Name a competitive activity humans engage in but never cheat at

[Chisquirrel]

If there’s a big fucking Hershey bar at the end of the run, yes.

[Two_Many_Cats2]

Connect Four? I can’t think of a way to cheat at that.

[vbob]

@Wallaby

Mornington Crescent

Just this spring I shunted a train into the Thames Tideway Tunnel.

[Shalmanese]

@N9IWP

Re: skateboarding— how about sabotaging your opponent’s board? Or putting drugs in their food/drink?
Also I don’t know if it would help, but adding a motor — possibly one oriented to help spin the board.

The question is not could you come up with a theoretical way for anyone to cheat it, but have there been any actual, real life instances of people cheating this activity before. It’s perfectly possible to think up some abstract way but the governing bodies of the sport have already put in sufficient safeguards (either technical or social) such that the way is impractical and thus, has never been performed before.

It’s also important to distinguish games from competitions. Games are activities where the intrinsic result (such a putting a ball through a net) is not valuable which allows us to impose extrinsic restrictions. Those extrinsic restrictions allow for clearer definitions of cheating as they are anything that violate the extrinsic restrictions that make the game interesting and competitive.

But we have plenty of competitive activities that are not games where we can pretty confidently say nobody has cheated at. War is an example mentioned above where we can say, under a certain moral formulation, it didn’t happen because axiomatically you can’t cheat at war.

Scientific discoveries is another, we can be pretty confident anyone who has won a Millenium Prize didn’t cheat because even if you admit to a range of things that do count as cheating, we’re pretty sure none of the people did those things.

Business endeavors are another area where you need to carefully define exactly what “cheating” even means in this context. If the punishment for breaking a law is a fine, did a business “cheat” if it won against a competitor by breaking more laws and paying more fines?

Artistic endeavours is another arena. Sure, there’s plenty of things JK Rowling could have done to “cheat” her success writing the first Harry Potter book but we’re also pretty sure she didn’t actually do any of those things because she didn’t have enough power to do them. She won that competition through some combination of luck and talent but definitely not by cheating.

[Telemark]

@vbob

Just this spring I shunted a train into the Thames Tideway Tunnel.

Actually, under the Southington Collected Sprint Updates of 2021 (Covid edition) that could be a legal move, assuming it was under weekend schedules after the Queens Birthday.

[filmore]

One way to cheat in judged competitions, like snowboarding, is through the judges. A judge can collude with a competitor to give better scores to one competitor and/or worse scores to other competitors to help the cheating competitor get higher scores.

Any activity which has betting associated with it likely has cheating as well. A competitor may be paid to perform poorly so that the bettor can get a guaranteed win for a certain bet. For instance, a baseball pitcher may intentionally walk a batter so that a bettor will win a bet. This can happen in judged competitions as well. Competitor A might intentionally perform poorly so that competitor B will win. With prize money being very low in many competitions, this kind of cheating can be much more common than you might realize. The money the competitor will make from the bettor will be much more than they could make from winning.

[N9IWP]

For skateboarding I was referring to @Sirhomealot saying “I can’t think of a single way you could cheat.” – I was envisioning possible ways. Granted those were a bit out there.
(I am genuinely curious if some sort of motor or (anti)stabilization device would help)

Brian

[filmore]

There are rules for skakeboard competitions, such as:

Worldskate - Skateboarding & Roller Sports - Regulations - Regulation

2.3 Prohibited Equipment
● Propulsion devices or mechanisms.
● Brakes, clutches or other devices providing torque to the wheels.
● Bindings, toe straps or other devices that attach the shoes to the deck.
● Aerodynamic fairings, parachutes, sails or other such devices.
● Handles, seats, supports or other equipment that provides an interface from the racer to the
board other than the sole of the shoe.
● Equipment that is consumed, discarded or dropped during the race.
● Steering mechanisms activated by means other than lean-to-steer.

From that list, I would guess that one way to cheat would be to have a hidden propulsion system in the board or wheels. Something like that happened in cycling. The racers would have a small, battery powered motor hidden in the bike frame to give them an edge when going up hills. Something like that could be done with a skateboard to give the skater more speed for a trick.

[Sage_Rat]

Apparently, there’s a competition to reduce your rate of aging by the maximum amount possible (the Rejuvenation Olympics).

I’m not sure that there’s a way to cheat it, and certainly there’s pretty low value in doing so since the “reward” in the competition is being the person who wins it.

[Yllaria]

@Northern_Piper

Yes. His protest was upheld and he got his gold medal back. It was Ross Rebagliati at the Nagano Olympics in 2004.

Thanks. That’s good news.

[Chronos]

@Shalmanese

Scientific discoveries is another, we can be pretty confident anyone who has won a Millenium Prize didn’t cheat because even if you admit to a range of things that do count as cheating, we’re pretty sure none of the people did those things.

Maybe not the Millennium Prize, but Pons and Fleischmann, say, definitely cheated.