Tag: trainwreck

Plagiarism is plagiarism

Toddy-Cat isn’t quite sure that the Zman is a plagiarist.

“I’m not sure that not citing a source in a response to a blog comment actually rises to the dignity of ‘plagiarism’”.

That degree of uncertainty is fair, especially if you haven’t actually read the source yourself, as I have not. But, as Tublecane demonstrates, once you look at Stove’s actual words and compare them to the Zman’s words, you are forced to conclude there is nothing to be uncertain about:

I thought of the paraphrasing defense, but that doesn’t hold up. It’s not that Z-man comes off sounding like Stove because uses the same general form of argument, borrowing a phrase or two…. I believe it was deliberate. Compare:

thezman: “Much more is known now about the natural world, than was known fifty years ago…”

Scientific Irrationalism by David Stove, (p.1) “Much more is known now than was known fifty years ago…”

thezman: “…and much more was known then than in 1580.”

Stove: “…and much more was known then than in 1580.”

thezman: “So there has been a great accumulation or growth of knowledge in the last four hundred years.”

Stove: “So there has been a great accumulation or growth of knowledge in the last four hundred years.”

thezman: “This is an extremely well-known fact.”

Stove: “This is an extremely well-known fact…”

thezman: “Let’s call this (A).”

Stove: “…which I will refer to as (A).”

thezman: “A person, who did not know (A), would be uncommonly ignorant.”

Stove: “A philosopher, in particular, who did not know it, would be uncommonly ignorant.”

The remainder of the post veers away from Stove’s text, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it were stolen from somewhere else. Now, whether such a thing as plagiarism exists in internet comment sections, that’s a different matter. I say yes, because it’s publicly passing off someone else’s writing as your own.

Tublecane is correct. The Zman clearly attempted to pass off David Stove’s writing and ideas as his own in order to try to place himself in an intellectually superior position from which he could then pass judgment. It’s not merely a question of what he did, but why he did it in that particular manner. He is observably a plagiarist. This observation is further supported by the fact that the Zman didn’t understand the argument that Stove was making about Karl Popper, nor does he understand Popper’s positions, nor does he even understand the fundamental differences between a) logic, b) math, and c) science, let alone the current need for the etymological division of “science” into its three aspects of scientody, scientage, and scientistry.

Ogre agrees. “It’s absolutely plagiarism in the sense of “presenting the words of another as your own.” And that’s really the only kind of plagiarism we care about here. Whether it could be considered academic plagiarism (I don’t know) or copyright infringement (its not), its still a dishonest and unethical thing to do. Especially given the context in which it was presented. It’s just more evidence of his posturing–passing off another’s arguments and expressions as his own in order to bolster his perceived intelligence.”

As has been the case every single time I have exposed the pretenses and posturings of someone who has fans, some of those fans are attempting to change the subject away from the failings of that particular individual to my theoretical motivations in destroying that individual’s intellectual reputation. To those fans, I will simply point out that my motivations are irrelevant, the facts are readily observable to everyone, and that this is what I do every time anyone comes at me, be they friend or foe.

The Zman and his would-be defenders can dance and defend and distract and theorize all they like. It won’t make any difference. The point is that he’s not particularly smart, he’s not very well-read – it wouldn’t surprise me to learn he hasn’t actually read much of the Stove book past the first page since he clearly didn’t understand it – and most importantly, he’s not very honest. And his moral and intellectual failings have nothing to do with me, as I am merely one of the many people who has happened to observe them.

The main difference between me and most of those who wish to somehow minimize my influence or discredit me is not that I am at least a standard deviation more intelligent than they are, although that is often true. The main difference is that for 16 years I have had tens of thousands of opponents poring over my every word written in column, blog post, comment, tweet, and book, looking for every possible mistake they can exploit, and most of my critics have not.

So, even if I lacked both confidence in my own words and personal integrity, I know better than to ever make the sort of stupid, obvious, dishonest, and self-discrediting mistake that the Zman did in plagiarizing David Stove’s words and attempting to pass off Stove’s ideas as his own. At the end of the day, a man must decide whether he values his integrity or he values the opinions of others. My decision should be obvious from my mantra: MPAI.

