So here’s a link -

a fascinating article for those who like to think about the quirks and foibles of humanity.

I’m posting this here for the benefit of my sister – she’ll probably stumble across it here. But you might enjoy it too

Cheating is a thin slice of human nature that doesn’t change. We can grow up, but we can’t grow out of it.
We want something. Our experience tells us it is a good thing (for us).
What are we willing to do to get this ‘good’ thing?

Two stories to read:

Story 1 (Two parts): A father seeing his son cheat at Candyland and teaching him a lesson. (Hat tip – The Old New Thing)

Story 2: Marvel comics fighting the heirs of Jack Kirby for the characters that will (perhaps) revert to his estate in 2014 (we’re talking Spider-Man here)

These are the same story to me.

In the first story a child wants to win because it feels good. That feeling is a good thing, and he is willing to do what he can to get it. It doesn’t matter that the game is no longer fair and that the other people are forced to lose.

In the second story someone (I don’t know who is right) wants to make millions of dollars. That money is a good thing, and they are willing to do what they can to get it. It doesn’t matter what the truth is or that they are lying about the nature of the original agreement.

A terrifying discussion of cheating can be found at the freakonomics blog. Read the comments; don’t stop until you at least hit comment #39. It frightens me because of the soullessness of the calculations, and it illustrates exactly how tolerent we are of cheating.

We?

Yeah, I mean me. I can vividly remember cheating on a spelling test in second grade. It was self marked (the things we do in the name of logistics) and as the teacher read out the correct answers, I silently erased my incorrect entries and wrote the correct ones down, putting a check mark beside them.

I wanted to receive recognition and I wanted to receive favour. It felt good.

But it felt real bad when the teacher asked me afterwards, “Did you change these answers?”

More recently when a colleague asked me if I’d performed a certain necessary task, I said, “Yes, of course.” Not having done the task would have said bad things about me; it would have meant admitting I wasn’t all that and more. After all, if I did it *before* our discussion, or did it *after* our discussion – what did it matter?

But I hadn’t done the task, and it felt real bad when I had to go back and confess that I had lied to him.

I’m constantly surprised at my own willingness and desire to cheat and deceive.

Ask any software developer, though, and they will tell you that Seth’s postulated 2 percent is invariably much greater.

2 percent is the minimum. The baseline. It only goes up from there.

Generally, however,  programmers don’t believe that they’re in the business of building relationships and connections and so the umpteen percent are told that if they don’t like it, they can walk.

Happy RTFMing, n00b!

I thought it was supposed to be a Peace prize.

I guess you can’t blame controversy. It’s going to happen among contentious people, whatever the spark. Still, irony like this is too good to waste

I did run across this story on obesity though.

The findings appear to be fresh evidence of a phenomenon that health professionals have long suspected: as those around us get fatter, our perceptions of our own size change accordingly.

Everyone lives in their own little world; the things around them become familiar, known… and normal.

From time to time something comes along that shatters our world and forces us to reconsider whether things were really the things we thought they were.

As people, our relationship with God has something of this character. God steps down and smashes our view of normal and acceptable. He tells us that we are not qualified to determine what is right and what is wrong, that we are incapable of determining because we are worldly.

That’s why we can’t always trust ourselves, our feelings, or our experiences.

So when I saw this dude the other day, I immediately knew that he was going to kill me.

His attitude, his clothing, his swagger… They all told me I had just moments to live,  that I should make my peace.

Then I looked down and saw he had a book in his hand. Phew!

People who carry books don’t kill people.

One for the ages, folks.

I guess I chose to post this one because it’s a system evil. More particularly, it’s a system evil which abuses the poor because the poor are easiest to abuse.

In computer software, it’s a recognized fact that unless quality is explicitly designed and maintained, it won’t just evolve. You have to plan it in and put lots of effort and energy into the system or you get a big bunch of chaos.

The same is true for moral quality.

Some things work well without a relationship backing them.

Other things don’t.

This shows up in a clash of cultures – different cultures consider different activities to be relational. There’s a classic (urban?) legend of a missionary who accepts/gives a gift of some sort upon arrival in a new place, and finds that he has married someone by accident. Hilarity ensues.

The question is not whether or not something is relational or mercenary, but whether it is one or the other for the wrong reasons.