Offering a road that bypasses a challenge makes the challenge feel less real, even if the cheat is diligently refused.
I think this is good to keep in mind, because it is often true, but it is not always true. How arbitrary the initial challenge was certainly has an effect. For instance, in the case of video game speedrunning, I think we can say that the fact that tool-assisted speedrunning exists doesn’t make the challenge of human-performed speedruns feel less real.
Edit: I should clarify this, since I expect speedrunning as a whole seems kind of arbitrary, which may have made it seem like I was saying “more arbitrary things will still seem real”, when that was the opposite of what I meant. The point is that the restriction of “ah, but a human has to do it, with an actual controller, on the original hardware”, is a pretty natural restriction to add. (At least, while the distinction of human-vs.-computer remains a natural one.)
I think this is good to keep in mind, because it is often true, but it is not always true. How arbitrary the initial challenge was certainly has an effect. For instance, in the case of video game speedrunning, I think we can say that the fact that tool-assisted speedrunning exists doesn’t make the challenge of human-performed speedruns feel less real.
Edit: I should clarify this, since I expect speedrunning as a whole seems kind of arbitrary, which may have made it seem like I was saying “more arbitrary things will still seem real”, when that was the opposite of what I meant. The point is that the restriction of “ah, but a human has to do it, with an actual controller, on the original hardware”, is a pretty natural restriction to add. (At least, while the distinction of human-vs.-computer remains a natural one.)