Mailvox: posturing and plagiarism

Tublecane accuses the Zman of plagiarizing David Stove

If those paragraphs you quoted in your update are supposed to be Z-man’s words, uttered without reference to their source, oh boy. I thought they sounded familiar, so I checked my copy of David Stove’s Scientific Irrationalism and Z-man copies verbiage found on page one. Right down to the year 1580, the letter “A,” and the phrase “uncommonly ignorant.”

Stove, being much brighter than the Z-men of the world, wasn’t making an “everything scientists say is factual, so shut up” argument. He doesn’t even share Z-man’s opinion on Popperian falsifiabilty, though he lays into Popper and finds him guilty of launching a line of irrationalism (or a “postmodern cult,” as the subtitle has it) in the philosophy and historiography of science. A line which isn’t so bad with Popper but gets worse and worse as you go through Kuhn, Lakatos, and Feyerabend.

The point about accumulation of knowledge, which is robust in Stove’s book, is neither here nor there regarding the subject at hand. Z-man thinks he’s dealing with nihilists, and nihilists would have trouble with facts accumulating. But of course that has nothing to do with how you characterize varieties of “science” in the 16 Points. Science since 1580 could have simultaneously been more wrong than right and still served to advance human knowledge.

Upon closer inspection, Z-man explicitly mentions David Stove’s Popper and After, but in a separate post from the one in which he steals from it.

I call plagiarism!

Moreover, plagiarism that would be insulting to Stove, RIP, since he wouldn’t be caught making an argument as silly as Z-man’s.

I haven’t read any of David Stove’s books, so I can’t testify to the accuracy of the accusation of plagiarism. But it’s not particularly surprising to be informed that the argument the Zman’s was making is not his own, as 8 hours before Tublecane posted his comment, I had made this observation: “One definitely has the impression that the Zman has not read Popper, or even Kuhn, himself, but rather, has read what people have written about Popper.”

In any event, this demonstrates why it is important not to feign knowledge you do not possess, not to pass off the arguments of others as your own, and not to express opinions on subjects you do not know very much about. Especially on the Internet, someone is bound to eventually notice that you are an intellectual fraud.

They never learn

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
It’s only a matter of time before the rest of the #FakeRight AKA Dicky Spencer’s Dance Party is outed as gay Jews.

Eli Mosley‏ @ThatEliMosley
Don’t be jealous because @RichardBSpencer owns the rights to a book you want to publish you greedy book merchant. Stick to vyda and comics.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
We are helping an author whose own publisher won’t even RESPOND TO HIS EMAILS.  As we have done for other authors with other publishers.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
Richard Spencer has not responded to repeated requests for arbitration specified by the contract by the author. You know this, Eli.

Ember Wolf  ?‏ @EmberWolfTMNM
Have you and Concernovich been drinking from the same glass in the past day? There’s something in that water.

Eli Mosley‏ @ThatEliMosley
If you’re asking if they collude because they are saddened by their shrinking relevance compared to us, then yea. Same shit.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
And that was after TWO FREAKING YEARS of no royalty statements or payments. Totally irresponsible and incompetent.

Eli Mosley‏ @ThatEliMosley
So you’re admitting that you’re attacking him purely because of business reasons and not because you actually believe your own BS? Got it.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
No, the way he runs his business merely confirms his lack of integrity, which I had suspected on the basis of his political actions.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
You told me yourself that he is a complete fuck-up when it comes to details and organizational matters. Weren’t you supposed to fix that?

Keep in mind that the book in question came out in 2013 and currently stands at  #684,934 in Books and #651,423 in Kindle. These Fake Right clowns literally do not understand the concept of acting on principle or helping people simply because it is the right thing to do.

Which tends to lead one to suspect that when they accuse everyone else of being shills and merchants, they are projecting on that score too. What I can’t understand is what benefit they can possibly derive from clinging to the rights to the author’s book when they’re barely selling any copies anyhow.

