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David Roberts Profile picture
@drvolts
Jan 5 • 3 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
They have AI now that will find examples of repeated/unattributed words/phrases in writing (what they used to get Gay). My prediction: once this becomes widespread a LOT of academics & authors & journalists will be found to have plagiarized, at least at the level Gay has.
What's more I bet we'll find out lots & lots of revered authors from the past lifted phrases/sentences/paragraphs. My guess is we'll find out this all is much, much more common than anyone thinks now. It will be shocking.
I'm not trying to make any political point, or any point about Gay, or any point about the morality of plagiarism. This is purely a prediction: once we can reliably & comprehensively find it, it's going to turn up everywhere.

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More from @drvolts

David Roberts Profile picture
Jan 6
The podcast @TheRestHistory is doing a special series on the rise & rule of the Nazis in Germany that I can not recommend enough. You probably suspect that there are parallels with our current situation, but lord, you have no idea. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the…
One thing that is very clear from the pod is that the ignorance, cravenness, & cowardice of the center-right establishment was crucial to Hitler's success. They thought they could use the energy he stirred up to their advantage. They were scared to cross his base.
This is the main theme of the great recent book How Democracies Die. The center-right, the establishment, the "good conservatives" -- they are pretty much the only ones who can stop this dynamic. When they acquiesce, authoritarianism follows. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Democ…
Read 4 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Jan 2
All right, I really should be doing literally anything else with my time, but I have certain compulsions, so here's a short thread on the Harvard thing.

Or actually, not about Harvard per se, because I, like most Americans, don't really give a shit what goes on at Harvard.
I just want to describe a certain pattern/dynamic that has replicated itself over & over & over again, as long as I have followed US media and politics. I have given up hope that describing such patterns will do anything to diminish their frequency, but like I said: compulsions.
The center-left pundit approach to these things is simply to accept the frame that the right has established and dutifully make judgments within it. In this case, they focus tightly on the question of whether particular instances qualify as plagiarism as described in the rules.
Read 25 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Dec 31, 2023
One thing I've been thinking about: government, in a large, wealthy, functional modern democracy, is pretty boring. Lots of bureaucracy, lots of agencies, lots of complexity, lots of rules, mostly incremental change. It's not particularly *dramatic*. That makes it ...
... a very poor fit for the dynamics & demands of modern media, especially social media. Drama, outrage, sweeping counterintuitive generalizations -- these are the coin of the realm. No one gets clicks by celebrating the workaday operation of the gov't machine.
Consequently, boring democratic governance -- perhaps the greatest advance in collective human welfare in history -- has no day-to-day defenders. Basically everyone is incentivized to take it for granted.
Read 5 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Dec 27, 2023
It was inevitable that righties would start saying "no YOU'RE the fascists." Devaluing language & meaning, reducing everything to a fact-free tit-for-tat slapfight with no higher principles, is *part of the standard playbook*. I just wish it didn't work so well.
No YOU'RE banning books. No YOU'RE encouraging stochastic terrorism. No YOU'RE rigging the voting system. Etc. The point of all this is not to flag bad things that everyone should stop doing, it's to say "everyone's doing it so we don't need to stop." It's permission.
This is the underlying theme that runs through so much fascist rhetoric: permission to be your worst self, to indulge in hatred & violence, because hey, that's just how the world is, it's how everybody acts, let's just quit pretending & be animals.
Read 4 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Dec 25, 2023
I still think frequently about the fact that a pandemic came & created an undeniable moral imperative for solidarity -- for acting together, on one another's behalf -- and it caused an eruption of fury among conservatives that is still raging.
"We all need to sacrifice a bit, undergo some inconvenience, to protect the weakest among us."

They try to pin it on Fauci or school closings or whatever, but really it was just that -- that basic call for solidarity -- that enraged the right. Fundamental brainstem rage.
You can Monday-morning quarterback the pandemic forever -- there are plenty of legit criticisms of public officials & policies -- but in the end there was never any chance that the right wouldn't erupt with fury over it. Their worldview is based on hierarchy & dominance ...
Read 7 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Dec 19, 2023
On Grist, @katemyoder asks why, in the year of our lord 2023, with climate impacts visibly crashing down around us, people still fall for the #climatescam stuff. Unsurprisingly I have a lot to say on the matter but here I'd just share one thought.

grist.org/politics/why-p…
I think one reason people like scientists (& Kate, & me) are so confused by this -- & many other cases where large groups of people believe obviously false things -- is that we have, very deep down, so deep down it's almost invisible, a fundamental premise:
The premise is: people want to believe true things. People have a need & a desire for their beliefs to correspond with empirical reality. To get someone to believe something false, you must overcome this natural desire somehow. You must overwhelm resistance.
Read 12 tweets

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