Book publishing advice needed

[gepr]

I don't know why I inverted the Mach number. [sigh]

What do you mean "when things get tough"? Wikipedia says when food is in short supply. But that sounds like the trigger to become social and, once collected, there might be another (set of) trigger(s) to reproduce? Or is it the case that, once together, they will inevitably reproduce? So, 3 collective behaviors reproduce, move, and harden up? I can imagine that the signal(s) to harden up can be more non-local than the signal(s) to reproduce, whatever it(they) might be.

On 7/6/20 2:11 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Speaking of Reynolds numbers?
>
> A great many years ago I had an undergraduate honors student who wanted to work with slime molds.  These are social single celled organisms that, when things get tough, flow together to form a stem and a fruiting body.  From the fruiting body are distributed spores for the next generation. Only some small percentage of the original cells get into the fruiting body, so they pose a problem of the "group selection" type.  We were wondering whether we should be thinking of fruiting bodies as like dandelions or like burrs.  A little reflection about scale and viscosity suggested that dandelions was a stupid model.  The student devoted some time to mimicking with a probe what would happen if an ant brushed up against a fruiting body, and found that, indeed, they were extremely sticky.  We were overjoyed.  But then the student  fell in love, and I never saw him again.  

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[Edward Angel]

Sarbajit,

You are just touching the surface of how authors are not making profits.

If a book is sold in a college bookstore (all of which rip off students) I get my contractual royalties (18% of net which is about 80% of gross). Sounds good but then there are a number of side deals (my six monthly royalty statement is over 20 pages long). 

Net from an Amazon sales is almost nothing.

Any international sales reduce any royalty by 50%. An Amazon sale in India or China nets me almost nothing.

But it gets worse.

There is an International Edition which is handled through Pearson in Hong Kong. To avoid  possible copyright issues they get the tex files from Pearson USA and change some of the exercises such that the pagination is exactly the same. The changed problems are idiotic and I believe violate my contract. The best I could do for the new edition is get a clause in my contract that forces them to take my name off a version if they make changes I don’t approve.

But there’s more.

Pearson HK competes with Pearson US and other Pearson subsidiaries, So they can offer a lower cost International version on the web to US students. So not only are my royalties reduced by over 50% but Pearson HK is said to be doing well and Pearson US and my editor are not even though they and he did all the work. (he’s not longer with the company).

And finally there’s China. Pearson sells the rights to China for a few thousand dollars, of which I get a small piece, and China can then print as many Chinese copies as they like. When I questioned management about what appeared to me to be a ridiculous deal, the answer was that if they asked for more, the Chinese would simply copy it for free.

Re: drug prices. A large percentage of the generic drugs in the U.S. are imported from India. Because insurance companies can negotiate drug prices, if you have insurance such as Medicare Part D, prices can be very low. We pay $5 month for most generics and our monthly statement from the insurer shows that their part of the cost is never more than a dollar or two per Rx. The tragedy of drug prices in the US is that people who most need inexpensive drugs are uninsured and get hit by outrageous prices at the pharmacy.

We also found on our trips to India that drugs we really wanted to have with us on treks, were unavailable in the U.S. but were over-the-counter in India.

Ed

_______________________

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon

Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home)   [hidden email]

505-453-4944 (cell)  http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

On Jul 6, 2020, at 3:59 PM, Sarbajit Roy <[hidden email]> wrote:

Gary

Actually I agree with you to a considerable extent.

Let us consider Edward's book, On Amazon-India his book (the 7th edn) is available to us at a Kindle price of approx $9.50. Amazon sells the same Kindle book in China at $45 and at $155+ for Kindle in the USA.

What does this suggest to you ? For me it's that the authors are not making the profits - Jeff Bezos &Co. do

Now to come back to the question of why prices in India are affordable, it's because we have (had ?) a few activist judges who ensured that India's constitutional status as a socialist state means the needs of the many (parasites ?) takes priority over the profits of the producers (creators).

The prices of most life-saving quality drugs in India are probably 1/20th of what you would pay in the States. That's because the same court enforced our nation's sovereign rights under TRIPS/CUTS/WTO agreements etc . When I read about poor people in USA not being able to afford their next insulin shot because it's so darn expensive, you may like to know that a 30 shot insulin Flexpen costs about $5 while the same manufacturer sells the identical pen for 20 times the price in New York.

