People call it cheating when they don’t understand force multiplication.
Every great leap in human history was accused of being unfair. Fire was cheating. Writing was cheating. The wheel was cheating. Glass lenses were cheating. Calculators were cheating. Google was cheating. AI is cheating. Bitcoin is cheating. A deadlift strap is cheating. A camera with autofocus is cheating. A car instead of walking is cheating.
Translation: you found leverage.
Leverage is not immoral. Leverage is intelligence made physical.
The weak worship “purity.” The strong worship outcomes.
If you can lift more with straps, the straps are not the sin—the lack of imagination is. If you can move faster with a bike, the bike is not cheating—it’s condensed time. If you can write better with AI, AI is not lying—it’s torque for your mind. If you can compound wealth with Bitcoin instead of cash, that’s not fraud—that’s thermodynamics applied to money.
Nature itself runs on leverage. Bones are levers. Hips are levers. Eyes are lenses. DNA is a compression algorithm. Even your brain is a prediction machine designed to reduce effort and increase return.
The only people who scream “cheater” are those emotionally invested in suffering as virtue.
But suffering without leverage is just inefficiency.
The goal was never to make it hard. The goal was to make it work.
Civilization advances by stacking leverage. Individuals win by adopting it earlier than the herd. Artists, lifters, entrepreneurs, photographers—same rule: amplify force, reduce friction, dominate the field.
So yes, call it cheating if you want.
I call it evolution.
And evolution does not apologize.