If a person gets in the habit of cheating because they don't think the thing they are cheating on is important, then they have to develop the skill of always knowing what is important, and what isn't, or they risk cheating on something with serious consequences. Patrascu died at the age of 29 from brain cancer. I wonder if he ignored any symptoms because he didn't think they were consequential.
If you look long enough only you will come across stories of how his disease went: there weren't any symptoms.
Such diseases are dangerous things and shouldn't be joked about lightly, for many cancers the medical literature is clear you won't know until it's too late.
But I think they only apply in contexts where your grading is done on a relative scale (which I think is much worde than an absolute one, where one's better grade doesn't imply another person's lower grade).
> Patrascu may have been a brilliant researcher, but was he as brilliant as the person who didn't make the cut because he made the cut instead?
I would love it if he were among us to give on of his characteristically snarky answers :D [1]
He would probably have said something along the lines of "not as brilliant, more brilliant; which the fact that the other poor chap who wasn't capable of cheating clearly shows".
[1] https://infoweekly.blogspot.com/2010/11/complexity-theory.ht...
In addition to this, for those students who will not cheat, they are then required to spend their effort developing a skill which they may never use again, at the expense of developing skills they will use again. And also at the expense of their placement in the class. Patrascu may have been a brilliant researcher, but was he as brilliant as the person who didn't make the cut because he made the cut instead?
I think cheating is unhealthy for the system.