Readers might be fascinated to know that charges of plagiarism - and righteous indignation about them - are nothing new. There's a famous case of plagiarism right at the start of one of Terence's comedies. The comedy in question is titled The Eunuch, and it was first performed on the Palatine Hill in Rome in the year 161 BCE. Here's the relevant part in both Latin and in the Oxford translation by the late Peter Brown:
quam nunc acturi sumus
Menandri Eunuchum, postquam aediles emerunt, 20
perfecit sibi ut inspiciundi esset copia.
magistratu' quom ibi adesset occeptast agi.
exclamat furem, non poetam fabulam
dedisse et nil dedisse verborum tamen:
Colacem esse Naevi, et Plauti veterem fabulam; 25
parasiti personam inde ablatam et militis.
As for the play that we’re now about to perform, The Eunuch by Menander, after the aediles had bought it,* he [= Terence's rival poet] fixed things so that he had a chance to look at it. When the officials were present, a run-through began. He cried out that it was a thief, not an author, who had put the play on, but that he hadn’t put one over on him all the same. He said that there was a play called The Toady by Naevius and Plautus,* an old play, and that the characters of the parasite and
the soldier* had been lifted from it.
It's interesting to see that the words for "plagiarize" here are just the regular words meaning "to steal" (fur = thief, and auferre = steal).
Thank you for this important read! As it is important that writers do not steal from each other I think there is also a misunderstanding of the process of “appropriation” in an existential way. Kierkegaard has written a ton about it as that crucial process with which we need to engage with what we know in order to gain any wisdom from it. He surely was “appropriated” by a bunch of authors following and neither Tillich nor Heidegger gave him due credit for how much they took from him. But again, is this may be the way of a living thought to walk pregnant in others and produce new results just as germination does in nature?
I have found passages in my own writings I could not remember any more if I have even written them or gotten them elsewhere. I wonder if the technical advances of detecting “plagiarism” today are probably also blind to the deeper processes going on. Again, I am sure there is just plain stealing going on which is to despise, but again, I am left with open questions if some of the hysteria displayed is a helpful way to judge some one’s writings. Does that make sense?
You bring up a good point with regards to intent as well - sometimes we incorporate ideas we have heard without realising that they came from somewhere else. I believe its a well documented phenomena - therefore, surely motivation matters? If you don't realise you have internalized the idea, are you as guilty?
Yes, internalization is the better word here. And it is a wisdom virtue isn’t it? Surely it is probably not the same than copy paste paragraphs. But American education has become a fast producing industry, no time for slow learning and deepening. All has to be new and newly invented! The opposite of wisdom learning I suppose.
In Germany the situation is vice versa: Here, the conservatives are under fire since years for many cases of plagiarism, and they are punished even when they set a footnote at the wrong place .... while liberals, whenever confronted with similar accusations, if at all, are rarely punished by their universities, even in blunt cases. E.g., our current secretay of the exterior, Annalena Baerbock, plagiarized a book about political topics (though not an academic work), which got revealed a few weeks before election day, but she did not step down, and got an influential position in the government. And she does not allow anyone to see her academic thesis which she made in London, allegedly. Not showing an academic thesis to the public is really a strange behaviour.
-- Conclusion: Justice means equal standards for all. Not a new realization, but a classic one.
As I write this I know I am borrowing this notion (apologies for no reference except that it is not my own): "Taking without asking is not borrowing, it is stealing." I feel exactly the same about plagiarism. Having one or two sentences that vaguely sound the same as another could be forgiven as pure chance. Entire works littered with whole paragraphs not properly notated smacks of knowledge aforethought.
AI can check for plagiarism in a nanosecond, meaning it should now be an obsolete practice, an impossibility, an anachronism. All undergraduate and graduate level papers should be scanned and uploaded to an AI application that searches the internet for identical language, highlighting it for review by the papers recipient.
