
Embracing the Kobayashi Maru – Why You Should Teach Your Students to Cheat [pdf] - danpalmer
http://www.rumint.org/gregconti/publications/201107_Kobayashi.pdf
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Ygg2
Slight nitpick, but is that really Kobayashi Maru? From what I've remember -
Kobayashi Maru is testing how examined person reacts under extreme stress of a
no win scenario, not whether he cheats or not.

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dvanduzer
Clearly the article should be titled "Embracing James Tiberius Kirk's Solution
to the Kobayashi Maru"

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fennecfoxen
I'm just going to take the opportunity to react to reboot-Trek and say that I
hope the non-angsty version of young Kirk had a slightly _classier_ way of
handling that particular hack... because as it was presented by angsty-Kirk,
it was utterly uncreative and dull.

Come on, man, you should have more style than _that_.

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moron4hire
But Kirk _is_ a cad. Why would anything he does be classy?

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archon
Especially a young Kirk, who hasn't yet had years to develop a sense of style.

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breakyerself
Oh yes. The problem is that people are coming out of college too ethical these
days. Especially in business. We need much less ethical business leaders. That
was sarcasm. This author has announced himself as a proud sociopath.

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Gormo
What does willingness to circumvent arbitrary systems of rules - which may or
may not be aligned with desirable outcomes - have to do with ethics?

To me, ethics seems to have more to do with the good vs. evil dimension than
with the lawful vs. chaotic.

In fact, doesn't the term "sociopath" seem more appropriate for people who
source ethics in external rules rather than native conscience?

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jamessb
The authors also presented a talk at Shmoocon 2012:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0JHDr1oT0Y>

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danpalmer
Oh nice, didn't know about this. I'll watch this talk later!

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logicallee
EDIT:

I'm going to clarify to the following and leave it that.

The world is not a homogenous group where cheaters can dominate honest folks
with their mathematically 'dominating' strategy.

instead honest folks very much do make it a top priority to avoid these
cheaters.

if a top university teaches cheating, its alums will simply not have access
to, for example, honest early-stage markets based on trust.

i disagree with the findings of the article for this reason.

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Balgair
It seems funny that professors don't think the students are cheating normally.
If this is what the students are willing to share with the proctors the real
'guns' must be more amazing.

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omegant
The ultimate "learn faster than your foe or die" is in my opinion counter-
insurgency. There is the army manual on counter insurgency by Gen.
Petraeus(free download <http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf>), heavy
on army procedures, but the general guidelines are very interesting. There are
also David Kilcullen´s books, very well written with great insights on the
mistakes made on Afghanistan and Irak.

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dpritchett
Coram's _Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War_ provides an
utterly fascinating glimpse into this type of competitive thinking. Boyd's
theories are regularly cited by today's Lean Startup personalities. Here's an
excerpt from his magnum opus:

" _To comprehend and cope with our environment we develop mental patterns or
concepts of meaning. The purpose of this paper is to sketch out how we destroy
and create these patterns to permit us to both shape and be shaped by a
changing environment. In this sense, the discussion also literally shows why
we cannot avoid this kind of activity if we intend to survive on our own
terms._ "

I never managed to finish the one Kilcullen book I bought.

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InclinedPlane
The OODA loop, always relevant. People that don't understand the concept are
doomed to die upon it. Exceptionally relevant in the high-tech business world.

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FigBug
On a somewhat unrelated topic, I've been trying to remember the name of the
'Kobayashi Maru' for months and I ket remembering it as 'Komagata Maru' which
is something completely different. Thank you for jogging my memory.

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w1ntermute
For those interested in Japanese ship-naming conventions[0], from Wiki:

> The word _maru_ (丸 meaning "circle") is often attached to Japanese ship
> names. The first ship known to follow this convention was the Nippon Maru,
> flagship of daimyo Toyotomi Hideyoshi's 16th century fleet.

0: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_ship-
naming_convention...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_ship-
naming_conventions)

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DaniFong
The meta-cheat is asking why you should be shilling for grades in the first
place.

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mxfh
For me it would be a red flag to study or work at any institution who expects
me to memorize more than the first 6 digits of π unless some kind of cake is
involved.

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danpalmer
Well obviously, the point was only to make it impossible so that students
cheated.

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cantankerous
I guess the real takeaway from this article is that cheating encourages people
to employ creative skills otherwise left unused in many class situations? I
had a hard time grokking the underlying message of the article. Clearly just
cheating to fake your understanding is not what's being advocated here.

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Kluny
Did anyone else notice the picture of the course text? It was Cory Doctorow's
"Little Brother". I would love to hear what an officer training course has to
say in a discussion of that book. Wow.

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salmonellaeater
The article is _not_ endorsing cheating, as many commenters seem to think. It
is endorsing thinking like a cheater to anticipate cheaters' attacks.

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JustinFulcher
The article is endorsing cheating as a learning methodology. Cheating helps to
drive innovation. However, I agree that the article is not endorsing cheating
from an ethical standpoint.

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L0j1k
And this is why information security will always be lightyears behind any
threat in the real world. If you introduce to a classroom of people a task
intended to make them cheat, and then you're required to follow up with the
information that they're supposed to cheat, well... Let's just say that the
people they're supposed to be defending networks and systems against don't
need to be told when and where to cheat a system.

