
The Future of Plagiarism - scribu
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2019/10/16/why-siraj-ravals-plagiarism-is-the-future-of-plagiarism/
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nkozyra
I never saw Raval as much more than an internet personality.

As such, the fundamental problem here is the world today values and rewards
glossy content. Gobs and gobs of glossy content. Repackaged content.
Aggregated content. Outright stolen content.

If you can make it at scale, views, subscribes and subsequent ad impressions
will make it worth it.

And the good news: we're not discerning viewers. Someone stole something?
We'll wag our finger, furrow our brow and click play anyway. There exists only
incentive for producing.

~~~
Nasrudith
That isn't new for better or worse. Even with new defined broadly as "times
that a person who is alive today lived through".

I am reminded amusingly about how moderation at scale pleasing everyone is
impossible by complaining about how many pages lower mirrors were than
original websites on Google.

~~~
nkozyra
I disagree and I think it's intensifying.

We used to find amusement and information from a single newspaper, a few ota
television shows ...

Even a decade ago the plethora of streaming options we have now we're absent
or in infancy. Monetizing your videos as an average Joe was not reality.

All that's changed. Influencers, content producers by the thousands are
inventivized to create nonstop content to compete. That _is_ new.

~~~
Nasrudith
Putting aside the dispute about the novelty and intensity how is a decrease in
gatekeepers both natural (the expense of distribution) and artificial relevant
to the cited problem?

They haven't made any positive difference and cannot. The incentives for
"gloss" to sell are the same and the alternatives have their own evils.

~~~
nkozyra
Because the nature of increased competition is accelerationism. The fastest
way to change a product is to introduce more viable competitors;
metaphorically, it's a form of evolution.

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RandomGuyDTB
I think Raval’s case is an interesting one for many reasons. First, Raval
bills himself, at least in part, as an educator. Second, the way that this
story fits into the larger picture of his actions. Finally, much of the work
he does is in areas such as blockchain and machine learning, areas that often
don’t have a great deal of public trust.

~~~
Schiphol
I see what you did there.

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aaron695
The future of plagiarism is GANs.

Currently it's washing it through machine translation.

But to the actual topic, the fun of lynching Siraj Raval...I don't get it.

Is the course a scam? No one has really said it is. Seems to be ok.

Not sure I know of many programmers who cite their stackoverflow which they
must. He has cited as required, hasn't he?

Wooooo he plagarised on a non peer reviewed site. I assume it's quality is
crap anyway.

Why are we talking about this? I don't get it.

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lordnacho
I'm not actually as worried about this sort of direct copy-paste plagiarism as
I am about a related issue.

What I'm worried about is the appearance of authority when there is none,
something that I guess Raval is also accused of. But what I'm looking at is a
bit more subtle than pretending to have written a paper.

In several fields, you get someone popularizing certain topics and
observations. Some guy will write a book about economics or psychology with
some compelling storytelling, and many articles will be written reviewing the
books. But actually nothing new has been added. It's simply a rehash of a few
well worn ideas from an area. Importantly what can also happen is something
that was considered marginal is brought up (Marxist/Austrian economics) as
accepted mainstream. Or something with weak reproducibility (Marshmallow) is
brought up as the accepted truth. Nothing that's a complete lie, but you get a
picture of a field that is quite different to what the experts see it as.

The fact that they aren't making up complete lies is what makes them hard to
critique. If someone comes up with a list of studies that seem to support some
tenuous case, it becomes quite hard to rebut them without seeming quite
pedantic. For instance you might need to dive into the methodology of some
survey to understand the critique, but the soundbite culture of our times does
not permit that.

Often the person writing these books is portrayed as someone very
authoritative, and certainly that makes sense for the publisher. They get in
the news, they give commentary on relevant news items, and the circus
continues. They never really have to defend their positions, because they're
always a sort of conduit for some other historical authority figure. But the
total mix of what they're saying doesn't add up.

~~~
wrnr
You make a fair point, but ins't that what any educator does. I've even heard
multiple teachers say "never let the truth get in the way of a good lesson".
It becomes impossible to begin to explain anything if you don't simplify
thing.

