The purpose of learning to write is to make yourself a formidable communicator. If you can independently analyze a new topic to learn something new and apply the results of those learnings towards a particular goal, you can be amazingly effective in everything you aim for. But if you plagiarize every assignment you rob yourself of your own training of this critically important competency.
Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you.
All part of the zeitgeist I guess.
News is fake. Science is fake. Schools are barriers. Everything is subjective, objective reality is nonexistent.
How do we have productive disagreements going forward?
Funny you describe it that way. I'd argue that young people in STEM fields, including IS/CIS/CompSci undergrad programs, think everything can be objective when that clearly is not the case.
You don't need to go to college to press buttons, fill out spreadsheets, or input code until you get the output you seek. You need to go to college to make the subjective decisions, which don't have a clear right/wrong answer.
I think people like the one you're responding to would agree and increasingly think that association with institutions of higher learning send a strong signal to avoid dialogue. It doesn't necessarily look like anti-intellectualism to me, any more than filtering out people who didn't graduate high school is necessarily elitism. I could see myself rationalizing either, depending on the kind of conversation I wanted to have.
And at end. In my intention to post, I was solely being altruistic, informing whomever reading that if they were to read this article and consider getting a degree from U of the P that they should consider the risk. Just a gesture. However, I think my writing style might have been misunderstood as some semblance of pseudo intellectual attempt or such. Do know, for the record,that as the 1st to reply to the post, my intention was to inform.
But I am intrigued and inspired. How about we both try to post an article that invites our versions of intellectualism! Ready set go.
We are barely having any of those right now in the greater society. As long as we can't argue facts, objective-reality and do so without feelings, we'll continue descending into anarchy and divisiveness.
Some news is fake, some isn't.
Some science is fake, some isn't.
Schools are barriers, but for many elements of a school, the fact that it's a barrier is a good thing--we don't want ignorant people performing in roles that where knowledge is required. The problem is that many elements of schools are barriers which are poor at achieving their purpose, or are directly counterproductive to their purpose.
> How do we have productive disagreements going forward?
That's a complicated question, but oversimplifying the opinions of people we disagree with and then labeling it ("cynical anti-intellectualism") isn't the answer.
Where do these mythical jobs exist where being able to write well is a requirement for career growth? Certainly not at engineering companies.
I wish what you said were true, but in my experience, "being able to write and communicate well is critical in the workplace" is one of the top lies taught to me when I was at university. We had to take a regular writing class, and a technical writing class to graduate with an engineering degree. And when I get to industry, I see no signs of people practicing what they're taught, and it doesn't hold anyone back.
Edit: I should say my experience is more about writing than communicating as a whole. People do need to be good speakers/presenters. But writing? Not really.
Work is hard, but like most things you learn best doing the thing. Not saying SICP was shit. Just that I could have done that in high school and accelerated my time to money (and through it, contentment).
Maybe I'll let my kids do something like that if they feel the mildest desire to.
Besides, plagiarism isn't really about writing. You can lump it into two categories: Cheating, which isn't most folks' intention, and more importantly, giving someone credit for an idea. This last one is something folks need to do in some professions. Don't take an employee's idea and call it your own, same for something your boss has you pass along. Don't pretend something is your own idea when it was implemented at a job you had years ago. This version of plagiarism is vastly more important than writing skills (which can be taught without needing to address plagiarism).
That's not really up for discussion though.
The degree itself will become utterly meaningless extremely quickly if we would actually generally accept that kind of reasoning.
The whole reason the degree is worth something is because it's perceived as a token of you having done the work and self-betterment etc.
It's not an empty token that allows you to have a middle class job. In practice it might be, but as soon as you openly accept that is just what it is, and only what it is, then you only get cheaters.
If you spend time in a university to just get a diploma and maybe some connections, you likely are wasting your time and significant money (remember, a student loan cannot be got rid of by a bankruptcy).
Welcome to the underlying systemic problem with some of Society's more critical institutions.
Fraud and corruption have become institutionalized, and lying and cheating are just the name of the game.
Explain to me how Banks got away with what they have if not fir this very root issue; blow up the economy because of reckless, risky investments: Bonus, bailouts, and golden parachutes for all.
Default on your student loans, utility bill or car payment? We'll ruin your credit for all of your miserable existence, while you slave away anyway because the former cannot be expunged.
I'm so glad I borrowed from family and friends instead of banks or the State. It was hard paying them back, but if I had to choose a creditor of last resort I think I made the right choice.
From talking to people further along the plagiarism spectrum than myself, they see it as developing good taste or almost coaching.
Yeah yeah in a writing class its hard to justify not learning to write. But in any other class...
Lets hypothetically say we're in a computer science class and our assignment is to write an essay on the supremacy of the C++ language. There's all these English department goals of becoming a better writer that would be met by my pitiful attempt to glorify polymorphism. But the C++ goal of learning to be a better C++ programmer would be best met by extensive reading and research to find the best Stroustrup quote. If I were involved in the academic scene of converting papers into salary via cooperation with other researchers, I need to quote my coworkers accurately to share the revenue appropriately. However what if I don't have the goal of playing that game? In a learning environment in casual verbal conversation I might tell my C++ instructor that C++ main() returns an int. Yet if I write that down as I just did, I'm committing the academic sin of plagiarism by not properly footnoting Stroustrup, that's a direct quote from him. But I'm not trying to play the academic game, I'm trying to learn to program, and develop good taste by copying the right people. It seems a little unfair to grade students based on playing a different game than they signed up for. Even if the institutional goal is to produce little academics, in practice almost none of the kids will become academics.
That's a very authoritarian example of copying a guy at the top; but it also applies to lower level copying.
