On: If Sapiens were a blog post

[JadeNB]

> It’s the original text, edited to ensure it still flows like the book.

This blog post seems to start off with the premise that you understand what's going on, which I don't. Is the author summarising his own impressions of Sapiens (surely acceptable), or literally lifting the original text of the book and taking it as his own, as this quote seems inadvertently to suggest?

[latexr → JadeNB]

> This blog post seems to start off with the premise that you understand what's going on, which I don't.

From the top of the blog post:

> The goal? Future-me should be happy to read this once future-me forgets how we evolved.

The post isn’t for you, but a reference for the author. It seems to be one of those “I’m making this for me, but if it’s useful for anyone else, so much the better” cases.

[neilkakkar → latexr]

Thanks, author here.

And for the other comments, no, I didn't update that right now. :)

[OJFord → latexr]

Why not quote the sentence before that? The actual first sentence is:

> I spent over 25 hours building a cut-down version of Sapiens.

Unless OP is on HN and added that after comments here.

[latexr → OJFord]

> Why not quote the sentence before that?

Because however many hours were spent making it is irrelevant as to why it was made, which was the point.

[OJFord → latexr]

I don't mean the hours, I mean the "cut-down version of".

[latexr → OJFord]

Similar reason. Explaining how it was made (by cutting it dow) has no bearing on the why, which was the point.

[OJFord → latexr]

No it wasn't, you were replying to:

> Is the author summarising his own impressions of Sapiens (surely acceptable), or literally lifting the original text of the book and taking it as his own [...]?

The first sentence about cutting it down answers that.

[latexr → OJFord]

> No it wasn't, you were replying to

No, I was not, I was replying to the section I quoted (hence quoting it, that’s how that works).

[ablation → JadeNB]

I understood it to be the latter: an edited (abridged?) version of Sapiens.

[JadeNB → ablation]

Indeed, me too. It seems a little bit untoward to me to post vast swathes of someone else's words literatim publicly, even if edited down, even with credit. If you want to make such notes for your own private use, then I see no objection to it.

[vectorEQ → ablation]

from the title that would be the goal i think.

[OneFamousGrouse → JadeNB]

That's quite unclear, yep. He also uses affiliate links to the book on Amazon. Seems shady.

[latexr → OneFamousGrouse]

The footnotes in the links point out that they are affiliate links.

[menacingly → latexr]

I think the shady comment was about profiting from another’s work (even if you’re upfront about it)

[latexr → menacingly]

I’m not familiar with Amazon’t affiliate program, but it’s my understanding that these don’t typically take money from the author, their commission coming from the platform’s cut instead.

Given that, and seeing as the blog post author was upfront about it, I don’t see a problem with it unless the book’s author objects. Affiliate links don’t even steal credit — they give an author’s work more visibility to people who might be interested in it without cutting into their revenue. A commission is an incentive to share work you enjoy.

[menacingly → latexr]

Oh I don’t really care about the ethics of any of this I was just pointing out that you seemed to be misunderstanding which aspect the parent was calling shady. It’s not that the affiliate links were poorly labeled, it’s that they were for profiting from the (in the context of the comment) questionably sourced material