<p>@kdiddy34 in #39: I hope this will be my last post to this thread and my last response to you on this matter. You base your conclusion – cheating is okay, perhaps necessary to be competitive – on your allegedly superior knowledge of the contemporary, teenage world (for example, “I can respect your opinion, but I find it a little out of touch with reality”).</p>
<p>You may be an expert concerning teenage “reality.” However, high school age kids are NOT a majority in America, their influence is minuscule in comparison to older, wiser, more educated and more experienced individuals, and the “older folks” fundamentally determine laws and policies as well as make the decisions (your generation will, too, in several decades). Further, I find it noteworthy that your own parents – by your words – would fully agree with me and not with you.</p>
<p>Accordingly, you just may wish to consider what “reality” actually is. A fantasy world, where teenage values and self-serving myths govern, or the real world in which you’ll soon have to live, to compete, and to prevail – and not by any teenage rules and customs, but by the adults’. </p>
<p>@TheAtlantic I re-read your post, and I apologize for misconstruing some of your position. I still disagree that any cheating can be rationalized.</p>
<p>@kdiddy34 Please do not matriculate at any school my S attends, ok? I find you position to extremely unethical, and your defense to be profoundly sad. I hope you learn to change your mindset, hopefully without a full-blown collapse when your behavior comes to light sooner, or later.</p>
<p>Your larger problem is that you fail to see that cheating is wrong, and indefensible. You have a character issue here. Kdiddy apparently shares your lack of character. </p>
<p>Why is everyone so divisive and narrow-minded here? @kdiddy34 isn’t trying to say that its ethically correct to cheat, but its a mistake that EVERYONE makes at one point or another, it just so happens that not everyone gets caught. To all the narrow-minded adults on this thread, have you ever parked a minute over in a 20 minute parking zone? Have you ever speed more than 5 mph ever while driving? Have you showed up 5 minutes late to work and made and excuse that there was traffic? All of this is equivalent to cheating here, and no one WANTS to break parking laws, speed, or make white lie excuses if they can help it, and people DO get caught, hence parking tickets, etc. In the real world, it just happens that people are better at covering up their tracks cheating, and it just happens that many people DO get caught (hence politics, the business world, and scandals in relationships). You guys are honestly so judgmental. Get of your high horses and try to think logically instead of idealistically for once.</p>
<p>@TopTier Prove that the sun will rise tomorrow. It’s extremely likely, but you can’t right? Also, what you said about the increased cheating in generations today is probably true, due to the much higher level of competition. Again, NO ONE IS ARGUING THAT CHEATING IS RIGHT, but then again, the whole concept of cheating is a social construct set by society, and as society changes, so will this idea. As you can see, it already is beginning to change because playing it fair in this kind of competition will not let one come out on top. I think its time for YOU to put up or shut up, because all you seem to want to do is impose your high moral standards on everyone. Deal with the fact that there are in fact a lot of people who have cheated at one point in their academic career.</p>
<p>@ColdInMinny @Tranquilmind I’ll try my best not to go to the same school as your son! As if he has never asked a friend “hey what was on the quiz?”</p>
<p>This “offense” is analogous to going 40 mph in a 35 zone.
Buying a term paper off the internet is going 80 mph in a 35 zone.</p>
<p>Are you telling me that both are equally “indefensible” and equally “unethical”?</p>
<p>Your analogy is broken by design. Cheating is cheating and it’s no secret that it will negatively affect an applicant’s admissions chances. Going 40 in a 35 is usually tacitly condoned and the punishment for it (in the extremely rare instance that a 5mph excess is enforced) is trivial.</p>
<p>Yes, you’re right, @alicksmeow, the penitentiaries are filled to overflowing with them.</p>
<p>Once one becomes ethically shameless concerning “little” deceitfulnesses and dishonesties, it becomes progressively easier to commit ever larger ones, And that’s a major problem with the “everybody does so” rationalization you’ve repeated expressed. VERY few people begin with huge corruption and dishonesty. Rather, they start with small – and easily rationalized – crookedness, and gradually evolve to far greater frauds, in large part because they never were caught and punished – and therefore, compelled to think and to learn – when their offenses were relatively inconsequential.</p>
<p>By the way, for many individuals morality isn’t a constantly changing societal construct; rather, it’s an immutable one, based on ethics and religion. Have you ever heard of the Ten Commandments and its admonition against stealing (and academic fraud is clearly a type of theft)? You might want to ponder why stringent moral codes have survived for thousands of years, while your “dishonest expediency is theoretically wrong, but I do so because it’s necessary to complete and because ‘everyone’ else does so” approach has been repeatedly rejected by societies since ancient times.</p>
<p>I understand that people have deceived and scammed – academically and elsewhere – with some frequency . . . and forever. By your own words, however “NO ONE IS ARGUING THAT CHEATING IS RIGHT” (your capitalization).</p>
<p>To conclude, you indicate – entirely in capital letters, no less – that cheating is wrong, however you then advocate it and rationalize it. That’s flagrantly illogical, it makes no sense, and it’s entirely self-contradictory. You can’t have it both ways. </p>
<p>@TopTier Do you have reading comprehension problems or something? I never advocated cheating, but for people on a forum who have DEFINITELY committed small acts of dishonesty throughout your life (I don’t give a flying toaster what you say, If you deny this you’re a blatant liar), you guys are awfully judgmental.</p>
<p>@marvin100 It’s also no secret that going 5 over the speed limit even in safe conditions is dangerous (the increase in harm is not just linear for anyone with basic physics knowledge) and subject to a monetary fine. You’re acting as if a rule humans made up should have more of an impact on our actions than something that potentially puts others in mortal danger.</p>
<ol>
<li> This is a verbatum quoatation for your post #45: " . . . because playing it fair in this kind of competition will not let one come out on top." That’s clearly is advocation of cheating.</li>
<li> You also stated, “if you deny this (cheating through “small acts of dishonesty”) you’re a blatant liar.” Therefore, now you’re telling me (and other principled indivduals) that we’re certainly liars when we say we have not cheated, only because you evidently cannot conceive of acting honestly and honorably.</li>
</ol>
<p>@TopTier Yes, I did say that, but I never said one necessarily had to come out on top, did I? Personally, I accept that I will not be the best, as to defer me from having to be blatantly dishonest in my academic pursuits. As to your second statement, I admit, the wording was accusatory and strong, but notice how you aren’t denying my previous analogies. Just because one doesn’t cheat academically doesn’t mean one is honest and honorable in all aspects of life, and because of that, you guys should stop being so judgmental of others. You think too highly of yourself in that you think you convey a moral standard everyone should adhere to, and in a way, that arrogance is just as bad as a normal person’s faults in integrity.</p>
<p>@bobkop YOU DIDNT CHEAT TO HELP YOURSELF, YOU CHEATED TO HELP YOUR FRIENDS. IN MY BOOK YOU ARE THE REAL MVP. I WOULD TRUST U WITH MY LIFE IF WE WERE IN A WARZONE. — Honestly, cheating is never good but the way you cheated – thats good character in my book. If I could cheat to help out a friend… I dont think I would do it, simply because I am not selfless enough. </p>