Pokemon and Perserverance – Thoughts on Cheating.

If you’re a nerd like me, you probably saw (and played) the Pokemon game on Google Maps today. If not, the game basically made you look around the world for various sprites on the map, usually near famous landmarks. It was a fun mix of geography, knowledge of the games (Typhlosion at Krakatoa, Charmander at Hiroshima) and some grunt work, scrolling for maps looking for signs of pokemon you haven’t found among herds of tyranitars. In the end, through a collaborative effort, my brother and I managed to catch 137 of them by legitimate searching and collaborative effort. But the real topic of this blog post is those last thirteen, that we found through looking up locations on the web.

                Cheating is an interesting social object. If asked outright, most people would say that it is wrong, but people’s view on it changes when they are in desperation.  There is often a tacit acceptance that sometimes you have to bend the rules to get what you want. Cheating has the potential to bring large amounts of money, as it has to the careers of many sports players. It also has the potential to ruin people, as it would to any student’s academic career if they are found plagiarizing. What I’d like to discuss is when and why people cheat, and to question when it is acceptable, or not.

                I would argue that there are three aspects which affect people’s willingness to cheat. First is desperation. When you feel the pressure of school, some financial pressure, or even just the expectations of others, you gain the will to cheat. Most people who have a handle on a class’ material and reasonable expectations of their performance will not cheat. However, when you get down to the wire, or if your parents expect perfection, cheating can seem like the only option. The people who I have witnessed cheating in my own life have often been from families that expect them to be doctors, or simply did not care about the material enough to put in the work to learn it.   Next is opportunity. One class I had in highschool was the perfect example of the power of opportunity – students knew they could get away with cheating and could be seen quite blatantly reading from their textbooks under their desk. In a room like a McGill exam room, with invigilators standing around, it is more of an intimidating task, though I am certain that people still do cheat. Finally is the fear of the punishment. Cheating was more prominent in highschool because it was a thing you could talk your way out of after being caught. When you cheat at a higher level, the stakes are higher. Essentially it’s a cost/benefit analysis. The gain that you get from the cheating, versus the chance you get caught and the penalty. But there is an X-Factor, and it comes in the form of moral values

                My Pokemon situation is a great example of this. There was pressure – it was taking forever to find them and the game will be taken off soon. The opportunity was infinite, I knew that the internet would have the answers I needed right off the bat. There is no punishment for cheating in this case. But still, I held back for a long time, and still feel relatively bad about caving. I think this comes from a mixture of pride, and determination. While I was working my way through the list, I was proud of myself for using my wits to find the next target. Further, I was determined to continue to show that I was smart enough to find these targets. This same determination and pride influences my decisions in my personal and academic career. In high school, I would occasionally be in situations where I could easily cheat – sometimes I had already accidentally glanced at the test. Even when I did, I wouldn’t allow myself to let that affect me, again, because of my sense of pride and how that would be lost if I gave in to temptation.  Does that make me a better person? Or does that just make me an arrogant fool who doesn’t take opportunities offered? In the real world, will this be valuable, or will it mean I get trampled over by those who are willing to be more flexible? I wonder if it might be prudent to raise a child to only cheat intelligently, rather than telling them to avoid it outright.

               

                There are definite downsides to this approach. Cheating often begets more cheating, as a cheater is forced to continue down the path to maintain what they have gained through their initial dishonesty. Academic cheating means you can avoid gaining the knowledge that you would have ordinarily gained from your studies, meaning that you are less prepared for future things built on that knowledge. And when you cheat often, the achievements you gain from this process will start to lose their zeal, as you know you have not truly worked for it.

 Still, cheating often has the capability to do good in the world. Lance Armstrong used blood doping, possibly for years. But the Livestrong campaign has raised an enormous amount of money for cancer research and support over the years, and it is arguable that would not have been possible if Lance had simply been a middle of the pack cyclist. Sometimes, people cheat to get through roadblocks in their path to success which have little to do with their eventual goal. There are likely thousands of doctors around the world who at one point in their med school career were lead to cheat, and they are saving lives as I write. And cheating in my pokemon game let me move on with my day, laugh at some of the locations of the final pokemon, and write this article. So go ahead, keep an ace up your sleeve, just make sure that it’s worth playing.