I am from India, and I just recently completed my Masters from a US university. I have never cheated in my life when it comes to interviews, exams, or assignments; not once. I am worried that calling us “low-trust” because of your experience with a few students might lead others to think that the entire country that is so diverse and large is comprised of just an incompetent set of cheaters. I agree that a lot of students cheat, but that's true of students from other countries(like US, Uk, etc) as well. I know this from my experience as a TA. I love computer science and so do many of my friends.
Edit: I should also add that I realize by low-trust OP meant the academic term for kinship-based society but my worry is that tying low-trust with cheating students from a country that gets its image tarnished because of various other reasons like low-wage labour and tech scams might paint a different picture to those who don’t know about the term or OPs intent
I came to US from India in 1996. During my college years, at a state school in CA, 80% of the student in CS courses were from India. Almost all of the boys from India cheated on exams because professor would generally leave the classroom. Grading was done on curve so those of us who didn't cheat had bad grades to show for :-)
India has been a low-trust society for a long long time and remains so. Every Indian I know would admit this in private. Back in 90's there was an Indian grocery store in Fremont, CA owned by a Gujarati gentleman. He had a poster on the wall that offended many of his countrymen. It said, "100 mein sey 90 beyimaan, fir bhi mera Bharat Mahan!". Roughly translated it says 90 of 100 Indians cheat but still my India the great.
I realized that’s what they meant but I was worried that tying low-trust with cheating students from a country that has a tarnished image because of tech scams and low-wage tech workers might paint a different picture to those who don’t know about the term or OPs intent.
It isn’t defined that way, but yes it is strong evidence that people from that society are less trustworthy. People are less trusting when others are more likely to cheat them.
well you tell me, who is defrauding them causing them to trust others less? Are you going to find a way to blame White people for how Indians treat each other?
Like all observations, they are reflective only of the individuals observed, even if a pattern emerges. 17% of all people in the world are Indian, India alone has 1.4B people, and that doesn't even count the hundreds of millions of Indians in the diaspora around the world. Nothing you could possibly say about Indians is true for every person in that group, because the group is so large that it necessarily includes every possible facet of humanity, good, bad, or otherwise.
I say all that to say, that I stand by the truth of my observations, but I do not intend for those observations to in any way imply that it would be acceptable to discriminate against people from India, or anywhere else, on the basis of their origin or ethnicity. I do not discriminate in this manner, as it is just as ethically reprehensible, incorrect, and dishonorable as the behavior I was pointing out in my original comment. I have worked with many Indian colleagues throughout my career that were excellent engineers, managers, and otherwise decent people.
Just to clearly state it, I do not in any way think that any individual person I meet from India is any more likely to cheat or otherwise be dishonest than any individual person I meet from anywhere else. India is far from the only low-trust society in the world, and in general most of the countries in the world qualify as low-trust societies. These are academic terms, and it is entirely expected that there is a higher variance in behavior for individuals in low-trust societies versus high-trust societies, so if anything honestly referring to India as a low-trust society implies within it that there is a higher variance of individual behavior and it's even less accurate to generalize about the behavior of Indian people.
I would be happy to work with anyone who loves computer science and embraces the cool things that we can do with technology to reshape the world and improve the human condition, no matter where they originate from.
It doesn't invalidate the easily observable phenomenon of widespread cheating in low trust society like India. This is also a huge problem for universities around that accept students of wealthy parents from these countries which cause grade inflation. Multiple articles have been written around this in mainstream publications.
> It doesn't invalidate the easily observable phenomenon of widespread cheating in low trust society like India.
Agreed. I am very carefully saying that I stand by my own observations as well. The point is that, while these behaviors may be commonplace in a particular society, it does not mean any given individual person from that society engages in these behaviors. We should always be careful of the heuristics we apply to people and work to treat every individual as an individual.
Not being careful here can actually create a form of category error. It's similar to the expectations of visitors to the US that everyone is walking around openly carrying guns and shooting each other constantly due to what's in the news or the statistical probability of a shooting occurring compared to other countries in the world. If you have a 4x higher chance of being involved in a shooting per capita in the US vs a random Western European country, both numbers could be minuscule chances (and are). Just because this type of dishonest behavior is more commonplace in low trust societies, and in this case in India in particular, the population is so large that it still represents a small fraction of the total number of people and you have to be careful not to indict everyone within the society on the basis of the behavior of a few. 15% of the Indian population would be the same as half or more of the US population, but there's a very big difference in categorization between something that is the behavior of a minority of a population vs half or more of the population.
That's all I'm saying. Treat individuals as individuals.
I graduated with my Bachelors about a decade ago and recently went back to school for my Masters. I work full time and attend school part-time.
I was shocked when I went back and started to work alongside many of the students in group projects. About 3/4 of the class were from India or Nepal. When I would meet up for group projects on Comp Sci security labs, I was shocked that everyone's instinct when we would start was to immediately google or use Chegg to find the lab done by other students and essentially copy it. I got frustrated because many of the times, my group would resort to cheating before even understanding what the lab wanted us to do, it was instinctual.
I didn't see this in the few groups I had with other American-born citizens. I feel guilty to even suggest a difference like this and I am conscious of cultural bias, but it was impossible to ignore the dichotomy between these groups.
