Embracing the Kobayashi Maru – Why You Should Teach Your Students to Cheat [pdf]

http://www.rumint.org/gregconti/publications/201107_Kobayashi.pdf

by danpalmer • 13 years ago

47 31 13 years ago

rumint.org

jamessb• 13 years ago

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

danpalmer2• 13 years ago

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

Ygg2• 13 years ago

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.

dvanduzer• 13 years ago

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

fennecfoxen• 13 years ago

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.

mxfh• 13 years ago

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.

danpalmer2• 13 years ago

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

omegant2• 13 years ago

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.

saraid2162• 13 years ago

The "learn faster" thing only really applies when you have an actual arms race of any kind.

Which asks the question: did they repeat this, and did future students anticipate it, and did they deploy countermeasures?

spitfire2• 13 years ago

Incorrect. Whoever learns faster is more fit to survive and thrive on their own terms. They have greater freedom of action.

dpritchett• 13 years ago

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.

spitfire2• 13 years ago

Funny, I was just going to chime in with a Boyd reference.

The Osinga book is excellent if you have the determination to read it. It isn't a light read.

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

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.

omegant2• 13 years ago

Thanks, I'll put it on the reading list.

FigBug• 13 years ago

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.

w1ntermute• 13 years ago

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...

Balgair• 13 years ago

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.

logicallee• 13 years ago

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.

breakyerself• 13 years ago

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.

Gormo• 13 years ago

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?

L0j1k• 13 years ago

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.

cantankerous• 13 years ago

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.

salmonellaeater• 13 years ago

The article is not endorsing cheating, as many commenters seem to think. It is endorsing thinking like a cheater to anticipate cheaters' attacks.

JustinFulcher• 13 years ago

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.

DaniFong• 13 years ago

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

Kluny• 13 years ago

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.

Embracing the Kobayashi Maru – Why You Should Teach Your Students to Cheat [pdf]

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