That smacks of entitlement. Yes. I know that the other side of the argument also smacks of entitlement. But I believe I have the 14th amendment on my side.

Also, there are a lot of assumptions baked into your statement. If you think that everyone here who can trace their roots back "a dozen generations" has your ideals, well, I've got $24 worth of trinkets to sell you.

Conversely, if you think that everyone here who is newly immigrated does not share your ideals, well, I have more trinkets.

The Mythology of America that I bought into was that it was a welcoming place where you could re-invent yourself in a way that was rarely possible in the country your were leaving.

And yes. I know it's a mythology--with kernels of truth to it.

But you have your own Mythology--and I find it unpalatable, both to me and my immigrant parents.

Explanation 2: Your trading "theory" is sound, but your theory requires specific and rare conditions to be met before you trade, so your 95-99% success rate only achieves modest gains.

My son just graduated with a double major in classics and molecular biology (doing informatics work), so maybe he could help! lol

But what was his plan and how would you have proposed implementing it?

You buy a Ferrari for the sex appeal.

But you nailed it. It's the Ferrari Priuso.

Handedness is probably not (often) captured in healthcare records, but I'm wondering if epidemiologists could mine insurance claims (or some other data rich resource) to see if there's a correlation with serious outcomes (death, hospitalization, etc.) from venom and handedness.

These places aren't homogeneous in their political tastes.

I live in a northeast blue state, but there are rural pockets that are still heavily MAGA. And I'm sure Mississippi has liberal enclaves.

That being said, I don't know what the "solution" to this problem is.

OP here. I think you're attributing relatively sophisticated motivations to cheating. I've seen it at elite institutions and those that were far less prestigious.

I don't think the motivations for cheating are different in the Ivy League compared to any other institution.

If I can speculate on most motivations (no particular order), they would be:

- Failing would be an embarrassment (to me, my family, etc.) and I probably won't get caught.

- The work for this course is completely irrelevant to my career path. They're just making me jump through hoops. I'll work honestly after I cheat my way through this course.

- I'm pressed for time or other there are other external issues fucking up my life, so I don't have time to study. I could definitely understand the course material if weren't happening right now, so cheating isn't that big of a deal.

I think most of this is excuse-making, but the human mind is capable of magnificent self-deceptions.

A couple more points (not really addressed to you).

I agree with many other commenters who say that the school admins do not want you to drop problems like this at their doorstep. The prof. usually has to navigate these waters on his/her own.

I've told this story many times over the years and the most common response (also given here) is something like "I'm sure she's put her talents to great use on Wall Street". Gives you a sense of public perception of Wall Street--which I believe is largely accurate.

~150 students in the class, so they were all a blur.

This was also a few years before the web took hold, so I could not have "Google-stalked" her even if I had been so inclined.

I do remember my fellow TA's name! But that's probably not surprising.

She certainly wasn't penalized, but I don't remember if she was given credit for her answer to Q2.

iirc, the student stopped attending my recitation after that.

I was a TA for a few classes and, given the honor code, we did not proctor the exams for undergrads. We just handed them out (left the room) and returned to collect them at the end.

- One of the exams in a course that I TAed had 5 free-response questions.

- There were also 5 TAs in that class, so we un-stapled the exams and each TA graded one question (for consistency).

- We re-assembled the exams and returned them to the students.

- A few days after the exam, one of "my" students (she attended my recitation) came to me with her exam and explained that I had incorrectly graded question 2.

- I told her that I didn't grade question 2, so she had to go take it up with "TA # 2"

- A few hours later, "TA #2" pays me a visit and she (TA#2) is annoyed. She tells me, "Your student is trying to pull a fast one. She answered Q2 incorrectly. She erased her answer and put in the correct answer and she wants it re-graded"

- I briefly defended the student and said something like, "Why would she do that... and how could you even know?"

- "TA#2" responded with "... because I photocopied all of the student responses after I graded them."

- Then I felt like a piece of shit for doubting my fellow TA. And felt even worse being naive enough to not be suspicious.

- "TA#2" and I brought all of this info up with the prof. who was running the course.

- We were told that the situation would be handled by an Honor Committee or something like that. We forwarded the information to the committee, but no one spoke to us and we were not allowed to participate in the deliberations.

- After about a week, all we were told was that the student was able to explain the "discrepancy" between her exam and the photocopy.

To this day, I have no idea what that student could have possibly said to explain her actions.

After that, I started photocopying every damned scrap of paper that I graded.

edits for clarity. The student did not get a zero on the exam, nor was she booted from the course. I don't remember if she was given credit for Question 2, but the TA and I were both expecting her to be tossed, which obviously didn't happen.

but sometimes being 19 is difficult in that way.

Thank you.

I was thinking about what you said w/r/t the proximal issue (gambling in prediction markets) and my 1st though was "why is this a big deal? If you're not an insider, just don't participate in these markets ... and then the insiders don't have a counterparty to fleece."

But I thought a little more about and I think you're right. Insider's fleecing others in prediction markets just erodes trust everywhere. And we need a considerable amount of trust in people we don't know for society to function properly.

I don't know the owner at my local hardware store, but I trust that he won't sell me shoddy tools. The same goes for every societal interaction. We need to trust people we don't know. If that gets eroded, we go back a several centuries.

The rest is irrelevant to what has been threatened.

edit. to be clear, the rest of your post is offensive in that it implies that under a different genetic lineage, the threats would be justified. I can't believe I have to even write this.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -GB Shaw

I don't fully agree with the quotation from Shaw, but there's some truth to it. And I suspect a common quality of the billionaire class is ruthless unreasonableness -- and considerable luck.