Up to this point i have chalked the difference to an age gap. Many of my classmates are young and have zero work experience yet. They want their degree as a piece of paper to get a job. By contrast I already have a high-ranking and high-paying position and extensive resume. I am not looking to use my Masters as a rite of passage, but I truly want to go back to school to deepen my knowledge academically at some scientific concepts that you won't find in YouTube videos or through personal study. I am there to learn, not just pass a class. So when given these labs, I see them as opportunities to learn something to apply in my current career and my teammates just want to get it done so they can get a job. But this doesn't explain why the American-born teammates who were also young were willing to learn and not resort instantly to cheating, so it likely is deeply cultural.
I read his complaint as more one of societal reinforcing of certain behaviours. Certainly cheating exists in all societies, but if it is considered acceptable or necessary as a reaction to others, it's going to be a problem.
My spouse works in a large multinational non-profit. India is one of the countries they will not partner with very often, due to the massive amount of, shall we say, unexplained cost inefficiencies (lost money) that happens. One of her Indian coworkers explained that the culture is just like that, for better or worse, it's a hustle culture. And once you get someone to buy, it seems it's expected to use that as resources for the next hustle.
I'm glad you've never cheated, and hope this becomes more common in the future.
But you're fighting an uphill battle to expect people not to possess prejudices based on what is statistically likely. People will believe the evidence of their eyes.
The most you can hope is that people not act on their prejudices before getting to know you. And, as unfair as it is that you can't change it, you'll have to find ways to live with the reality that there are people who will act on their prejudices before they get to know you and know that you're really different.
Can’t believe I have to state this explicitly, but I am on Hacker News, after all-- scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
It is absolutely reasonable to ask people to reconsider their prejudices. Your line of thought does nothing but reinforce people’s existing biases without leaving room for the nuance of social context. Racists misuse statistics all the time to justify their awfulness. Consider whether you’re really different from any of those people. Or do I just need to get to know you more?
I'll stick up for btilly here - I don't think you've read his comment fairly, and instead are criticizing something he didn't say. He didn't say, or imply, that people shouldn't be asked to reconsider their prejudices. Of course they (or we, rather) should.
This is covered by the HN guidelines, which ask: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
I could imagine a criticism of btilly's post on the basis that it didn't really meet the GP's experience, didn't show empathy (though I think he was trying to be helpful, not mean), and didn't contribute anything positive, just "you'll have to find ways to deal with it". A better comment might have been more constructive and less coldly generic. But those aren't the criticisms you've offered.
Instead, you crossed into personal attack and snark with your last two sentences. Those things are definitely against the rules here, so please don't do them. It's always possible to make your substantive points without that, and you're of course welcome to do that instead.
No matter how low in the barrel HN is or you feel it is, there's always room to sink lower! That's why we have guidelines—to try to stave off further sinking. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and posting in the intended spirit, we'd appreciate it.
Sure, I agree that I could have been nicer. On the other hand, I have very few spoons for responding politely to people who retort to others’ requests to not be judged on the basis of their race with, effectively, “suck it up”. It’s difficult for me to consider that an attempt at helpfulness, though it’s possible that someone without personal exposure to these issues could mistakenly think otherwise. It causes a lot more damage than some snark on my part, imo.
In any case, thanks for taking the time to offer a more charitable perspective on the comment I responded to.
...though it’s possible that someone without personal exposure to these issues could mistakenly think otherwise.
Please do not mistake differing opinions for ignorance.
My father grew up in a time and place where they were persecuted by the KKK for being Irish. I have a half-brother on that side who lives on a native reservation. My half-sisters on the other side were half-Chinese at a time when public opinion absolutely condemned interracial marriage. I have close friends from many different cultures, who have arrived in a wide variety of difference circumstances. Including my wife, who was a refugee from the Soviet Union.
All this has taught me that the more real the problems that you face, the MORE important it becomes to focus on that which remains within your control, while trying to shrug off that which isn't. You'd absolutely be in the right to go around being upset at the world for being unfair to you. But your justified outrage amplifies your problems, and makes your life worse.
The positions that you put down as "suck it up" are therefore the best advice that I know of to improve things. To the extent that individuals and groups do that, they make their lives better. Both in the short term, and the long term. I have seen the truth of this, both for my family and for my friends.
I hold this position based on experience, not ignorance.
If it still sounds crazy, I highly recommend reading https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitiv.... In particular for its "backwards law". Which says that trying to hold on to a good thing is a bad experience, and accepting a bad thing is a good one. Nobody wants the bad thing to be true. But if the bad thing is true, the act of consciously recognizing and accepting it is far better than the alternative. (The rest of the book is full of other good advice that flies in the face of common preconceptions.)
I was happy to see this comment but expected to see it much higher up. "low-trust" is obviously an established term but it's really giving me a bad feeling here. These are enormously diverse cultures and we only see a very specific filtered set of demographics that end up in the US / West.
Edit: I should also add that I realize by low-trust OP meant the academic term for kinship-based society but my worry is that tying low-trust with cheating students from a country that gets its image tarnished because of various other reasons like low-wage labour and tech scams might paint a different picture to those who don’t know about the term or OPs intent