And how is Richard Spencer going to accomplish anything at all when he can’t even successfully run a tiny publishing house that is a fraction of the size of Castalia House? It’s absolutely no surprise to me that his little marches and demonstrations have turned out to be debacles in light of what I’ve learned about his organizational capabilities.

Scientists can’t do science

One of the signs of a society in decline is the way in which its institutions are increasingly incapable of performing their primary functions. SJW convergence is one reason for decline, but declining intelligence and capability is another one. I suspect the latter may be the root cause of the latest scientific debacle.

Researchers warn that large parts of biomedical science could be invalid due to a cascading history of flawed data in a systemic failure going back decades. A new investigation reveals more than 30,000 published scientific studies could be compromised by their use of misidentified cell lines, owing to so-called immortal cells contaminating other research cultures in the lab.

The problem is as serious as it is simple: researchers studying lung cancer publish a new paper, only it turns out the tissue they were actually using in the lab were liver cells. Or what they thought were human cells were mice cells, or vice versa, or something else entirely.

If you think that sounds bad, you’re right, as it means the findings of each piece of affected research may be flawed, and could even be completely unreliable.

“Most scientists don’t intentionally publish findings on the wrong cells,” explains one of the researchers, Serge Horbach from Radboud University in the Netherlands.

“It’s an honest mistake. The more concerning problem is that the research data is potentially invalid and impossible to reproduce.”

Science is not, and should never be, considered any sort of truth-metric. It can only be judged by its actual real-world results, which is to say, science that has not advanced to the state of being transformed into engineering can NEVER be relied upon.

This also demonstrates why it is so vital to construct a solid and reliable foundation, because building upon intellectual sand means the entire edifice is eventually bound to collapse.

Actors ran interference for Weinstein

The sudden downfall of Harvey Weinstein is merely the very tip of the Hollywood iceberg. And it’s a really big iceberg of moral sewage and corruption:

In 2004, I was still a fairly new reporter at The New York Times when I got the green light to look into oft-repeated allegations of sexual misconduct by Weinstein. It was believed that many occurred in Europe during festivals and other business trips there.

I traveled to Rome and tracked down the man who held the plum position of running Miramax Italy. According to multiple accounts, he had no film experience and his real job was to take care of Weinstein’s women needs, among other things.

As head of Miramax Italy in 2003 and 2004, Fabrizio Lombardo was paid $400,000 for less than a year of employment. He was on the payroll of Miramax and thus the Walt Disney Company, which had bought the indie studio in 1993.

I had people on the record telling me Lombardo knew nothing about film, and others citing evenings he organized with Russian escorts.

At the time, he denied that he was on the payroll to help Weinstein with favors. From the story: “Reached in Italy, Mr. Lombardo declined to comment on the circumstances of his leaving Miramax or Ricucci, saying they were legal matters being handled by lawyers. ‘I am very proud of what we achieved at Miramax here in Italy,’ he said of his work for the film company. ‘It cannot be that they hired me because I’m a friend.’”

I also tracked down a woman in London who had been paid off after an unwanted sexual encounter with Weinstein. She was terrified to speak because of her non-disclosure agreement, but at least we had evidence of a pay-off.

The story I reported never ran.

After intense pressure from Weinstein, which included having Matt Damon and Russell Crowe call me directly to vouch for Lombardo and unknown discussions well above my head at the Times, the story was gutted.

Russell Crowe is hardly a surprise, but suddenly Matt Damon doesn’t look like such a good guy, does he? Read the whole thing, there are more details at the link. There should be no slacking off on the attention given to this issue, as it is a promising opportunity in the cultural war, especially given the way in which Hollywood is used as Satan’s pulpit.

When losing, lose harder

Having failed to learn from the failure of its initial show of force, Spain appears to be intent on losing the moral level of war and is doubling down.

Defense Tuesday ordered the sending of the Army to Catalonia with material and to provide logistical support to the Civil Guard and the National Police . 