Sarbajit

On Mon, Jul 6, 2020 at 6:09 AM Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:

No offense to the government of your country, but just because its courts have judged it to be legal, doesn't make it right. Of course "right" is a subjective, moral concept, and I hasten to add that morality is relative and personal. Additionally, I don't know how subject other countries are to the pronouncements of a particular country's judgments. I'll leave that to the United Nations. But in the case of copyrights, my own view of what is right is that the availability for copying of material should ideally be in the hands of the author. My two cents worth.

On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 7:11 PM Sarbajit Roy <[hidden email]> wrote:

I got your book from here
https://www.pdfdrive.com/interactive-computer-graphics-a-top-down-approach-with-webgl-edward-angel-and-dave-d38281420.html

The Indian judgment is clear, Reproduction is limited to a copy which the teacher/institute has LEGALLY purchased.

There are other judgments from the same court directing that thousands of infringing movie piracy websites (and their whack-a-mole clones) are blocked in India for copyright violation and harm caused to producers.

https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Utv_Software_Communication_Ltd._..._vs_1337X.To_And_Ors_on_10_April_2019-1.pdf

Sarbajit

On Mon, Jul 6, 2020 at 5:17 AM Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thanks but the story is more complex. 

What transpired is in retrospect somewhat amusing. I received an email from someone at a university that was using the book asking if I knew there was a ps file on the web of the whole book. I checked it out, contacted the instructor who had it taken down. I had no idea how anyone had obtained a perfect copy of the book. Even during copyediting, I never was given access to a final ps version with even the typesetting marks. My editor started a big investigation at Pearson to see who had violated security during production only to find out after weeks that the people at Pearson who dealt with accessibility issues were sending out the file to every school that adopted the book (at the time around 200 just in the US).

What is odd to me is that the last time I checked libgen.io, which was a while ago, the version there was not a ps version put a pdf in which you could use the TOC interactively so I figured it was the kindle version which my editor, who had become somewhat expert at this, showed me how easy it is to get the kindle version. Apparently what is the the situation now is that the ps version is libgen.is so someone else must have uploaded it.

The material on the Indian decision on respect to fair use was very interesting. I was familiar with the fair use policies in the U.S. and the U.K. In spirit, they are the same. However, the problem is not fair use but with sites like libgen, where anyone can upload a file irrespective of copyright or ownership  That file is then available worldwide to everyone. Consequently, the holders of the copyright have no protection at all other than some people having ethical issues with libgen. Sadly, I find many of my colleagues and students do not see this as an ethical issue. 

Ed

_______________________

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon

Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home)   [hidden email]

505-453-4944 (cell)  http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

On Jul 5, 2020, at 4:14 PM, Sarbajit Roy <[hidden email]> wrote:

Edward

The PDF of the 7th edition of your book being widely circulated was very likely not generated from its Kindle version, but from the Postscript version used to print your book. It was generated using Adobe Distiller 7+ for a Macintosh. Must have been cloned from one of those unwatermarked copies dished out by your publisher's marketing team to "potential" customers.

Sarbajit

On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 2:52 AM Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:

I’ve been a book author since 1972 and a textbook author since 1989. My computer graphics textbook has been the most popular book in the area for 20 years and just came out in its eighth edition with various editions being available in Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Russian. Sadly, the book business has changed over that time; changed in way that is bad for almost everyone, especially authors. I think you’re faced with a lot of bad choices. I hope some of the following will prove helpful. And if not helpful, at least interesting.

Before I forget, you might enjoy reading of my adventures writing the first edition of my present textbook while on sabbatical in Venezuela, Ecuador, Hong Kong and Nepal. There’s a pointer to it on my home page www.cs.unm.edu/~angel 

When I had to pick a publisher, I knew the editors and  local book reps at Academic Press, Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall and Benjamin/Cummings. They dominated the CS field and did so largely because they had editors who knew the field, excellent book reps who knew the needs of the faculty and students, a willingness to invest in a book, and in-house production. None of these exist anymore and, as Tom pointed out, you're largely on your own. It’s unfortunate if you care about how many copies get sold and your royalties. I have many friends who self-published in the past. It’s a lot of work either way but I prefer to put my effort into content and not type-setting or marketing. None of my self-published friends have ever sold many books.

