Why is cheating bad?

[Ragsnstitches]

(by cheating I mean not playing by the rules: IE having answers to a test)

Now I will preface this by saying I do not agree that cheating is right, I just want to play devils advocate

So, can anyone tell me why cheating is bad? One of the most common things I hear is that it is not fair to other people. But you know what else isn't fair, that other people were born with more brains, or more muscle. This gives them an innate advantage, and would a cheater not simply be using their gift, cunning, to give themselves an advantage?

From an individualist standpoint, we try to do what is best for ourselves. So for example, If cheating on the LSAT would get you into law school, why should you flip burgers rather than go to law school just because your competition either has more intellect or drive.

Of course, cheating will probably catch up to you at some point, and getting caught is a major deterrent, but how is cheating unfair when life itself is not fair?

If you're contemplating cheating on a major exam for a particular career, or by forging documents to get hired in a specific place, what exactly is your attraction to that job. I mean if you aren't passionate enough to do the work yourself and earn a place, what's the chances you will have any motivation within that job?

If that is what you're thinking, stop, get yourself to the nearest supermarket and ask if they have a full time job available as a shelf stocker, because that's all you can amount to with that attitude. Even if you expertly pulled off that con and got to where you wanted, what foundations do you have to be there? How long before someone realises you are lacking basic skill sets?

Depending on the career, you could put peoples lives at risk. Don't be so freaking selfish.

 

[Woodsey]

Some arguments are such a waste of time that there's zero point in playing devil's advocate. This is one of those arguments.

 

[sebashepin]

I see it as a matter of "Social Contract". Most of the advantages of our modern world is being able to easily hire people to delegate your responsabilities (eg. Health to physicians, building to engineers).

To me, the whole point of not cheating is acknowledging that when i hire somebody, i would like him/her to be compentent at what he/she does. So since i expect that from people i meet, i should also be competent at what i do.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Cheating, in any context, diminishes the sense of accomplishment you might otherwise earn from going through anything that requires a modicum of effort. I've cheated in games on occasion, but once the initial bonus you get from being invulnerable or having oodles of cash wears off, the usual justifications start losing ground. You can cheat in games for the sake of giving yourself training wheels or to push past a difficult point, but odds are this approach will leave you naked in any instances where you might not be able or willing to use these cheats.

Outside of gaming, cheating or playing hooky with your job can only come back to bite you in the ass in some way or another. One of the standard things I keep hearing about is friends and family slipping little white lies about their education level in their resumes. Say, one of my cousins might be a year away from passing his Bachelor's, but he'll update that document so it says he actually does have it.

 

[Paladin2905]

Eh, all morality aside; the reason why cheating is bad is because it changes what the tests are supposed to be measuring. All tests do is measure something about whatever they are applied to. A good analogy for cheating would be baking a chicken breast in the oven and testing the internal temperature with a thermometer- if the chicken 'knows' that by cheating and inflating their reading on the thermometer they can get out of the oven earlier then you end up with salmonella. Not a realistic example, but I think it illustrates the problem without any vague moral argument.

 

[Altorin]

cheating is bad because ideally it's bad for you in the long run, and if EVERYONE did it, there'd be anarchy. What would the point of school be (IE, paying teachers, taking the time to teach kids) if no student learned anything but they all got perfect grades? I know that's a bit of reducto ad absurdum, but if you let one kid cheat, that's the scenario you invite.

The problem is that we have a system currently where cheating is sometimes the best option for kids, and it shouldn't be, because the only person they're cheating is themselves, in the end, but in a system where everything is concentrated so hard on the final grade, getting a good high score so you can succeed later down the road, that just breeds the wrong attitude.. I don't have an answer though, at least not one that would work right now in our society. Ideally we'd go back to a point before we even had tests, where teachers would talk to students and learn what they'd learned by talking to them, and mark them on that. Can't really cheat when your test is "tell the teacher what you learned", but there are so many students, and we make teaching such a thankless, low paying chore, that there are so few teachers, or people willing to teach, that I'm sure that system would not work..

but it would be ideal.

I also don't think teachers should have such a zero tolerance for cheating, but I can understand why they do - it's impossible to police all the kids they have to deal with, so they need the punishments to be ridiculously harsh as a deterrent, but expelling a kid for cheating is like shooting someone in the face as punishment for catching them shooting themselves in the foot. It's just not a great system we have in place, and it's just easier to let those kids that cheat fall behind society when those are probably the students that need the most attention, not pretty, but short of going back to some pre-industrial model of schooling.

Another reason it's strictly bad, at least in the current model, is that you're cheating all of the other students in the class. Whenever you cheat, you're hurting everyone, yourself, your teacher and your classmates. When merits are handed out based on aptitude, when you cheat, you're not learning what you need to in order to grasp what you need to in order to progress properly, and even if you're successful, you're basically stealing those merits from someone else that earned them, when you need more help.

I mentioned schools because it was in the OP, but Cheating in general is bad because you're doing harm to yourself. You might argue that it allows you to move past school and get on with life, but the point of school is to make you a smarter, more educated person, and if you're not, then you're just wasting everyone's time no matter how successful you are. You're stupid at the end of the day because you chose not to bother learning.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Meh, i muscles can be trained. But jeah brain power isn't. Sofar i haven't notice that i live a better life because of it, except that i could be a lazy bum in school :>

 

[MetalMagpie]

A lot of tests we do in life are to protect us and/or others by making sure we are capable of doing something before we do it.

