I am astounded by the effort some are willing to put into cheating.

Spontaneous opportunities that arise are met with a cost-benefit analysis. In this moment, am I willing to cheat in order to gain a (usually slight) advantage in this situation?

What’s the downside if I get caught?

If  the consequence is mild, there is no interruption of the pattern and the temptation increases. Depending on the moral leaning of the person, the resistance to cheat outweighs the willingness to continue with the action.

This could be something as innocuous as taking an extra twenty from the bank while playing Monopoly, or peeking at someone else’s cards during a card game. It might even stretch as far as someone giving you extra change during a purchase.

These, however, are not the situations that astound me.

It’s the ones where a person is willing to put more effort into cheating, and preventing themselves from getting caught, than putting in the actual effort for which they are trying to cheat.

It’s the situations I’ve seen, firsthand, where someone is willing to go such great lengths to cheat on their partner, they have an entire system in place. And by entire system, I mean failsafes, phone programming and complete nlp (neuro-linguistic programming) to convince themselves it didn’t happen.

Learning how to cheat a system that is unjust could be considered a valuable use of time.

The real value is in putting the effort into making change so the need to cheat doesn’t present itself.

It just seems to be more effort than it’s worth.