Now since we need a little order for various secondary reasons, we promoted exam cheating to illegal and that's ok. We need order. But there is nothing someone should feel guilt for imho, assuming the person knows she may be harming herself.

For a long time, they were. A technical school certifies someone to do something. A university teaches you how to think about hard things (supposed to, anyway).

"There is nothing fundamentally universally wrong to cheat at an exam beside the fact you may be harming yourself."

I don't understand that, I have no idea where you got that. Or what those words "fundamentally" and "universally" add. I say it's wrong, you say "Oh, but it's not fundamentally, universally wrong".. As if it's clear what that means.

For example: You may have harmed the people who didn't get good enough marks because you cheated your way into higher marks. Then you may harm people in your career that you're not qualified for, besides stopping properly qualified people from doing their jobs. I don't want an airlane pilot or doctor that bought their degree or cheated in exams, thanks. Anyway, it seems ridiculous that I have to explain to people why cheating's bad. Well, I don't know, maybe you are in a country where it's normal, perfectly fine, accepted, everyone does it. Where I come from, people don't have to have it explained to them why it's bad.

If you are good at mathematics, you will invent a new theorem! If you are good at music, you will compose a new music! If you are good at chess, you can win! If you are good at exam answering, you can earn some more marks (guessing at answers if you do not know the answer)!

Huh? I don't see a significant difference between 'ethically wrong' and 'morally wrong', no idea why you would say that.

Another example of that could be: I want my kid to go to bed at 9pm. Sometimes I will break that rule. To some extend, because of the reasons I've advanced, I claim that cheating at an exam follows the same characteristic as the "kid go to bed at 9pm". Just not in the same magnitude if you will.

I then guessed that it may draws the limit between what's ethic and moral.

I'm just guessing here, but maybe you have a religious value system, with absolute moral commandments or something? All I have (as an atheist) are ethical/moral principles exactly like 'cheating is wrong'.

Now I'm not going to do the math for you.

But still, memorization is not the same as learning. That is one thing that the test is not always so good; whether or not is "ethic" and/or legal is independence from that, because if you understand, then you can do, but if you know the word but don't actually know what is the significance, then you might answer the question same like that one but not the difference question that you can actually use.

(I remember once on one exam, the last question I did not know, and cheated off of someone who also didn't know and was cheating off of me (I don't know if they were cheating on other questions too or not, only that it is for last question), so in this case we cheat off of each other. Of course it is no good compared to all of the effort they mentioned above, but still you can see, you can be cheating off of each other the same question. I think this is the only instance of cheating on exams I have done, although once I tried to use the "coughing code" (without telling anyone!!!) just to see if I can, and not because I actually wanted to cheat, because I don't want to cheat.)

You can get off your high horse about not being able to acquire your degree without cheating, too. I never once cheated at any point in college, but if I had spent more time working on sick electronics projects and less time memorizing the years of significant 15th century battles, I'd be more qualified technically, not less. The ethics of it are problematic as I've said, but you seem to be going farther and implying something about his ability as well.

I think the implication that he should feel like an impostor for cheating on two exams is a very large over-reaction on your part.

Society does not depend on wether or not a few students cheat.

But society definitely depends on the social and moral contract that we do not cheat, and that it is wrong. If most of us cheated, the system would definitely fall apart.

Have you ever visited a developing nation? Where outside of small villages it seems like everyone is cheating at everything, all the time?

It's like pouring sand into the gears of an engine: everything starts to break down.

I would not hire someone who admitted cheating during an interview unless they talked at length at their remorse, how they learned from it, how they grew from the experience, and there were exceptional circumstances.

While true in general, cheating in that environment is also sometimes necessary to get on with your life unharmed. And sometimes cheating the system is actually regarded highly by the fellow citizens, because the people do not believe in the imposed system. Cheating is not beneficial to the system, but it often is to the people. Now, what is more ethical, doing what benefits the people or doing what benefits such system?

If you live a totally corrupt system, maybe.

But functional societies are based on the notion that cheating is bad, immoral, and nobody should do it.

"Now, what is more ethical, doing what benefits the people or doing what benefits such system?" - ha ha ... this sounds like how psychopaths in prison justify their crimes!

"I robbed the bank because the bank is evil, now who's more important, the people or the evil bank?"

No way around this one: cheating is bad.

Yes it is.

Maybe you live in an interesting developing nation?

