This article doesn’t really explain why academic norms against it are fine, but blogging / social media ones aren’t. It seems the incentive structure, and therefore the reasons, are essentially the same.
The problem all lies with incentives, and aligning them with the public good. You could spend a week compiling original data and making a graph, or you could spend a week re-posting 200 other people’s such work. You note that there is some natural equilibrium and so we’ll never totally lose original content — true, but what if that equilibrium is far below the optimal equilibrium? If we imagine a world where social networks are mandated to use AI to strike down every image that’s not either original, with significant alterations, or at least giving full attribution — that is a world with more original content, and therefore discoveries, being generated, as original creators would have less competition to be heard, and be more fully rewarded.
More practically, educated people have social norms against ripping off work without attribution — and those seem good and useful.
The dumbest accusation is “self plagiarism,” when someone takes passages from their own work and uses them in a later work. That should be standard for Methods sections in academic articles.
This raises concern on the part of an old academic now retired, but you’ve gone over that already. How about discussing AI and its growing use in commentary. I had a few instances where discussion groups—like here—were actually being trolled by such AI postings.
I have zero problem with assembling commentary from others or using previous postings as long as it is cited—even from AI summaries. Problem of course is a failure to cite references. There is little use in argument with an AI, although I’ve seen it done successfully. I’d just rather exchange ideas with fellow humans.
Posters don't become popular solely due to quality of posting. They become popular due to quantity and variety. Someone who steals content can not only produce more stimulating posts per day, with less effort, but doesn't require any sort of focus of his own, allowing him to simply pluck the ripe fruits from every genre.
Meme theft in particular is bad even when done consensually, because memes are essentially massified in-group jokes. They're funny because you get them. The more everyone gets them, and the more you see them, they lose their charm. Spreading them decreases their worth. It is so easy to become popular from stealing memes too, because someone can scroll through thousands of memes a day effortlessly while they could make only 1-5 per day.
What you're saying might be true for long-form content, but it doesn't hold up for short-form content like social media posts.
Academics are evaluated in terms of their publication count and citations because it correlates with producing large amounts of useful work. They could try to fake doing this is by repeatedly publishing other people’s work. To prevent people from doing this, norms against plagiarism were enforced. In a similar vein, copying and selling art that others have done was made illegal to allow people to profit from their work. Rules against plagiarism in academia and violating copyright law are probably for the best, though the duration of copyright/patents should be shortened to a smaller timeframe, ideally 10-30 years.
Otherwise, there is nothing wrong with taking something on the internet and posting it as if it were your work.😳
Aha! That's a lie. You literally admitted to plagiarizing David Cesarini's plot format in your Art of data analysis post. I knew that you weren't plagiarism free.
I have another argument for abolishing authorship: If authors are not rewarded for their efforts, then anybody who copies another's work won't be rewarded either, and the only people who post will be the ones who really care about the work they do.
This article doesn’t really explain why academic norms against it are fine, but blogging / social media ones aren’t. It seems the incentive structure, and therefore the reasons, are essentially the same.
The problem all lies with incentives, and aligning them with the public good. You could spend a week compiling original data and making a graph, or you could spend a week re-posting 200 other people’s such work. You note that there is some natural equilibrium and so we’ll never totally lose original content — true, but what if that equilibrium is far below the optimal equilibrium? If we imagine a world where social networks are mandated to use AI to strike down every image that’s not either original, with significant alterations, or at least giving full attribution — that is a world with more original content, and therefore discoveries, being generated, as original creators would have less competition to be heard, and be more fully rewarded.
More practically, educated people have social norms against ripping off work without attribution — and those seem good and useful.
The dumbest accusation is “self plagiarism,” when someone takes passages from their own work and uses them in a later work. That should be standard for Methods sections in academic articles.
yep. "self plagiarism" always struck me as ridiculous.
I see why some academic publications nitpick about it.
but when trashing someone's academic work using this, I'm feeling it's basically saying "we couldn't find anything else of substance"
Good artists borrow, great artists steal -- Pablo Picasso / Steve Jobs
This raises concern on the part of an old academic now retired, but you’ve gone over that already. How about discussing AI and its growing use in commentary. I had a few instances where discussion groups—like here—were actually being trolled by such AI postings.
I have zero problem with assembling commentary from others or using previous postings as long as it is cited—even from AI summaries. Problem of course is a failure to cite references. There is little use in argument with an AI, although I’ve seen it done successfully. I’d just rather exchange ideas with fellow humans.
Posters don't become popular solely due to quality of posting. They become popular due to quantity and variety. Someone who steals content can not only produce more stimulating posts per day, with less effort, but doesn't require any sort of focus of his own, allowing him to simply pluck the ripe fruits from every genre.
Meme theft in particular is bad even when done consensually, because memes are essentially massified in-group jokes. They're funny because you get them. The more everyone gets them, and the more you see them, they lose their charm. Spreading them decreases their worth. It is so easy to become popular from stealing memes too, because someone can scroll through thousands of memes a day effortlessly while they could make only 1-5 per day.
What you're saying might be true for long-form content, but it doesn't hold up for short-form content like social media posts.
Academics are evaluated in terms of their publication count and citations because it correlates with producing large amounts of useful work. They could try to fake doing this is by repeatedly publishing other people’s work. To prevent people from doing this, norms against plagiarism were enforced. In a similar vein, copying and selling art that others have done was made illegal to allow people to profit from their work. Rules against plagiarism in academia and violating copyright law are probably for the best, though the duration of copyright/patents should be shortened to a smaller timeframe, ideally 10-30 years.
Otherwise, there is nothing wrong with taking something on the internet and posting it as if it were your work.😳
Yeah, this article has made me seriously question how much of Seb Jen Seb's work is plagiarized or actually original.
I've never plagiarised.
Okay, I believe you.
Aha! That's a lie. You literally admitted to plagiarizing David Cesarini's plot format in your Art of data analysis post. I knew that you weren't plagiarism free.
Why not? In this post, you declared that plagiarism is a good thing and you persuasively defended it.
Never occurred to me, have no need for it.
I think he’s original I was just making a dumb joke
I'm confused. If plagiarism is good, then why did you accuse Nathan Cofnas of plagiarizing something that you wrote? https://www.sebjenseb.net/p/does-the-right-have-a-stupidity-problem/comment/48265799
Is plagiarism only good when you support it?
My pro-plagiarism stance is like a year old or so.
I have another argument for abolishing authorship: If authors are not rewarded for their efforts, then anybody who copies another's work won't be rewarded either, and the only people who post will be the ones who really care about the work they do.