Let me clarify - If I have an ability nobody else has, and I utilize that ability to win a contest, am I a “cheater?”
F’rinstance:
[ul]
[li]If I could, really and trully, see into the future, and I use that ability to win the lottery, am I a “cheater?”[/li][li]If I am a much, much, much better basketball player than anyone else who has ever lived, if my superiority makes it simply impossible to beat my team, if I make the shot every single time I shoot the ball, am I a “cheater?”[/li][li]If I was, far and away, the strongest man to ever live, if I could benchpress 10 or 20 times the current world record, would it be “cheating” for me to compete in a weightlifting competition?[/li][li]If a genetic abnormality had given me gills and the addition to breathe underwater in addition to breating air, would it be “cheating” for me to join the US Water Polo Team?[/li][/ul]
I just made those examples up. In short: If a person posesses a special talent that no one else has (or can have) that allows him or her to perform at a level unattainable by anyone else, is that person a “cheater?”
I don’t think Ian Thorpe was ruled a cheater for having size 17 big ass feet in the Olympic Swimming events…I suspect that if the condition/attributes of the athletes changed over time, the “rules” governing the sport or activity would change as well
No. A cheater is someone who doesn’t obey the rules of a contest. Anything allowed within the rules, even if some of the contestants do not have access to that equipment or ability (as long as said access wasn’t denied by another contestant), is not cheating.
What if I was married, but I had an unquenchable longing for a blow job. I mean, it was 10 to 20 times the desire of any normal human being. If I got it, would that be considered cheating?
“cheat’chet\vt(1590) 1: to deprive of somthething valuable by the use of deceit or fraud” Webster’s
So, as long as there is no deceit or fraud there is no cheating.
As for your examples; as long as going into what ever the contest was, both contestents knew of the others ability it would not be cheating. However, if you were to hide your unkown abilities with deceit or fraud, you would be cheating.
because that is the definition of “cheating”. If there is no deceit or fraud, there is no cheating. If you take illegal drugs and the judges know it, they will disqualify you. If they don’t, you did not cheat. Cheating means you did it and did not tell the truth. If the rules allow you to take enhancing drugs, then it is not cheating.
To flesh out sailor’s example, remember the controversy last year regarding Mark McGuire and his taking of a steroid supplement (stereoandyrne? I can’t quite remember); some people saw it as ‘cheating’ because it was a non-natural addition to his strength, but most saw it as acceptable because MLB had not ruled the practice illegal.
I believe what sailor meant was, “If you take illegal drugs and the judges know it, they will disqualify you. If they do know it, and don’t disqualify you, you did not cheat.”
Cheating is putting up a cheap GUI to disguise a Unix server, then entering it into a contest with an NT server. The poor (NT) bastard has no chance. Better luck with Win2K.
What sailor said was that if the rules allow it, it is not cheating. You can put in anything you whant for what “it” is, the fact remains it is not cheating if the rules allow “it”.
This is interesting. Say you are look like a complete ditz, but you are really a brilliant card player. It is not against the rules of poker to be brilliant. If you do nothing to clue in your fellow card players that your intelligence is above average, and then proced to win all thier money, is that cheating? What if you activly conceal your intelligence?
I don’t remember who Muhammid Ali was fighting but they called his technique “rope-a-dope.” Basically he pretended to be more hurt then he actually was and lulled his opponent into a false sense of security. Nobody thought he was cheating he was just using good ring strategy.
If I hide my abilities from my opponent I’m not cheating.
Manda and MG pose almost the same question, is deciet in and of its self cheating?
I guess my answer is no, not if the rules allow it.
If Ali had lead lined gloves, he would have been cheating. The rules of boxing say so, but the rules say nothing about “rope-a-dope” so he was o.k.
Same with cards, acting dumb is not cheating, using marked cards is.
Both of these examples use instanceses with a set of rules. I think that the definition I was using would be better applied to an instance without set rules.
So, back to the OP. In lotto, no your not a cheater unless psychics are forbiden to play. In basketball, if that makes you a cheater what was M. Jordan? As for weightlifting, that is why they have contest. I don’t know about water polo or gills.
And it’s arguable that Ali’s purpose was not so much to lull Foreman into a false state of security as to waste Foreman’s energy and tire him out. (Most of Foreman’s fights had ended in early round knockout victories).
The strategy was, of course, perfectly legitimate. It simply took fighting defensively to an extreme.
I don’t think any of the above are cheating, as they do not break any of the rules of the game. However, the first and last examples would, in my mind, be competing unfairly.
Example:
Through some means, I aquire all the abilities of Superman - vast, inhuman strength; flight; super-hearing, etc. Rather than become a superhero, I decide to cash in by joining the NBA/NFL/MLB, whatever. Obviously, I could hit a home run/score/dunk/make the tackle every single time. However, I know that if I did, my abilities would be discovered and the rules committee would soon pass a “No mutants” rule, I hide my true ability and merely score, or whatever, enough to be the best paid player in the league. Would I be cheating?
No, because there is not a “No mutant” rule currently in effect. However, I would be unfairly competing because I am breaking the implicit rule of “Humans with human-level abilities” rule.
I think that the case of poker is a little different, in that the “rules of the game” involve deception (e.g. bluffing). So cheating would be hiding an ace up your sleeve, but not necessarily pretending to be a novice player.
On the other hand, I think that the pool shark who purposely plays badly to encourage people to bet against him and then magically increases his skill is “cheating”. I knew a guy who was an excellent pool player and when people offered to play him for money the first words out of his mouth were always “OK, but I’ll warn you, I’m pretty good.” I thought that was just and fair.
I think that we may make a distinction between cheating and unsportsmanlike behaviour. ( [/British accent] *Now that’s just not Cricket! * [/British accent]
Technically cheating is not following the rules–as the ace up the sleeve example points out.
I think that Pool Sharking and the Mark McGuire incident fall into the unsportsmanlike behaviour category. While not technically cheating they do seem to be unfair or generally not playing within the implicit rules which make up the spirit of the game. I think that this is what people are trying to express when they quote Gore saying “There is no controlling legal authority” in regards to the fundraising scandal (sorry to bring up politics).
If I tell the gorgeous blonde at the bar, in order to get some nookie, that I’m a wealthy dermatologist, when I’m really an unemployed scoundrel…am I cheating?