You cheat because it's the easiest way to achieve your goal. Not expending unnecessary effort is smart and makes you strong. What are you on about.
Seemingly unnecessary effort makes you strong through toil, otherwise why else would people do things like go to the gym? By your model this is strength:
Growth is more about the journey than the destination. Skip the journey and the results will show.No. You go to the gym to be strong and to look good. There are things you want you cannot cheat in order to get.
Why deny the journey though? Goal or not you'd acquire experience from it that could be used elsewhere.
If there was a magical pill that made me get the effects of gym, without any nasty side-effects, I would scrap going to the gym and take it in a heartbeat, laughing in the face of anyone actually putting in more effort than that.
This would be a highly unrealistic expectation, as there's always costs.
There's also passive non-goal oriented growth, like how if someone was stuck riding their bike to work every day that they'd (likely) be in better shape than the guy who's always driving his car. They both have the goal of going to work, but one of them is coming out on top in the long run as a result of being saddled with more toil.
If I just want to beat someone in a debate, and I can get away with a 1-line chad hominem, rather than actually proving them wrong, I will.
That's not strength, that's efficiency.
Side-effects you want to happen can also be part of the goal you're getting by cheating and whatnot. It's pros and cons and you decide which path to take. Cheat on an exam to get a higher grade, but don't learn the material, if you don't think learning the material is useful.
It's not just the material, it's the practice of critical thinking and acquiring knowledge in itself. If there was a future trial that happened to bank on that knowledge, or if that knowledge were the bouncing point for a future inspiration they could not predict in the now, those pathways would be lost to them. In your model that only works if the goals could all be known well in advance.
If you suddenly had to learn new material with no means of cheating the system, and prior to that all you'd done is cheat, you now can't do the thing you wanted to do as the potential for it is under-exercised. Studying is like sending your brain to the gym in that it tires it out and gets it in better shape.
If the two were to be put next to each other and made to compete, odds are that even two gunmen with the same pistols will have the victory go to the one with more experience wielding it.
You need to take the easiest road to achieving your goals. Unless you like having noble aspirations, or are delusional.
"Need" is a very strong word.
