Tag: plagiarism

Everything is a Remix

Tim Harford on The Rights and Wrongs of Copying

Or as I prefer to think of it, Tim Harford’s brilliant essay on two of our favorite things to think about here on EFE. Namely:

  1. What are you optimizing for?
  2. The truth always lies somewhere in the middle

The post is about plagiarism in academia, a topic that has been generating a fair bit of controversy, as you have probably noticed. And in typical Tim Harford style, his column seeks to inject a bit of sanity into the proceedings:

It feels like there should be a simple rule that we could apply, for example, “don’t copy other people’s work”. But as Kirby Ferguson argues in his glorious video essay, “Everything is a Remix”, “copying is at the core of creativity and the core of learning”. Star Wars uses ideas from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress and even Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, but it would be fatuous to suggest that either a creative or an economic sin had thereby been committed.

https://timharford.com/2024/01/the-rights-and-wrongs-of-copying/

We’re all copying from each other, in a manner of speaking. Why, almost every single post on EFE is an act of copying, in a sense, including this very post. Because without Tim Harford having written his original post, this post (the one you’re reading right now) simply wouldn’t exist.

Here’s a thought experiment for you. Would you rather live in a world in which all books are shallow and derivative, but with no plagiarism? Or would you rather live in a world that is full of plagiarised works, but alo deep and original?

Too abstract? Here’s another thought experiment – would you rather live in a world without the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or a world without Barfi (the movie)? Tim Harford asks us just this question when he suggests that “the kind of plagiarism you can detect with software or a keen eye on Wikipedia might not be the kind of imitation that really matters”.

Or in other words, you’re being asked one of our favorite questions by Tim: what are you optimizing for? Should we be optimizing for no plagiarism but shallow thoughts, or deep thinking and some plagiarism? Yes, it is true that deep thinking and no plagiarism would be heaven, but what if the choice was between those two options alone?

Tim’s answer (and mine) is that if those were the only two choices, I’d much rather watch Barfi than be stuck with MCU. A very good movie (and stellar performances) with some plagiarized scenes is better than shallow, derivative storylines with no plagiarism.

Where do you stand on this issue? When it come to the Puritanical Purging of Plagiarism, what are you optimizing for?

And what about the truth always being somewhere in the middle?

The other day, I was listening to one of my favorite songs while my wife was putting our daughter to bed. When we were chatting later on that evening, I started humming the song to myself.

“Ooh, I love “Ode to Joy””, my wife said.

“What?”, I said, outraged. “I’m humming “Paint it Black”, by the Rolling Stones!”

Who was right?

Well… you tell me.

The truth, you see…