Shortcuts are great, until people get hurt or killed. That's why the phrase cutting corners is largely seen as negative, because it's associated with times when shortcuts caused harm.

Regardless of gender it's useful to teach people endurance, prioritization, and how to judge when it's best to do everything vs only some things.

So who is being harmed by someone not reversing a binary tree by memory for an interview?

Just out of curiosity: do you think there's nothing wrong with cheating on an interview, and if so would you do it?

What if current interview process heavily favours fast thinkers, memorizers and crammers? Shouldn't slow thinkers figure out a way to beat the system?

When someone asks what your biggest weakness is during an interview, and you don't answer honestly because the honest answer to these sorts of questions are socially unacceptable and isn't what the interviewer is looking for to begin with, is that cheating? Or is it taking into account the context of the question and answering the question the interviewer wanted answer? I could see how both answers are justified, and as such it would need to be clarified to know what is meant by your question.

I just want to point out that this is an amazing comment. These gray areas are everywhere, and cognizance of them betrays intellectual rigor and honesty. I salute you good sir.

edit: I just realized there's a great irony here. I salute you, while recognizing that honesty and intellectual rigor is not valued in the world. I guess that's why it's valued so highly by people like me?

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I actually don't really disagree at all with the "Rules can be broken" part, but I can't say I agree with the conclusion that the people in the podcast drew. I don't mean to say though that they're bad people though, but more like these are complex issues and I don't think their analysis was right in the end.

This is just my personal take, but I like the Plato way of thinking about this. If we were to invent an evil person who succeeds at everything, including being perceived as good by their peers, and also invent a good person who fails at everything and is unfairly or coincidentally perceived as evil by everyone, the "good person" still wins.

He argues that's because to be "good" requires to know separate it from bad, and that essentially knowing good from bad is what wisdom is. This, he argues, comes from having some kind of access to the truth, and the truth is the end-all-be-all. He believes that truth is more powerful, than power itself.

Finally, he argues that truth is more powerful than power because with power alone you only have the ability to achieve your aims but not the ability to know if they're good for you or bad for you. So finally he says this is why tyrants are always such sad people.

I don't know if we can fix a broken system in the sense that the wise people will always have the power, but I do find his argument persuasive and I know which of the two I prioritize. That's why when people act out in these ways, like cheating on interviews but also other things, I just accept it as you laid out earlier. Rules can be broken. It's not ideal, but it's fine.