• @[email protected]
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    354 months ago

    I have no scientific basis for this, but I instinctively distrust anyone who calls themselves an “ethicist”.

    • @[email protected]
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      94 months ago

      Other notable people include the “effective altruism” advocate Sam Bankman Fried who gambled away other people’s money on FTX.

    • @stockRot
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      44 months ago

      If you research ethics, then you’re an ethicist. A little narrow minded to immediately distrust an entire field of research

  • Funderpants
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    244 months ago

    Okay, so, maybe correct me if I’m wrong or scold me if I didn’t read far enough but that first example of plagiarism, why didn’t the author just cite the work? They were describing a basic behaviour tree (a decision tree, I think) and had a source, then didn’t cite it. Why wouldn’t they cite it?

    • @cyd
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      104 months ago

      Because it looks bad if your text is peppered with quotes joined by little strips of connecting material. It gives (rightly) the impression that you don’t know how to digest information and put things in your own words.

    • @tulipasOP
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      54 months ago

      Perhaps because his text was almost ad verbatim the same as the source he didn’t cite. There are many more egregious segments than that which you can easily find in his vroniplag page.

    • @[email protected]
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      24 months ago

      They might literally have had some psychological issue, where they were trying to see how far they could push it without being caught.

      Or this whole article could be a hit job - maybe the original thesis literally wrapped these sections with text saying “here is an example of a plausible attempt at plagiarism that would not get caught today - please do not quote me out of context here, m’kay?”. The devil is in the details, and I for one am not volunteering to put in the amount of effort it would take to properly judge this person.

      Although I bet their bosses are, now.

  • @[email protected]
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    174 months ago

    It makes sense - he spent so much time learning how the system worked, enough to get around it, so now he makes a living continuing the exploit. Many politicians and CEOs do the same.

    • @just_another_person
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      64 months ago

      Yes, but it’s still wrong, if true. Plagiarism isn’t just unethical, it’s punitive in most places. I don’t see anything bad about calling it out.

      • @[email protected]
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        74 months ago

        Oh absolutely. And this being in academia, they likely will lose their job over it - like that Harvard professor who was accused of a highly similar form of plagiarism (borrowing long stretches of text while failing to cite the original source material). I was pointing out the absurdity of not doing that for politicians and CEOs:-(.

      • HACKthePRISONS
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        44 months ago

        plagiarism is an academic crime.

        failing to cite a source is completely amoral.

        • @just_another_person
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          4 months ago

          No, it’s also possible to be sued for plagiarism, so defacto punitive.

          I would also err on the side of ethics versus morality for something that doesn’t directly and intentionally do harm on its outset.