They're not necessarily wrong or self destructive, just kids on a different path with different priorities.
Then to some extent I could sympathize with those who plagiarize. ... If it's to save time for something more on topic they think.
But if it's a writing class, then, no! Or writing about history or society etc
Uh, did I say that, or were you intuiting? Not exactly a learner's approach :D
> Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you.
Except when it benefits you? This is the subjective perception I was talking about. That their mindset differs does not instantly make them wrong, especially when you can throw a dime out the window and hit an educated professional who falls short of the best (heaven forbid the "perfect") ethical standard.
Ethics is, and should be, hard. If you put words into my mouth, is your position ethical? This stuff requires the ability to stick around, listen, learn, and stay in the game, moreso if you plan to claim the high ground.
The concept of competence as you describe it is also very much a vague, subjective concern out of which you've just attempted to carve a covert competence contract. This leaves your blind spot unguarded because you are unknowingly making the discussion focus on you and your own competence level.
And this is a big part of why "hyper ethical" subjective ethics people struggle--they assume their view is right and don't ask questions of others.
What is it with this everywhere on HN these days where people assume every response someone makes is a refutation? It's a conversation, dude. People will take it places. Sometimes people will build on ideas you mention. Other times people will take an incident and draw their own conclusions. Other times people will draw on a similar incident or talk about a related concept.
I'll accept my off-topic downvotes since that is fair but this is so frustrating.
I just re-read what you wrote. If you're saying your response was not a refutation, given that you wrote "is not best characterized as," I think it's pretty clear as to why that could be misunderstood, to say the least. It seems clear to me that you were replying in direct disagreement and also projecting words I never said right into your reasoning. And further, it now seems as if you're claiming that I'm being assumptive. This is just compounding, not helping.
I think specifics are important here because it's unfortunately common for people to attempt to sweep pesky details under their subjective-ethical rug in the name of [hand wave]. Since this is an ethics discussion some due concern to communicating ethically seems reasonable to expect. If that's frustrating, maybe you can at least see the frustration on both sides.
Except learning isn't really the reason most go. It's to get a well paid job at the end of it.
Anyway, I notice a lot of younger students have this attitude and it frankly causes them to produce really crappy work. As long as they pass the class, they don’t really care to absorb the material.
I can’t help but wonder what kind of job they’re hoping to get when they leave school. What will happen when they get a technical interview? I can’t imagine them doing anything beyond answering phones at a company’s IT Help Desk.
I dunno. I listen to every word the professors say as if they’re telling me the secret to eternal life while half the class is dozing off.
My experience says you'd be very surprised. As in most fields, networking, charisma, and ability to bullshit play a substantial role in IT hiring.
This is absolutely brilliant.
> Except learning isn't really the reason most go. It's to get a well paid job at the end of it.
There's no contradiction here.
and a job well done is its own reward right? i think it's very pretentious to say that to a person who's attending school in order to improve their lot in life (because credentials count for so much); that what's more important than the credential is some abstract notion of improvement. you might as well cast it in terms of sin and salvation.
Sure, if the life you want is to be at a desk for 8 hours a day regurgitating your superior's existing biases back at them, go ahead. I find employers much prefer someone that can attack a real problem and think critically about potential solutions from multiple levels of analysis. If all you're good at is chewing someone else's cud and spitting it out with a slightly different word order then you're useless to people that actually want to solve problems.
And, sorry to say, credentials are counting for less and less every year. If employers have to take a year to train you to think critically, then what use does a credential serve as a filter? I wonder why that's happening...
The clients got the same value (they wanted a v1 policy, and they got one). I became better by doing the work, so next time I had a discussion on the matter I felt that I controlled the discussion instead of pitching in.
Faking it till you make it has the risk that you fake it forever and you become the paradigm of the Peter Principle.
Walking the walk takes more time but always benefits in the long run.
I have met plenty of people though that take the risk to never grow/evolve and stay in their comfort zone because they just want the base salary to fund their hobbies and they get no sense of accomplishment through their work (for many reasons)(I am not getting into this discussion).
Edit: Ps: I now work like this (when asked to develop a policy for a new client): spend some time thinking of key points (technology changes fast enough in some areas), drop a couple of examples for each bullet point, and then "plagiarise" from previously made work. This way I have prepared part of the downstream Procedures. You would think that a Policy is high (enough) level so it shouldn't need frequent changes, but different clients want different things.
If every person at the school had this reasoning, the credentials wouldn't count for anything.
The credentials only count for something if enough of the people graduating are actually fulfilling this promise of self improvement in the subject of their studies.
The cheaters are literally freeloading off the prestige of the credentials produced by the people who do put in the effort. If that group of people did not exist, the credentials would be useless to the cheaters as well.
Those credentials only matter insofar as they describe the likely caliber of the alumni that come from that particular school. Being a terrible student isn't going to help the value of your degree a whole lot...
Funny enough, this idea is almost certainly one you are plagairising. Perhaps you could find nuance, depth, and understanding by turning those words on themself?
Somehow I feel like most of the debate here centers on these words:
> The purpose of <foo> is <bar>.
That little word "the" there at the beginning seems a bit myopic to me. I mean, clearly, something like writing functions in more ways than one. Here are some other potential purposes of writing, off the top of my head:
* Deconstruct your personal ontology,
* Intrinsic artistic value,
* Emotional expression,
* Elucidation of unconscious grammatical habits,
* Social signaling.
Any of those are perfectly functional operations of the writing act, and a few of them actually benefit by plagiarising (Identifying these is left as an exercise for the reader). Of course, saying that "university should allow students to operate under any possible goal framework" is a different matter, but hopefully that at least points toward one way of thinking with more nuance about plagiarism.
