Both the Japanese and Koreans use a word for cheating that derives from the English word "cunning," describing cheating as doing something cunning, like a fox. It's used most appropriately for cheating on a test, by looking up the answers or looking off your seat neighbor's answer sheet. The first time I ever witnessed someone cheat on a test was oddly during Chinese school, where the teacher caught a student in the back of class cheating by going back and seeing that he had an answer sheet hidden somewhere. The Chinese teacher then announced to the class that this particular student had cheated and would be receiving zero points on this particular test. I don't know if it was effective or not, but I certainly didn't want to get caught cheating like that, and the added shame of being outed in front of class was an added deterrent. Contrast that experience to a college class, where the professor told us before administering a test that he was adhering by the "honor system" and he walked out of the room to let the students take the test unsupervised, relying on our sense of honor to complete the test without cheating. I'm not sure it was honor more than just the grade wasn't that important, and no student could trust other students from snitching, but it was an interesting experiment as the motivations behind cheating.
The Houston Astros recently were caught cheating by Major League Baseball for using cameras in center field to catch the catcher's signals (whether the next pitch would be fastball, curveball, etc.) and rely it to the dugout where they would bang on a trash can to inform the batter what the next pitch would be. Blatant cheating, and the MLB suspended their manager and several other team staff members and levied severe fines. However, I'm not sure if the system was correct to punish just the Astros; other teams had tried to use various ways to get the catcher's signals before too, just not using technology like the Astros did, sparking a debate about what really constitutes cheating. America, and probably the world, seems to have a consensus of "you can cheat, but just don't get caught." You can speed on the highway up to a certain point, but just don't get caught. I work on investigations of companies where there was small bits of noncompliance and suspicious behavior that goes unchecked, then finally there's the one big event that causes a full investigation to occur. Human beings will take more and more liberties until we are punished for it, skirting ever closer to the line of cheating until we are caught. And some may never be caught; there's plenty of cheating on tests, insider trading deals, marital infidelity, fraud of the elderly, tax evasion, and other types of cheating that happen without anyone knowing. It's only the ones that get caught that we know about. The only world I can prove cheating is through dodgeball and video evidence; and that's indeed how the MLB caught the Astros: through indisputable visual evidence. Law firms I work with also try to find the most damaging and blatant document evidence, but it's not always there and the case has to rely on the dreaded circumstantial evidence.
A couple billionaires in the Democratic race for President seem to be doing a form of cheating by buying up votes in various states. Billionaire Tom Steyer is way back in the polls nationally but has been spending (literally) millions of his own money buying up ads in South Carolina and Nevada, as he's spent $15 out of the $18 million dollars total by all the candidates in South Carolina and 2nd in the polls, and 3rd in Nevada. It's staggering what money can do, essentially buying an election. But Michael Bloomberg, the even bigger fish worth $60 billion, might do the even bigger cheating by spending a full billion dollars of his own money to obtain the Democratic nomination. Is that cheating? There's no law against it (the only thing close is campaign finance reform), but do we as a society want presidential elections to be the latest thing to fall victim to the powers of money? We're not deciding based on qualification, likeability, ideas, or promises in office. Just money. Sure seems a lot like cheating to me.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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