eecsninja

This is key. It's not that you're going to be third-world-country poor, it's that regardless of what you do, you won't experience the same economic benefits for the effort that you put in, compared to 30 years ago.

This is true for people all across the board: blue-collar workers, office workers, and doctors.

No. Just like we will not see professional graphic design, 3d modeling, circuit layout, or physics simulation on a mobile phone.

Why? Because a phone is fundamentally a consumer's device, not a producer's device.

Just because you can tweet or upload videos to YouTube from your phone doesn't change that fundamental nature.

It is designed for the masses, not for specialized power users.

So what happens when you stay at your current job because you've just stopped caring for any of the software work out there? It's easier just to stay with your current company than to have to incur the costs of changing to a new environment and having to learn a new way of doing things.

I'm not sure if at this point in my career, it really makes a difference in the big picture of my life to get a 20% raise.

Good stuff. Makes me wonder how many programmers still think of pre-C++11, and all the tropes of what's wrong with the older form of the language, when they opt for using other languages like Java. SMH.

Cry me a river. I'm still waiting for the day when our productivity scales with computing power (or node size). [1]

Until then, the drive toward smaller/faster/whatever-other-superlatives CPU's is just people running on a hamster wheel.

[1] https://foundersfund.com/the-future/#/artificial-intelligenc...

This begs the question of what will be the next trivial game by this company that will be hyped as the next quantum leap forward only to fizzle out a few years later while revealing how naive the developers are about the implications of real life social interactions (e.g. crime driven by Pokemon go)

> And in fact vandalism probably goes up.

I guess it's too much to expect Americans to act like the Japanese when it comes to taking care of public spaces.

People go their separate ways in their 20s. There is less of the shared struggle that characterized college camaraderie.

It also becomes harder to line up schedules to keep in touch with old friends. Back in college, at least everyone was on the same academic calendar.

Maybe people on this forum aren't as open-minded as they'd like to think.

Thanks for sharing, and for pointing out that it's ultimately about self-improvement. I'd upvote you more if I could.

> it seems academia really did fail you, as your argument just falls apart prima facie. the learned person would reflect on the wealth of the feedback that you're getting here rather than assuming that you've unsheathed some gloden nugget of truth that the rest of us silly fools can't glean.

Damn right it did. I remember in a scientific writing class in college, the professor told us that we should always give credit when citing someone. I asked her if that was just a good practice and courtesy, or a moral obligation. The dumb prof just repeated herself "you should always give credit" and didn't seem to understand my question.

Anecdote: I remember in a scientific writing class in college, the professor told us that we should always give credit when citing someone. I asked her if that was just a good practice and courtesy, or an actual moral obligation. She just repeated herself "you should always give credit" and didn't seem to understand my question.

> This does not apply to the majority of students going to college. Why should a tiny fraction of students be able to drag down the reputation of a college because they do not want to do the work that they signed up to do, paid tuition to be taught how to do, and signed a contract saying that they would honestly complete to the best of their abilities?

Why should colleges penalize against possible future job interview fraud? Pre-crime, anyone?

> It is a matter for colleges to worry about because they are in the business of bestowing credentials backed up by the colleges reputation for doing a good job educating their students. If too many students have a degree from a college but they do not actually know anything, then degrees in general from that college become devalued and it cheats the students who put in all the work legitimately!

Good, the sooner we bury the whole rotten, overpriced system, the sooner we can come up with a better alternative.

> Cheating is not free, it has a real cost to it as companies have to implement additional testing and applicants have to spend their time (which always has a monetary trade off) going through screening that is redundant to the credentials they already have.

Neither is spending $200k on tuition!

> What about other artificial systems with defined rules, like sports? Is doping or other cheating permissible? If so, at all levels, or only professional levels?

Actually you raise a good point. The sports system is like that too, it's just an artificial system. I don't watch sports so I don't care what goes on inside that system.

> Edit: I should point out this isn't a theoretical concern. I personally resent the people who have attempted to 'beat the system' with simple dishonesty and caused me to have to endure uncomfortable and tedious attempts to minimise cheating during my education.

I resent the fact that I had to spend so much time in world renowned educational centers learning so much theory that I never use in the real world.

