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Comment by somsak2 | Hacker News Reader

If all you need to answer that question is "we're confident that X" then that's still a problem with the asker. Why are they confident? Have we modeled the data needs over time? What data are we even storing? Basic probing questions should either uncover the lack of preparation or show that things will indeed be fine.

Just like cheating is a problem for a teacher to solve, a lack of preparation is a problem for the audience to solve.

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This is only true in a low-trust society. In a high-trust society, it's absolutely on the presenter to make their claims not only true, but realistically true, and acceptable by the average person. When people defect from that norm, they are shamed, or worse.

Aren't we talking about an environment where there are rampant cheaters? My perception was that this is by definition a low-trust company. Of course, it is always going to be easier to remove yourself from that situation and go to a company that has more rigorous interviews that would catch cheating in the first place.

The corollary of your argument is that hiring rampant cheaters produces (by definition, as you say) a low-trust company. Putting aside everything else, low-trust organizations are intrinsically dysfunctional (though it may take a while for the consequences to play out.) In them, asking more questions will not get you useful information, and you had better watch your back.

See, for example, the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, Hoxha's Albania, the Taliban's Afghanistan...

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