I had three excellent editors over 20 years. When I did my first edition, my editor hired a development editor at great expense to improve the quality of my writing. She worked with the CS faculty and grad students at Caltech and Stanford. It made a huge difference. Now almost none of these jobs exist within the publishers. All production is contracted out to the low bidders (art, typesetting, copy editing, etc) most of whom are in India. I no longer have an editor. There is one person working for the publusher with whom I communicate with to try to get things done correctly with the contractors. This last edition has been a long painful experience. 

So what happened? Books were always expensive for students, especially when sold through college bookstores. Then used book sellers appeared and Asian students started importing low cost Asian versions of the standard textbooks. Under US copyright laws, both are legal. The publishers responded by upping prices which reduced sales even more.

And then came electronic media. At first, my book, like most others, was still print-only. But the publisher sent perfect unwatermarked pdfs to all the schools what adopted the book for use by students with special needs. Wasn’t long before those pdfs made it to the Web. Then they had a electronic version and a kindle version that students could rent for a semester or year. The publisher, the largest in the business, was clueless about web security and had no idea that Kindles are not secure. Very quickly, the book appeared (with most of the other cs texts and various best sellers) on a Russian website as a “public service.” End of paid sales.

The new edition is only available in electronic form and the publisher claims it is only available on a secure site. I doubt anyone on this list believes that.

Although I never in the past had issues with the publisher having the copyright, which was pretty standard, I wish I had it now. Since there is no hope of making significant royalties now (we used), my coauthor and I would like to put the book out for free on our websites rather than having it appear on various illegal Russian sites known to most students.

Personally, I no longer care about royalties but the long term issue I worry about is why would any young person write a textbook. It’s a huge amount of work and usually not something that in the academic world is valued as highly as research papers and grant funding.

Ed

_______________________

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon

Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home)   [hidden email]

505-453-4944 (cell)  http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

On Jul 4, 2020, at 2:25 PM, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thanks. Yes, self-publishing is an option. I am looking for an official publisher mainly for one reason, namely that other scientists and researchers can cite it, since I still cling to the illusion that someone would actually do it. Normally self-published texts are not considered as reliable or trustworthy sources. I didn't expect that finding a decent publisher would be so difficult. 

-J.

-------- Original message --------

From: Tom Johnson <[hidden email]>

Date: 7/4/20 20:10 (GMT+01:00)

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Jochen:

The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.

Background:  I have been practicing and teaching about "Be Your Own Publisher" for nearly 15 years.  There are, in my opinion, some major problems with all publishers today.  It starts with control of the copyright.  I think YOU should want to maintain control of the copyright to your work.  It will depend on the contract, but many or most publishers will try to lock down the copyright in their favor for all -- ALL -- forms of your work in perpetuity and throughout the universe.  Sometimes quite literally.

Second, you should assume -- especially with a small publisher and you, not being as well known  as Stephen King or Daniel Steele  -- the publisher will do little if anything to promote your book beyond a mention in its catalog and, maybe, some promotional links on Amazon.  Given that, a 5 percent royalty should be seen as a con.

Third, given your computing experience, you should find it easy to format and produce the book yourself.  I have used Lulu.com for years.  It is especially good if you want to have both hardback, paperback and PDF editions.  Again the advantages: you keep the copyright, you can set (and change) the prices and to a degree the royalties.  Also, Lulu and Amazon handle all the backend financial arrangements and administration and pay directly and quickly.  I also use a very good, high quality digital printer in Albuquerque for paperback editions.  It is Lithexcel.  It handles all the printing (one copy to any number) quickly, along with all the fulfillment and accounting. The folks there will also, for only $25, set up your book in the Amazon inventory search engine.  Finally, there is Amazon's self-publishing arm.  While Amazon might take a bigger slice, the control over all aspects is in your hands.

Here's the problem/challenge with all of these.  YOU have to do the marketing/publicity/promotion.  But so what?  If you today sign with any publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.

Hope this helps.  Feel free to contact me with questions.  Also you might want to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc 

Tom

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505.577.6482(c)                                    505.473.9646(h)
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On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.

At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book" at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.

For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked, and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak

-J.