I resent the fact that we put the college-as-job-credential system on a pedestal instead of coming up with something more efficient and doesn't let professors hang the fucking sword of Damocles over your head.

> So having cheated my way through schooling, I should probably drop a few more bucks into getting some jobs-board contractors to knock out a couple of 'passion projects' to throw onto github?

Nice straw man bro.

Nice name. I probably wouldn't want to work for you anyway.

Dude I've been out of school for almost a decade. I didn't major in CS. And the only stuff I learned that was useful for my future career was through a project class where it was impossible to cheat or otherwise bullshit your way to an A. Most of my programming skills were learned from coding games in my spare time.

If you think the only important part of your children's education is what happens inside the walls of schools, then you're already setting them up for a life of mediocrity and servitude.

These are real-world situations with real consequences on people's time, money, and lives. Honesty and ethics matter here. That's what licensing requirements are for. That's different from the academic system where you only use 10% of what you learn, once you go into the real world.

It is my belief that we should have checks and balances against that in other aspects of life where they matter. Where people's money or lives are on the line. Academia is not one of those situations.

Commercial fraud: > The theory of contract espoused here demonstrates that fraud is properly viewed as a type of theft. Suppose Karen buys a bucket of apples from Ethan for $20. Ethan represents the things in the bucket as being apples, in fact, as apples of a certain nature, that is, as being fit for their normal purpose of being eaten. Karen conditions the transfer of title to her $20 on Ethan's not knowingly engaging in 'fraudulent' activities, like pawning off rotten apples. If the apples are indeed rotten and Ethan knows this, then he knows that he does not receive ownership of or permission to use the $20, because the condition 'no fraud' is not satisfied. He is knowingly in possession of Karen's $20 without her consent, and is, therefore, a thief.

source: https://mises.org/wire/problem-fraud-fraud-threat-and-contra...

There is no equivalent of harm done to property or person with plagiarism in an academic setting.

> Finally, it is curious that the first thing that occurs to people on first hearing the anti-IP case is plagiarism: “You mean it would be okay for someone to take an author’s work, put his own name on it, and sell it?”

> Two issues are conflated here. One can plagiarize without violating a copyright, and one can violate a copyright without plagiarizing. Under copyright law you may use brief verbatim excerpts of another’s written work without permission as long as you use quotation marks and attribute the text to the author. It’s called “fair use.” (Question for copyright fans: Isn’t even fair use a violation of an author’s rights?) If you were to use an excerpt that otherwise would qualify under the fair-use principle but without attribution, you would be guilty of plagiarism but not copyright violation. The same would be true if you quote Shakespeare without attribution. (Shakespeare wrote without benefit of copyright.)

> On the other hand, if you publish Atlas Shrugged with Ayn Rand’s name on it, you would be guilty of copyright violation but not plagiarism.

> For the sake of clear thinking, let’s keep these issues separate.

> Well, is plagiarism okay? No, it’s not! Obviously it is dishonest and dishonorable to represent someone else’s work as one’s own. But note, according to LegalZoom, “plagiarism is not a criminal or civil offense.” Nor should it be. It’s a breach of good conduct, and there is a plentitude of nonviolent, non-State ways to deal with it, especially in the Internet age.

Source: https://mises.org/wire/slave-labor-and-intellectual-property...

Look, I get it's a bad in a practical sense if someone cheats or plagiarizes, especially to the cheater. It could even be a breach of contract between the student and the school. But it's not a crime against another person. It's a "victimless crime" essentially.

If someone falsifies licensing or safety requirements, like with an airplane or a building, that's a legal matter. Call that "professional fraud" -- it's illegal. But there is no law against cheating in school.

> I don't know a clear distinction between "accomplish and explain" and "write answers" for academic study.

In my undergraduate education, the most valuable class I had was a set of embedded systems classes. No tests, no homework, just have to build a project incrementally over the course of the quarter, and then provide schematics and documention at the end.

> Employers are using other methods, such as personality tests, coding interviews, work-for-free exercises, requiring "experience" for entry level jobs, and so forth.

> Employers could abolish that system overnight by simply eliminating the degree requirement. They could reduce their labor costs, because a person with no college debt might be willing to start out at a lower salary and be more loyal to their initial employer.

Exactly! Thank you for pointing this out, especially in a world of skyrocketing tuition costs.

