> People cheat at sports all the time and people just sort of accept it.
In pro bodybuilding, steroids are nominally illegal, but essentially every pro bodybuilder uses them, the physique necessary to be competitive in pro contests is not achievable without them, and the people running bodybuilding shows deliberately make no effort to enforce this rule.
In that kind of context it's hard for me to say the "cheaters" are doing anything wrong in any practical sense. Nobody involved actually believes in the rule they're breaking.
I think cheaters in other arenas can rationalize away to themselves that their context is equivalent to the bodybuilding context I described above.
You're making a good point. We have to remember that rules about cheating are effectively social agreements within a group of people. If the majority of the people within that group don't (anymore) agree with the rule, for all intents and purposes it's no longer a rule -- even if it might nominally be stated somewhere as one.
Culture and social arrangements evolve implicitly at first, and are only later encoded. Of course, the modern homo bureaucraticus might do well to be reminded of this.
In pro bodybuilding, steroids are nominally illegal, but essentially every pro bodybuilder uses them, the physique necessary to be competitive in pro contests is not achievable without them, and the people running bodybuilding shows deliberately make no effort to enforce this rule.
In that kind of context it's hard for me to say the "cheaters" are doing anything wrong in any practical sense. Nobody involved actually believes in the rule they're breaking.
I think cheaters in other arenas can rationalize away to themselves that their context is equivalent to the bodybuilding context I described above.