Yes, it's the system, not the people. Same why laws matter and not corporations "playing nice".

I see it slightly differently. It’s cheaters feel that even among other cheaters they feel they have a better shot and will avoid the meritocratic choice.

So it’s a bit of “why we can’t have nice things”. It’s not the system as much as people taking advantage of social permissivity for individual benefit.

> It’s cheaters feel that event among other cheaters they feel they have a better shot and will avoid the meritocratic choice.

Cheaters think they are the meritocracy. They think they are smart and resourceful.

Maybe? To me it seems they either don’t have enough $ability to do things the accepted way, or they want to do things an easier way, so one way for them to do well is to use a shortcut (cheating), either for lack of ability or out of laziness (not wanting to put in the hard work). But, it’s not all bad. ‘Cheaters’ the lazy type are innovators, they look to make things easier to achieve, so they will employ automation and the like to get out of drudgery, which leads to discoveries and progress, right?

Define "cheating".

Is it cheating or just being savvy if a farmer wires his new building to the 1999 NEC instead of the 2021 NEC since a copy of the 1999 one is $20 on eBay and omits some grounding requirements that are onerous for outbuildings.

Is it cheating or just following the spirit of the rule if a middle manager avoids a problem be skipping the process-required approval for a time sensitive change to something when it's exactly the kind of thing the higher up would approve in a heartbeat?

Cheating vs non-cheating isn't a binary thing. People have degrees to which they're willing to fudge stuff.

I don't think there is dichotomy between ability and cheating. The dichotomy is just too make us feel better if we lose against cheater.

Highly skilled people cheat to get little bit more advantage against other highly skilled people. And it is harder to catch them, because the ability demonstrated in some situations means everyone will go out of way to excuse them.

Highly skilled people cheating also means that only cheaters can rise to the top of competition.

I think cheating is a response to a sort of exhaustion with a gamified system... Like when you get tired of going through the grind on Gran Turismo and you enter a cheat code so you can get the R8 without doing the 24 hour le mans.

When you shift to things that aren't gamified, such as project based education, I there is little to no "cheating" because cheating is an artifact of the game design.

A good reply, it goes to a deeper level and I agree.

Maybe also related to gambling. People who feel they don't otherwise have a shot at getting something better or competing.

You can't change people, but can change a system. So it makes sense to blame the system instead of people.

Blacklists vs whitelists. Blacklists are better for society. I’d rather have default accept rather than default drop when it comes to laws.

It's the system, but not the system of laws. If leaders and elites constantly shit on laws because they think their status allows them to – then the laws won't make people honest. Because there are thousands of ways for dishonest behavior that doesn't break any laws.

I wonder how well this transfers. Instead of cheaters, bullies? Liars? General opportunists?

My gut is it transfers easily. Not clear on what to do about it.

always nice to have the data to confirm the hypothesis.

Please don't do this. Substantial comments are much appreciated.

The word you're looking for is "substantive", not "substantial."

subtantive: important, serious, or related to real facts

substantial: of ample or considerable amount, quantity, size

IMHO, it is substantive to point out that a study produced an obvious result that everyone already knew to be true.

Don’t put your words in my mouth, please.

I said substantial. As in “weighty, solid, meaningful”.

I'd say the comment runs afoul of the "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work." guideline.

Fair enough. So here's a less shallow dismissal:

This study seems to me to produce an obvious result that no reasonable person would doubt even in the absence of data, and is therefore a complete waste of time and resources. Am I missing something?

One could, of course, provide you with a stack of obvious ideas that no reasonable person would doubt in the absence of data...that are nonetheless wrong.

I doubt that very much. Can you give me a few examples? I can't imagine what such examples would even look like because in the absence of data I don't see how you could establish that they are false.

"...an obvious result that no reasonable person would doubt even in the absence of data...":

Aw, c'mon, you can do it, too. The Sun (and other astronomical bodies) go around the Earth. Time (and space) passes at the same rate for everyone, everywhere.

Here's another good one I just ran across:

"Let me tell you about some findings from the literature on divorce. People who start their marriages with the most love and affection for their partners tend to have a decline in satisfaction over time, but are unlikely to divorce, while people who had poor relationship quality at the outset tend to eventually get divorced, especially once their children are grown. Does that seem obviously true? Wait, that’s not right. That’s not what the research showed. The results really showed that those super-happy couples quickly come crashing down in the early years of marriage, and if they divorced, they tended to do so within the first six years, while those miserable couples were equally likely to divorce early or late. Oh wait, I got it wrong again. These are the real results: Couples who were especially unhappy early in their marriage were the most likely to get divorced early on (within the first six years), whereas when later divorces (seven or more years into the marriage) were examined, it was the most blissfully happy newlyweds that were most likely to get divorced.1 Sure enough, when I wrote about these findings on my blog, one commenter stated "So prevalent and obvious, it's hard to believe anyone wasted time and money on yet another study telling us what we already knew." Ouch, makes you glad you're not the researchers who spent 20 years collecting that data." (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/close-encounters/201...)