of the larger "fast food culture" problem for that society.

Competitive eating (including stuffing 110 hot dogs down your throat[1]) is popular in Japan. Is "unhealthy fastfood pretty entrenched in Japanese culture"?

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeru_Kobayashi

Normally when you cite a source, the source is supposed to support your argument.

A Japanese man who wins predominately USAian eating contests does support the statement "Competitive eating is popular in Japan".

Besides this not being true. Can we please try to be a little political correct? Imagine someone writing "Crime is pretty entrenched in Black American culture" or "The feeling of superiority is entrenched in Jewish culture" - that would not be so nice, right?

Seriously.

It's better to be true than politically correct.

But it is worse to be politically incorrect and false - which is the case here.

Can you provide some support for your assertion that this is false -- that there are no cultural differences between Chinese cultures and Western cultures in terms of attitudes of what is "right" in terms of cheating, plagiarism, or copycat/shanzhai goods? Note that this is not just a matter of whether a culture has cheaters or not, but to what degree it is tolerated in either practice or in the stated beliefs of a culture.

Culture is not just cuisine and costumes -- it is also how one interacts with the world and others in one's society. There's a certain arrogance in assuming that all people in the world must obviously approach things in the same way that you do.

I can't help but feel that your evidence that it is false is that it is politically incorrect. Prove me wrong?

(Bear in mind that one can not have both "There's a lot of diversity in the world, and that's a good thing, and we should seek more diversity" and "All cultures are precisely the same". Pick at most one.)

Being chinese myself I would have to say he's more right than wrong. I would even go so far to say that our tendency cheat could have genetic origins as well. It's anecdotal, but I'm born and raised in the United States, I'm culturally influenced by american culture, yet I totally identify with and understand this propensity among the Chinese to cheat. As a result, I think it's deeper than just culture.

After you suggested that Chinese genetics as a reason for cheating, I don't think any of us should take your comments seriously.

Why is this such a foreign concept? If genetics influences physical features, why doesn't it influence behavior? Do you choose to not take my comment seriously due to logic or politics?

I'd say it has a lot to do with the collectivism of the culture - there, sharing and "standing on the shoulders of giants" is emphasised more than independent thinking.

Yeah, I think that may be it. It's not really seen as cheating, but as cooperation and community.

I think it has more to do with the guilt vs. shame culture metric anthropologists and psychologists talk about and have documented at length. Guilt gnaws at you even when nobody else knows you've done wrong. Westerners score relatively highly for it. People in East Asian societies tend to have a less developed sense of guilt. Instead, they feel bad for having done wrong to the extent they are shamed and shunned by the surrounding society (loss of face). For things like cheating on tests it's easy to see how it's more difficult to maintain standards by shaming mechanisms.

> Guilt gnaws at you even when nobody else knows you've done wrong. Westerners score relatively highly for it.

Except when it comes to stealing land, right?

> Sometimes I even wonder if they consider it's cheating at all or if it's just cleverness and they should be rewarded for it.

There is a quote that comes from sports but I think is more apt for business, "If you're not cheating, you're not trying" and ties well with "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission". This is a competition so they cheated and lost, but their gains from the work itself will/should pay dividends in the real world.

The culture doesn't provide an association between cheating and punishment but only academic success and reward.

Anecdotally speaking, a lot of international Chinese students cheat blatantly - i.e. comparing answers with the person beside them at the end of the exam when people are turning in (and often get caught doing so).

Generalizations like these piss me off to no extent. Because students have been expelled, therefore, it must be true that Baidu tried to cheat and there can be no other possible explanation? The first conclusion you jump to is "because Chinese culture"? Really?

The naked racism of this comment is saddening. I'm sure we all know pockets in our societies where cheating runs rampant. Thankfully, people aren't regularly trying to act as though those pockets represent the whole.

The post says Chinese culture, not Chinese people. Discussing traits of a certain culture is not racist in my opinion.

So if someone were to say that Spanish culture is X, where X was negative, you wouldn't consider that racist either? Perhaps 'racist' isn't exactly the right word, but that seems like splitting hairs.

Of course it's not racism. You can absolutely discuss the negative aspects of a culture. This bending over backwards to be PC is truly absurd

It's not really cleverness if you break the rules so obviously that you get caught and disqualified.

Clever would be finding a loophole in the rules, a way to run your tests without it getting counted as task submission, make it look like a bug or something like that.

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