Life Isn’t Fair: Best Understanding of Putin in Ukraine
Game Theory and How Putin Got Away with Cheating For So Long
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4 - Minute Read
Q. Lewis, I believe in fairness. It seems that the world is full of cheaters. How does one protect oneself from people like this? This thought especially came to mind after Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine.
A. Let, me begin my answer here by exploring the very concept of “cheating” and “cheaters.”
Every Human Interaction is Bound to have Cheaters, That is Just How It is! Cheating generally describes various actions designed to subvert rules in order to obtain unfair advantages. This includes acts of bribery, cronyism and nepotism in any situation where individuals are given preference using inappropriate criteria.
There are two primary ways a cheater is likely to ply their trade
Breaking explicit, understood rules
Transgressing against an unwritten code of conduct based on morality, ethics, or custom
In transgressing a person can easily claim that they haven’t cheated at all since the identification of cheating here is a potentially subjective process.
Of course, a person described as a "cheat" doesn't necessarily cheat all the time, but rather, relies on deceitful tactics. Hopefully, as far as they are concerned no one will recognize their cheating patterns, but many consistent cheaters are likely to acquire a reputation for it.
In life, especially in the world of forgiving and forgetting self-improvement, and personal development, we have to deal with the reality that we have been betrayed, and this has an emotional resonance. We want to be emotionally centered, and yet we may have an authentic need to, respond with anger and rage.
This quote below says it all about having to deal with a cheater of any sort. It may not be gentle, but it certainly can be a good release for those of us who are not saints (according to a memoir by his grandson Mahatma Gandhi lost his cool all the time and believed that “anger is good”).
Here is an appropriate quote on this issue…
“Fuck You for cheating on me. Fuck you for reducing it to the word cheating. As if this were a card game, and you sneaked a look at my hand. Who came up with the term cheating, anyway? A cheater, I imagine. Someone who thought liar was too harsh. Someone who thought devastator was too emotional. The same person who thought, oops, he’d gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Fuck you. This isn’t about slipping yourself an extra twenty dollars of Monopoly money. These are our lives. You went and broke our lives. You are so much worse than a cheater. You killed something. And you killed it when its back was turned.”
—David Levithan
If you look around you will see, that it is hard to survive being honest all the time. Academic cheating is a significantly common occurrence in high schools and colleges in the United States. And over 95% of public high school students admit to serious test cheating. Here cheating is likely to include:
Plagiarizing,
Cheating on tests,
Copying homework, and papers,
Peeking at someone's test. 1/3 reported having repeatedly cheated.
The new revolution in big data and high-tech digital info contributes enormously to the ability of people to cheat. For instance…
online term-paper mills sell formatted reports on practically any topic,
services exist to prepare any kind of homework or take online tests for students (despite the fact that this phenomenon, and these websites, are well known to educators),
digital audio players can contain notes,
graphing calculators store formulas to solve math problems.
For centuries, rampant cheating and examiner-bribery were common problems for the Chinese civil service examinations, the main route to career success for literate men in imperial China, as detailed in books like the Ming-dynasty Book of Swindles.
Cheating in Sport, Games, and Gambling
In my approach to applied game theory, virtually every aspect of life can be treated as if a game and so cheating in sports can certainly be used as a model for cheating in the game of life.
Essentially cheating is the intentional breaking of rules in order to obtain an advantage over other individuals, groups, teams, or players. Sports and civil society are governed by both customs and explicit rules regarding acts that are permitted and forbidden at an event, in daily human interaction, and away from them. Forbidden acts frequently include performance-enhancing drug taking (known as "doping"), using equipment that does not conform to the rules or altering the condition of equipment during play, and deliberate harassment or injury to competitors.
High-profile examples of cheating include steroids and banned drug use by athletes in many sports. This was a real problem in the 2022 Winter Olympics.
One of the great debates on cheating was a controversial perspective concerning cheating including the cyclist Lance Armstrong's use of steroids in professional road cycling – particularly controversial as it is widely suspected that a high percentage of professional cyclists are using prohibited substances. This raises the question of is it ethical to cheat if everyone else is cheating and the referees, know this is the case and do nothing to stop it.
Illegally altering the condition of playing equipment is frequently seen in bat sports such as baseball and cricket, which are heavily dependent on equipment conditions. For example, in baseball, a pitcher using a doctored baseball, such as a spitball or an emery ball, or a batter using a corked bat are some examples of this. Tennis and golf are also subject to equipment cheating, with players being accused of using rackets of illegal string tension, or golf clubs of illegal weight, size, or make. Equipment cheating can also occur via the use of external aids in situations where equipment is prohibited – such as in American football via the use of stickum on the hands of receivers, making the ball easier to catch. An example of this is Hall of Famer Jerry Rice, who admitted to regularly and illegally using "stickum" throughout his career, calling into question the integrity of his receiving records.
Athletic, and academic cheating is a widespread problem. For example, in professional bodybuilding, cheating is now estimated to be so universal that it is now considered impossible to engage in professional competition without cheating and the use of supposedly banned substances; bodybuilders who refuse to take banned substances now compete in natural bodybuilding leagues. Many people feel this is the same reality in geopolitics and economics and was shown to us through the Panama and Pandora paper scandals support this view.
Cheating may also be seen in coaching and politics. One of the most common forms of this is the use of bribery and kickbacks in some recruitment processes. Such practices are widespread all across athletics and in the corporate world. Another common form of cheating in sports coaching is profiteering in association with gamblers and match-fixing. Another form of this involves a team coach or other manager undertaking corporate espionage or another form of prohibited spying in order to obtain details about other teams' strategies and tactics. The 2007 New England Patriots videotaping controversy is an example of this, in which the New England Patriots were found to have videotaped an opposing team from an unapproved location while trying to obtain defensive signals. As was the Pittsburgh Steelers’ use of, at the time legal, performance enhancers. However, there was cheating proven by the Denver Broncos during their back-to-back titles in the late 1990s to circumvent the league's salary cap and obtain and retain players that they would otherwise not have been able to. Circumvention of rules governing conduct and procedures of a sport can also be considered cheating, a form of collusion.
Of course, we are now dealing with the worst type of cheating, Russia invading Ukraine. Here…
numerous treaties and agreements have been broken,
thousands of innocent people have been killed,
the cheater (Vladimir Putin), has cheated many times before and got away with it. So, why not cheat again and keep on cheating?
If you have an interest in how large-scale cheaters get away with what they do you may want to research the following...
Panama Papers
Pegasus Papers
UAE set to be put on money laundering watchdog's 'gray list ...
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Of course, there are many ways of dealing with cheaters but that will be a conversation for another newsletter….
To be continued sometime in the future.
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Author: Lewis is a writer, teacher, and master results-oriented life coach. He is the author of over twenty books, numerous self-improvement, and personal development courses, and is the former host of a talk show on NPR Affiliated WIOX91.3 FM. He can be contacted at LewisCoaches@gmail.com
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