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.