The problem with AI is that it can find anything that a writer may or may not have used in a part article or piece of work. As an example, I cited a definition from Merriam-Webster's Dictionary. The second part of the definition which was in quotes only was shown to be from an academic paper according to Grammarly... not from the primary source, the dictionary.
Yes I can see the problem you describe occurring. AI ends up highlighting the majority of the paper as plagiarism, leaving the reviewer with a big headache to sort it out. But just like all software, refinements and improvements would come, and the very threat of an “AI plagiarism scan” could significantly lower the instance.
It is extremely over-hyped. I think of it as 5th generation software. Software makes computers and machines do what the programming tells them to do, nothing more. But Large Language Models and massive statistical screening are a new, 21st century software phenomenon. “AI” will prove to be very good at some things and horrible at others. It will never be able to “think”. The danger that lies with it, I believe, is giving it Control functionality, like giving HAL control of opening and closing the pod bay door. That wasn’t necessary. At the end of the day it’s what the programmers are up to that no one knows about, including their bosses, that is where at least some of the risk lies.
And of course AI will be used as a propaganda and PsyOp tool. It already is.
The scenario is quite the opposite: conservatives have been facing criticism for plagiarism for years, often facing consequences even for minor citation errors. On the other hand, liberals, when accused of similar offenses, are seldom penalized by universities,https://topfollowapks.com/ even in clear-cut cases. For instance, Annalena Baerbock, the current Secretary of the Exterior, faced plagiarism allegations related to a book on political topics just weeks before the election. Despite this, she retained her position and secured a prominent role in the government. Furthermore, she has not disclosed her academic thesis from her time in London, adding an element of mystery. This underscores the importance of justice being upheld with consistent standards for all, a timeless principle.
Readers might be fascinated to know that charges of plagiarism - and righteous indignation about them - are nothing new. There's a famous case of plagiarism right at the start of one of Terence's comedies. The comedy in question is titled The Eunuch, and it was first performed on the Palatine Hill in Rome in the year 161 BCE. Here's the relevant part in both Latin and in the Oxford translation by the late Peter Brown:
quam nunc acturi sumus
Menandri Eunuchum, postquam aediles emerunt, 20
perfecit sibi ut inspiciundi esset copia.
magistratu' quom ibi adesset occeptast agi.
exclamat furem, non poetam fabulam
dedisse et nil dedisse verborum tamen:
Colacem esse Naevi, et Plauti veterem fabulam; 25
parasiti personam inde ablatam et militis.
As for the play that we’re now about to perform, The Eunuch by Menander, after the aediles had bought it,* he [= Terence's rival poet] fixed things so that he had a chance to look at it. When the officials were present, a run-through began. He cried out that it was a thief, not an author, who had put the play on, but that he hadn’t put one over on him all the same. He said that there was a play called The Toady by Naevius and Plautus,* an old play, and that the characters of the parasite and
the soldier* had been lifted from it.
It's interesting to see that the words for "plagiarize" here are just the regular words meaning "to steal" (fur = thief, and auferre = steal).
Wow! That's fascinating!
Thank you for this important read! As it is important that writers do not steal from each other I think there is also a misunderstanding of the process of “appropriation” in an existential way. Kierkegaard has written a ton about it as that crucial process with which we need to engage with what we know in order to gain any wisdom from it. He surely was “appropriated” by a bunch of authors following and neither Tillich nor Heidegger gave him due credit for how much they took from him. But again, is this may be the way of a living thought to walk pregnant in others and produce new results just as germination does in nature?
I have found passages in my own writings I could not remember any more if I have even written them or gotten them elsewhere. I wonder if the technical advances of detecting “plagiarism” today are probably also blind to the deeper processes going on. Again, I am sure there is just plain stealing going on which is to despise, but again, I am left with open questions if some of the hysteria displayed is a helpful way to judge some one’s writings. Does that make sense?
You bring up a good point with regards to intent as well - sometimes we incorporate ideas we have heard without realising that they came from somewhere else. I believe its a well documented phenomena - therefore, surely motivation matters? If you don't realise you have internalized the idea, are you as guilty?