My point is that cheating is at worst a violation of rules/contracts. I'm saying there's a different way of thinking to understand why somethings are wrong -- not just that they are wrong, but the underlying reasons as well.

Every example that has been provided could be counted as wrong by some other existing real world standard. In the case of copying the stress analysis, that is called FRAUD in the real world.

I sound like I'm being pedantic here, but I hope some people out there can understand.

As far as social systems go, the object of aversion is deception and the associated harm. That's bad. I think we mentally conflate that with academic cheating (plagiarism), when it is something different.

> People who cheat their way to a degree, are lying to future employees about possessing a level of knowledge that they do not have.

Not if they don't apply to jobs.

> Being able to communicate, and think, in a clear and coherent manner is one of the very foundations of a classic liberal education. It is also one of the most important skills for almost any professional job.

You can't assess that by talking to someone during an interview?

> Lying about possessing that ability is a form of deceit, and by common consensus, morally objectionable.

Agreed. That's a matter for when the person is applying to jobs.

If he just gets the degree and becomes a trust fund kid for the rest of his life, who is being harmed?

Regarding that employee who outsourced his work:

It's not that he didn't do anything wrong. It's that "cheating" is an artificial construct that should be done away with in our way of thinking, and instead we should learn to apply other ethical standards to these things. For example, he's still guilty of breach of security and leaking of confidential information.

You might be wondering, what's the big difference? In the end, we still have this action being judged as unethical.

The point I'd like you to take away is that you should critically analyze things, especially those taught to you at a early age and for a long time. Hopefully we can see how artificial the system is, and find ways to build a better system. I am not anywhere close to having kids, but I do intend to absorb as much real-world experience as I can over the next few years, so that I can be a better teacher to them than the school system can be.

You're right, actually. He hasn't proved trustworthy, but that's because he leaked confidential company materials.

I don't get why this is being brought up as a matter of cheating rather than leaking, which is the big elephant in the room.

Still shows a lack of ethics though.

I agree about the lack of ethics, but that's something to be screened by future employers or school admissions.

I don't disagree with schools having penalties for cheating. But on the moral severity scale, it's really an infraction rather than a felony. Would you call jaywalkers bad people?

If you want to see why I have such a disdain for academia, here's my story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16726402

From what I can see, the real problem was that he leaked confidential information to the outside world. Unless we can prove some harm to the consumer or the shareholder, I don't see why anyone outside of the company should care.

I still see this as a contractual matter. If his employment contract strictly forbade him from doing this (and it might very well do so), then that's grounds for termination. Just like how copying homework could be grounds for suspension from school. But still a different effect on society than stealing.

Another thing to consider: he's making the company management look bad. The smart thing to do would be to promote him for his smart thinking.

And why do we care in a real-world sense whether this student has cheated in general relativity? If that person goes to a physics lab, he would be found out eventually.

In a real-world sense, cheating hurts nobody except the person doing it, if even that.

How does that harm anyone? Does anyone who doesn't work at Verizon care?

Here's the real problem: leaking private info:

> And it had then called on Verizon to look into what it had suspected had been malware used to route confidential information from the company to China.

> "Central to the investigation was the employee himself, the person whose credentials had been used to initiate and maintain a VPN connection from China," said Mr Valentine.

> Further investigation of the employee's computer had revealed hundreds of PDF documents of invoices from the Shenyang contractor, he added.

I'm really disappointed by the downvotes that sithadmin, misterbowfinger, and I have been receiving in this thread.

Let me restate the argument, not in favor of cheating but why it's not the moral issue that everyone makes it out to be:

1. Cheating is only an issue in the artificial world of academia, where it goes against how the system is supposed to work.

2. We only think it is a moral issue because it's been drilled into us since we were kids, and that we think it is not fair to those who don't cheat and devalues the value of their degree.

3. The current system is stupid. Academic grades and degrees, to the extent that they affect your life after academia, should be based on what you can accomplish or explain, not how well you can write answers.

4. Employers should be using other methods to screen prospective employees -- looking at past projects, word of mouth, etc.

The sooner we can put to rest the notion that we should spend ages 6 through 22 in an artificial system that has no relation to the real world before we can enter the real world as functioning adults, the better.