This should end well and totally convince the Catalonians that they really, truly are better off as part of Spain. I doubt it escapes anyone’s attention that the Spanish government has shown itself completely unwilling to use its Army against the marauding immigrants invading the country.

Cracking under pressure

Brian Niemeier is more than a little amused by John Scalzi cracking under the combined pressure of his big, beautiful book contract and the God-Emperor’s presidency:

Scalzi’s “the dog ate my homework” post is yet another indication that #1-selling indie author Nick Cole is about to be vindicated once more. To quote Nick:

Okay.  As I’ve talked about before this before… this is what happens next:

  • Big Pub reduces its Author List down to servicing Cadillac Clients.  Many authors who think they’re something are about to be shown the door in the form of un-returned emails, unanswered calls, and not talk of future projects.  Already happening.
  • Amazon Opens Book Stores.
  • Trad Pub Authors attempt to seamlessly bring themselves, and their mojo, into Amazon and fail badly because they’re not used to the volume of work.  Marketing, Formatting, Editing, Social Media, and most importantly now: a tight release schedule of every 30-90 days.  Also Amazon picks the winners and its more interested in New Talent.

A cataclysmic paradigm shift is underway that will soon overturn the publishing landscape as we know it. Indie has been overtaking tradpub for years, and now the Big Five New York publishers’ sole advantage–their paper distribution monopoly–is about to collapse.

When B&N goes, it will take the tradpub midlist with it. You’ll know the old era is over when current tradpub authors start trying to go indie. But as Nick forecasts and Scalzi confirms, former tradpub darlings are woefully unprepared to handle the increased workload.

And that’s just on the writing front. Factor in the additional responsibilities of being your own publisher and marketing department, and consider how a guy who can’t finish a novel in ten months with the backing of sci-fi’s biggest publisher will fare in the new order.

Here’s the truth: Scalzi’s ongoing nosedive has nothing to do with who’s president or the current weather. It has everything to do with the fact that Patrick Nielsen Hayden handed him a golden ticket. Scalzi has never had to work in this business without Tor propping up his career. Now he’s losing favor to N.K. Jemisin, his last book underperformed, and he’s falling behind on his contract–all in the looming shadow of B&N’s failure.

I prefer to characterize my friend Nick Cole as a bestselling Castalia House author, but otherwise, Brian has described the situation rather well.

I’m sure you will understand that I found this comment to be particularly entertaining.

“The worst part of all this is that Vox called it when he was given the deal in the first place. And Scalzi, in his arrogance, set about to prove him right.”

The thing is, I wasn’t making the prediction out of any malice or SJW-style magical thinking. It was entirely obvious to me that an author whose primary skill was marketing himself to editors was not going to be successful once they stopped devoting excessive resources to propping him up and maintaining a false narrative about his skill and his success. Scalzi is, and has always been, a mediocre mid-list author with a penchant for juvenile vulgarity. If he submitted a manuscript to us under a different name, there is virtually no chance we would accept it for publication.

That being said, John Scalzi is very highly skilled and he is extraordinarily successful, just not at what he wants you to believe he is. The challenge facing him is that while those particular skills were integral to his success in a traditional publishing model that required currying favor with SJW editors and the pseudo-media of SF fandom, they are considerably less useful in the brave new world of publishing today.

The death of the cloud

This sort of thing is why we don’t use the cloud. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone does.

Yahoo said a major security breach in 2013 compromised all three billion accounts the company maintained, a three-fold increase over the estimate it disclosed previously.

The revelation, contained in an updated page about the 2013 hack, is the result of new information and the forensic analysis of an unnamed security consultant. Previously, Yahoo officials said about one billion accounts were compromised. With Yahoo maintaining roughly three billion accounts at the time, the 2013 hack would be among the biggest ever reported.

“We recently obtained additional information and, after analyzing it with the assistance of outside forensic experts, we have identified additional user accounts that were affected,” Yahoo officials wrote in the update. “Based on an analysis of the information with the assistance of outside forensic experts, Yahoo has determined that all accounts that existed at the time of the August 2013 theft were likely affected.”