Robbing banks, stores, anyone - is considered basically immoral in all of civilization, thankfully.

Yes - not all bank robbers are psychopaths - probably not the majority.

But prisons are fully of people bending reality to justify their crimes.

There is no ned to see any film about this.

Erm, no, it is regarded as unethical by almost everyone except bank robbers.

So while I agree with you in the abstract, I believe it's hard for people in the western system to relate and make moral judgements about the experiences of a student in post-communist Eastern Europe, where the rules were often gray. Fellow students were cheating on a grand scale, and up to that point, I had the same principled attitude towards cheating as yourself. Part of the reasons for creating "the system" was my revolt towards what I saw around me - the tacit acceptance that those with good cheating skills, which I lacked and did not develop early in my academic career, should be allowed to cheat their way to a degree, while I was supposed to memorize garbage.

Sure, my "rebellion" was unethical and compounded the social problem around me. But what could I realistically do, could I have changed anything? At least I saved me from myself, because otherwise I would have dropped-out. In the grand scheme of things, impeccable ethics is often a luxury and could have the exact opposite effect, letting only those with no ethics whatsoever to graduate.

I don't think it's a huge deal and wouldn't personally let it negatively affect a hiring decision provided you made the right noises about how it was dumb in retrospect and you were young, etc, but your comment here is pretty much the opposite of that. Who could possibly employ someone with your attitude? Even a gas station wouldn't want to hire a cashier who steals money from the register when they can get away with it just because the petroleum industry is destroying the environment, or whatever.

The social contract includes not just what's written or implied, it's also what people do in practice, what is acceptable. If cheating is acceptable and required to get a tech job, then I can do that, in fact I can do it better than most. That says very little about my profound sense of ethics.

To counter your analogy: what if you are indicted of a crime you did not commit in North Korea? You surely accepted their rules when entering the country, but would you trust their judicial system to do the right thing? Would you bribe your way out if you were given the chance? Would you ask your country to put diplomatic pressure on your behalf, a clearly unethical advantage no Korean has? Would you consider escaping from prison if wrongfully convicted?

In a narrow definition of ethics as "whatever the current rules are" (typical, I would say, for somebody living their whole life in a state with strong rule of law), the only ethical behavior is to subject yourself to whatever abuse NK decides for you.

Also, I'm not convinced that growing up in the former Soviet bloc necessarily means that honesty isn't the best policy. If everyone around you is corrupt, being the one dependable person around is a differentiator. Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems like that reputation could have some real world value to you.

By the way, it doesn't matter what your classmates are doing. Comparing myself to the average was horribly destructive to my college education. It turns out, everyone around me putting in average amounts of studying and getting average grades ended up getting average jobs with average pay! The one or two people in class that always aced everything, about whom I thought "well I don't have to be as good as them" - those were the ones who ended up having a real shot at grad school or dat $100k Facebook new-grad signing bonus. It's just like when you move from high school to college and suddenly you're not the smartest person in the universe anymore. Your cheating classmates are bozos - stomp them with harder work and keep moving up. Don't sink to their level.

If you do not sign such a document, does it make a difference? Of course not. Getting massive advantage by extraordinary cheating is still unacceptable. However, cheating a little when stakes are very high, or cheating for 'greater good' may be acceptable. Cheating is a personal decision and whether it is acceptable depends on the situation the cheating person is in, and the person doing the judgement.

I have noticed that the worse the comment, the harder it is to reply to decently/politely/etc; maybe it was impossible for me to reply to this one, or say what I thought without arguably breaking the guidelines, so OK, point taken, better not to reply in such cases. "Someone is wrong on the internet!" is real. I really did try to stay on-point, not hard enough apparently. I mean, I really do think it was the most condescending, deluded thing I'd read in years, definitely while on here. (I guess you've read much worse!) Again, not sure if that's the part you're objecting to. Apologies if you've read 10,000 replies just like this one. Kind of surprised (and depressed) I'm the problem here though.

ps I only saw your comment by chance, it's pages back in my comment history. Is there a way of getting alerts for replies on here?

The main thing to realize is that even if another comment is bad/uncivil, you still need to refrain from replying in kind. Believe me, I understand how hard that is! But our community depends on it.

Sometimes I think that HN threads are a big experiment in all of us learning how not to get triggered. If you give better than you "get" (by reading someone's comment), you'll be on the right track.