The problem with Raval is he is a narcissist. Check out his youtube apology
video where he reads out, for 4 minutes, the names of the developers he
plagiarised. It's a grand gesture suitable on veterans day or after a
terrorist attack. He gets pleasure from the attention alone, others get
pleasure from actually doing something. Maybe we should be asking the ESA who
decided to give him a podium.

~~~
sukilot
"simplifying" is different from "bullshitting".

As it is said, Education is the art of telling progressively smaller lies.

Marketing and pop-book-writing is the reverse.

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minimaxir
Minor update: after the fallout months ago (around when this article was
published), Siraj recently made a video apologizing for the plagiarism with a
promise to offer more credit explicitly:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zZZjaYl4AA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zZZjaYl4AA)

Not many people found it convincing, especially as he did not apologize for
the paid course plagiarism which brought his plagiarism mainstream.

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fargle
If Raval were smart he’d take a lesson from the Johnsons and Lehrers of the
world and go quiet for a bit. Wait until the heat and the scandal die down and
he can make a return. While a real apology would probably help, it may not
even be necessary.

Raval will, almost certainly, be fine. If he isn’t it will be owed not to the
plagiarism alone, but to the combination of all of the scandals brewing around
him. One plagiarized paper may be survivable, but a history of weak citation,
a heavily-criticized course and a feeling he misled his community may be
enough to make him a pariah.

Still, we’ve seen others survive much worse and it’s clear we’re entering an
era where the title “plagiarist” doesn’t disqualify you from any position at
all. It’s frustrating as many times it appropriate to sever all ties with
plagiarists, but it’s the reality we live in.

In the end, it would be good if Raval could at least thoroughly reexamine his
approach to citation, in everything he does. Citation isn’t just about formats
and standards, it’s a thought process and a way of creating. Clearly, Raval
doesn’t have that right now.

If nothing else good comes of this, maybe he can take this as a learning
opportunity and grow from it.

~~~
doc_gunthrop
Somewhat ironic to write such a comment without attribution (ie. it's directly
from TFA)

Lead with `>` for quotes in case you were unaware.

~~~
jefftk
I think that's the joke?

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TrackerFF
Plagiarism is very, very easy to understand: It boils down to money. Students
plagiarize their homework to pass exams / get good grades, and to get better
jobs. Researchers plagiarize in order to get grants and / or recognition which
will strengthen their reputation, and thus ability to work.

Programmers plagiarize to get work done, authors plagiarize to publish stuff,
musicians plagiarize to release better music. workers plagiarize to get
credit, and hopefully a promotion. And the list goes on.

In the end, people plagiarize because there are incentives to do so.

Siraj plagiarized because he's an "influencer", so to speak, in the Machine
Learning beginners scene. Why did he do it? Probably to build reputation and
credibility. I'm gonna go ahead and guess that he did it not to impress
researchers or industry workers, but to look more productive and legit to his
followers.

In the end, he probably doesn't give a sh!t about getting caught. If his main
focus is on teacher beginners, then that's where the bank is.

It's like with stand-up, when someone shamelessly lifts a famous routine -
other stand-up comedians will ostracize him/her, but that's a exceedingly
small group of people. The audience will still laugh.

So, that's my take. As long as there's a clear incentive, and no punishment,
then plagiarism will continue.

And unfortunately, you're more likely to hear "Who give a sh!t?" from casual
bystanders. When discussing plagiarism, I've heard so, so many variants of
just that.

"Who cares, everyone does it once in a while"

"Most would do the same in his/her position"

"That's not cheating, it's just solid problem solving"

"It's been happening forever"

etc.

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sukilot
This "future" of plagiarism is the past of plagiarism in China, as regards
technology. Without a strong regulatory regime to stop it, it's just more
efficient and profitable to plagiarize (but please, call it "research").

~~~
darkkindness
This view might be conflating IP theft and plagiarism -- plagiarism has always
had a strong regulatory regime in the form of peer review. Regulation of IP
theft is a different story.

By the way, did I spot a Tom Lehrer reference?

~~~
Metacelsus
Yes; to "Lobachevsky"

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empath75
Seems to me that GPT-2 and technology like it is going to lead to impossible
to detect plagiarism eventually.

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ivan_ah
Very interesting... I never bought the idea of GPT-2 as a threat to humanity,
since it's not able to produce meaningful original new content (it just
produces thematically and grammatically correct filler), but if your primary
goal is to plagiarize, then maybe the threat is real.

Problem statement: given context C and sentence X, find a sentence X' that
communicates the same idea as sentence X but in different words. This is not
exactly GPT-2, but it seems doable.

This kind of plagiarism would be difficult to detect. The plagiarizing party
could say something like "I didn't copy or reproduce, I just used as input to
a NN."

~~~
empath75
To be honest, I’ve had it come up with free verse poetry that was actually
quite thought provoking.

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disabled
Let's be real: Programmers plagiarize all the time. Especially other people's
code, but it can often be from peer-reviewed journal articles, other peer-
reviewed literature, literature in general, or just something off the
internet.

It is in everyone's best interest to comment their code and provide where
their information came from. More likely than not, you are no super-genius,
and you needed this information to finish your project. It is highly unlikely
that anybody can do this on their own.

It is no big deal to cite where you are getting your information. It is
important in case somebody needs to review your project.

~~~
RandomGuyDTB
Yup, even in private code I always add the occasional `/* taken from K&R 2nd
ed. */`. Helps when reviewing anyway so you can understand in what context the
code was written and how it applies to the current project.

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airocker
Please ignore

~~~
airocker
Or is it a "any publicity is good publicity" stunt?