The information taken in the heist may have included users’ names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, passwords scrambled using the weak MD5 cryptographic hashing algorithm, and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. Yahoo said investigators don’t believe the stolen information included passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. Yahoo also provided updated figures in a press release and in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

As if there is any chance – any chance at all – that they didn’t know that all of the information had been taken. Who trusts anything these Big Tech companies say anymore anyhow?

Sure, I use Blogger and Gmail, but always in the full knowledge that everything on this blog and in my email could go public one day. There is no such thing as “security” in social media.

RaiderGate!

This report of the Raiders offensive line metaphorically kneeling while on the field sounds as if it must be satire. I mean, it can’t possibly be true, right?

A new report from The Armstrong and Getty Radio Show has sent shockwaves throughout the sports world after it was revealed that members of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders may have purposefully allowed their star quarterback to get sacked multiple times after he refused to kneel during the National Anthem.

If true, this would essentially mean that an NFL football game was illegally thrown over anger that one of the teams star white players did not believe that kneeling during the nations anthem was the correct way to protest supposed racial injustice in America.

In other words, an epic level scandal.

During the anthem, virtually the entire team was seen kneeling other than the teams coaches and star quarterback Derek Carr. Unfortunately, this may have not set well with the teams offensive line as they were apparently the players who spearheaded the entire idea to kneel as a team in the first.

“This is one hell of a scandal with the NFL, could ruin the whole league,” claimed the show before detailing the fact that Carr was sacked two times in a row on the teams second drive and that the teams usually dependable center snapped the ball at the wrong time in three different instances. Extremely capable receivers also made multiple “weird” drops of passes thrown by Carr that T.V. announcers even noted at the time.

On the one hand, you think, no way. What sort of professional being paid millions of dollars would even contemplate such a stupid action. And then, you consider that the combination of low IQs and an entitlement philosophy with low short time preferences does make it possible. Still unlikely, but possible.

From the radio show forums: “One of the guards reportedly said if he wants to stand alone he can play alone. One reporter asked a team official about it and was told he would never be allowed in the locker room or any access to the team if he reported on it.”

UPDATE: An NFL sponsor is the first to pull its ads:

It’s happening; the NFL has just lost their first sponsor over players and coaches’ move to take a knee during the playing of our national anthem before kick-off.

Tennessee businessman Allen Jones slammed the league as “unpatriotic” in a public statement and pulled all ads for his two businesses, Check Into Cash and Hardwick Clothes, from the NFL for the remainder of the season. Jones reportedly “instructed his media buyer to remove any commercials from airing during NFL games.”

“Our companies will not condone unpatriotic behavior!” said Jones in a statement.

Fire your players, Art

The owners are starting to get just a little bit shaky after seeing the ratings drop another 10 percent while fans burn their gear and season tickets:

To Steelers Nation:

I want to reach out to you, the members of Steelers Nation, based on what I believe is a misperception about our players’ intentions in not taking the field for the National Anthem in Chicago. The intentions of Steelers players were to stay out of the business of making political statements by not taking the field. Unfortunately, that was interpreted as a boycott of the anthem – which was never our players’ intention.

Our players come from many different backgrounds and are united by what it means to play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. They are active in their communities and participate regularly in events designed to give back to those communities. And they appreciate the support they get from Steelers fans around the country and here at home. I also know that our players have tremendous respect for the members of our military services, including their teammate Alejandro Villanueva. There was never any desire on the part of our players to show disrespect for our service members.

Yesterday, I received an email from a Steelers fan who said tell the players to just play football. That is exactly what they wanted to do. They wanted their sole focus to be on playing the game, while also coming together as a unified team.

The main thing we can do is learn from this and strive to come together remaining unified as a football team. I believe we are capable of accomplishing this with the support of our fans. Steelers Nation is made up of the best fans in the National Football League. We appreciate your continued support of our players, coaches and staff.

Sincerely,

Art Rooney, II

 He chose… poorly. It’s rather remarkable how many owners are choosing to side with the media, the players, and the league instead of the one thing they actually need: the fans.