Yes, internalization is the better word here. And it is a wisdom virtue isn’t it? Surely it is probably not the same than copy paste paragraphs. But American education has become a fast producing industry, no time for slow learning and deepening. All has to be new and newly invented! The opposite of wisdom learning I suppose.
In Germany the situation is vice versa: Here, the conservatives are under fire since years for many cases of plagiarism, and they are punished even when they set a footnote at the wrong place .... while liberals, whenever confronted with similar accusations, if at all, are rarely punished by their universities, even in blunt cases. E.g., our current secretay of the exterior, Annalena Baerbock, plagiarized a book about political topics (though not an academic work), which got revealed a few weeks before election day, but she did not step down, and got an influential position in the government. And she does not allow anyone to see her academic thesis which she made in London, allegedly. Not showing an academic thesis to the public is really a strange behaviour.
-- Conclusion: Justice means equal standards for all. Not a new realization, but a classic one.
As I write this I know I am borrowing this notion (apologies for no reference except that it is not my own): "Taking without asking is not borrowing, it is stealing." I feel exactly the same about plagiarism. Having one or two sentences that vaguely sound the same as another could be forgiven as pure chance. Entire works littered with whole paragraphs not properly notated smacks of knowledge aforethought.
AI can check for plagiarism in a nanosecond, meaning it should now be an obsolete practice, an impossibility, an anachronism. All undergraduate and graduate level papers should be scanned and uploaded to an AI application that searches the internet for identical language, highlighting it for review by the papers recipient.
The problem with AI is that it can find anything that a writer may or may not have used in a part article or piece of work. As an example, I cited a definition from Merriam-Webster's Dictionary. The second part of the definition which was in quotes only was shown to be from an academic paper according to Grammarly... not from the primary source, the dictionary.
Yes I can see the problem you describe occurring. AI ends up highlighting the majority of the paper as plagiarism, leaving the reviewer with a big headache to sort it out. But just like all software, refinements and improvements would come, and the very threat of an “AI plagiarism scan” could significantly lower the instance.
I think AI is overhyped. Does it provide some solutions, yes? Will it become the best solution? I doubt it.
It is extremely over-hyped. I think of it as 5th generation software. Software makes computers and machines do what the programming tells them to do, nothing more. But Large Language Models and massive statistical screening are a new, 21st century software phenomenon. “AI” will prove to be very good at some things and horrible at others. It will never be able to “think”. The danger that lies with it, I believe, is giving it Control functionality, like giving HAL control of opening and closing the pod bay door. That wasn’t necessary. At the end of the day it’s what the programmers are up to that no one knows about, including their bosses, that is where at least some of the risk lies.
And of course AI will be used as a propaganda and PsyOp tool. It already is.
This looks like an excellent thread for a future mailbag question!
The scenario is quite the opposite: conservatives have been facing criticism for plagiarism for years, often facing consequences even for minor citation errors. On the other hand, liberals, when accused of similar offenses, are seldom penalized by universities,https://topfollowapks.com/ even in clear-cut cases. For instance, Annalena Baerbock, the current Secretary of the Exterior, faced plagiarism allegations related to a book on political topics just weeks before the election. Despite this, she retained her position and secured a prominent role in the government. Furthermore, she has not disclosed her academic thesis from her time in London, adding an element of mystery. This underscores the importance of justice being upheld with consistent standards for all, a timeless principle.
Totally loved this. Thank you Classical Wisdom
Should I trust you?
In God we trust!
Plagiarism of trust or redefining utilitarian usage of words?
True trust can not be broken?
Yes, it can. It’s quite easy. Just do something contrary to someone who had great faith in you. Why would you?
Now we have to revert to dictionaries to reevaluate God, Trust and Faith.
Ah! the power of connecting words with meanings, then humbly believing you are creating new wisdom or novel contextual thoughts.