Sometimes bypassing this protection only has minor consequences, such as cheating to get into university, then wasting a year's worth of fees because you weren't actually ready for it. (I know someone who did this.)

But sometimes it has major consequences, such as a medical student qualifying as a doctor by cheating, then causing the death of a patient.

On the whole "fairness" idea - life isn't fair. Some people are born smart, and the rest of us just need to work hard.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Because if you have to resort to cheating it means your not deserving of the rewards and why should you get the rewards rather than someone who is deserving ie someone who actually took the time to learn the material?

 

[Fappy]

Let's put it this way: would you trust your doctor's expertise if he cheated his way through med school?

 

[The Funslinger]

I like to think it depends what you cheat on. 8D

I'm notorious with my friends for, let's say, "Tipping the balance" when we play card games or board games. (Which basicaly means yes, I'll cheat if I see an opportunity to do so).

See, my stance on this is that if you're going to cheat at a game, why bother playing at all?

Also, since I now know this, I got my eye on you come Escapism UK =_=

 

[EtherealBeaver]

Tests are there to see what your level of understanding in a particular subject is. If you cheat, you get a strongly misleading result. This hurts yourself primarily because it means you will be getting challenges based on a level of understanding you are not ready for and thus cause you to basically crash and burn.

It is also harmful to society because many people cheating gives a false understanding what the average level of a certain test or education is.

Lastly it is harmful for employers (and again, through this society) because you claim to have competances you really dont have which leads to poor performance leading to waste of man hours, income and quality which hurts the companys buttom line which hurts the tax income society gets from said company.

Admitted, it gets a little meta later on and a single person cheating would not cause the downfall of society but if it became the norm rather than a few cheating bastards, we would get quite a few problems in the end

 

[DugMachine]

Because when someone else works their ass off to learn the subject so they can ace a test and some douchenozzle is cheating it's unfair. Simple as that.

 

[Zaik]

Traditionally a "test" is a skill check to see if youcan actually do what they're about to tell people you can do.

Today, most tests are mere memorization checks and I don't really see the harm in cheating during those.

 

[sinsfire]

because only captan kirk can cheat and get away with it and you arent captain kirk

Technically he didn't cheat. There was nothing in the rules that said he couldn't rewire the no win situation.

OT: cheating has an effect on everyone around you. The classmates who have worked hard and studied, your parents who are working to raise you properly, any siblings who might look up to you. Most importantly it affects the cheater as well.

You are faking your accomplishments, you are lying about your capabilities. None of that is ever acceptable. Some people are smarter then others, some are more athletic. That doesn't make it right or even rational to cheat in order to level the playing field. If you aren't as smart, study harder or find a subject you are better at. If you aren't as strong then change your training regiment or find a sport/athletic feet you are better at. There is no excuse for cheating.

 

[Yopaz]

Life isn't fair, thus murder is justified. Life isn't fair thus theft is justified.

If you're going to whine about life not being fair thus you shouldn't have to play by the rules you are a hypocrite. If you cheat your way into law school then a honest person will lose his spot because someone chose to cheat. Life isn't fair, whining about the fact then promoting things to get more unfair seems contradictory.

If you're not smart or dedicated enough to get into law school without cheating then you're most likely not smart or dedicated enough to do well at it anyway.

 

[Moderated]

It depends on what it is.
If it's something that you need to know for your job, like say medical school for a doctor, then it's bad. If, on the other hand, it's something you won't use in your profession, then I see nothing wrong with it.

 

[Olas]

So, can anyone tell me why cheating is bad? One of the most common things I hear is that it is not fair to other people. But you know what else isn't fair, that other people were born with more brains, or more muscle. This gives them an innate advantage,

For starters you assume that the person cheating is the one born with an innate disadvantage. This is true at best half of the time. But even if they are naturally less skilled, that's what many of these tests are designed to detect. The point of any test is to measure someone's abilities, whether those abilities are natural or learned is often irrelevant. Anyone who thinks that tests are supposed to be purely a measure of how hard you worked are living in a dreamworld.

and would a cheater not simply be using their gift, cunning, to give themselves an advantage?

Unless the test is supposed to measure how cunning you are, or how good you are at cheating, I don't see how this matters. Besides, cheating doesn't always require some talent to pull off. Sometimes you just have to be lucky, or willing.

From an individualist standpoint, we try to do what is best for ourselves. So for example, If cheating on the LSAT would get you into law school, why should you flip burgers rather than go to law school just because your competition either has more intellect or drive.

Um, because the competition has more intellect or drive than you? Therefore they'd do a better job than you would and society as a whole would benefit.
If you take up the position that nobodies needs matter except your own then morality is already completely out the window. And if everyone thought this way the world would collapse. That's why rules exist to begin with. There's nothing wrong with working to further your own ends as long as you do so within the established boundaries that society has created to protect us from one another.

Of course, cheating will probably catch up to you at some point, and getting caught is a major deterrent, but how is cheating unfair when life itself is not fair?

That's like trying to justify beating someone up by saying that they already had prior injuries. Life may be somewhat unfair but cheating just makes it a whole lot worse.