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[gepr]

Nick has asked us to consider ways in which society, given its current structure including sci-hub and libgen, peer network theft, "late stage" capitalism (including things like Amazon and the gig economy), the decline of universities, youtube, and everything else, might *facilitate* non-credentialed, paid, authorship ... or more generally intellectual work outside academia. I don't have any kind of response, yet. But given that question and your calling out libgen (and its use) as an ethical question *and* given your description that the creators aren't paid much as things are, I'd like to know how you (and everyone else) parse things like Aaron Schwartz' Open Access Manfesto, the FAIR principles, CopyLeft, etc.

It strikes me one could decide using libgen is ethically necessary, or at least virtuous.

I don't think that. But I have a friend who comes close. He hosted Game of Thrones nights at his house, attended by several of their friends [†]. Early on, he stole the episodes with Torrent. When that dried up, they shared a single Netflix login so all of them (maybe 10 or so) could watch while minimizing the cost. And every single one of these households pulls in >$100k per year. There's literally zero financial reason to go to such extents to steal that sort of content ... *except* if they believe they're "justified" or "right" in doing so.

So, if the existence of, contribution to, and use of libgen is an ethical question, do you think someone who decides they *should* participate in the project has made a reasonable ethical choice?


[†] I still wonder why they never invited us to their GoT parties. >8^D

On 7/5/20 4:47 PM, Edward Angel wrote:
> Consequently, the holders of the copyright have no protection at all other than some people having ethical issues with libgen. Sadly, I find many of my colleagues and students do not see this as an ethical issue.

On 7/6/20 4:04 PM, Edward Angel wrote:

> You are just touching the surface of how authors are not making profits.
>
> If a book is sold in a college bookstore (all of which rip off students) I get my contractual royalties (18% of net which is about 80% of gross). Sounds good but then there are a number of side deals (my six monthly royalty statement is over 20 pages long). 
>
> Net from an Amazon sales is almost nothing.
>
> Any international sales reduce any royalty by 50%. An Amazon sale in India or China nets me almost nothing.
>
> But it gets worse.
>
> There is an International Edition which is handled through Pearson in Hong Kong. To avoid  possible copyright issues they get the tex files from Pearson USA and change some of the exercises such that the pagination is exactly the same. The changed problems are idiotic and I believe violate my contract. The best I could do for the new edition is get a clause in my contract that forces them to take my name off a version if they make changes I don’t approve.
>
> But there’s more.
>
> Pearson HK competes with Pearson US and other Pearson subsidiaries, So they can offer a lower cost International version on the web to US students. So not only are my royalties reduced by over 50% but Pearson HK is said to be doing well and Pearson US and my editor are not even though they and he did all the work. (he’s not longer with the company).
>
> And finally there’s China. Pearson sells the rights to China for a few thousand dollars, of which I get a small piece, and China can then print as many Chinese copies as they like. When I questioned management about what appeared to me to be a ridiculous deal, the answer was that if they asked for more, the Chinese would simply copy it for free.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[Gillian Densmore]

I did not know that either about india. Thanks!

Ed do you get residuals and research royalties from your work? (not to pry) just curious to get my head around the economics of this.

On Mon, Jul 6, 2020 at 5:28 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick has asked us to consider ways in which society, given its current structure including sci-hub and libgen, peer network theft, "late stage" capitalism (including things like Amazon and the gig economy), the decline of universities, youtube, and everything else, might *facilitate* non-credentialed, paid, authorship ... or more generally intellectual work outside academia. I don't have any kind of response, yet. But given that question and your calling out libgen (and its use) as an ethical question *and* given your description that the creators aren't paid much as things are, I'd like to know how you (and everyone else) parse things like Aaron Schwartz' Open Access Manfesto, the FAIR principles, CopyLeft, etc.

It strikes me one could decide using libgen is ethically necessary, or at least virtuous.

I don't think that. But I have a friend who comes close. He hosted Game of Thrones nights at his house, attended by several of their friends [†]. Early on, he stole the episodes with Torrent. When that dried up, they shared a single Netflix login so all of them (maybe 10 or so) could watch while minimizing the cost. And every single one of these households pulls in >$100k per year. There's literally zero financial reason to go to such extents to steal that sort of content ... *except* if they believe they're "justified" or "right" in doing so.

So, if the existence of, contribution to, and use of libgen is an ethical question, do you think someone who decides they *should* participate in the project has made a reasonable ethical choice?


[†] I still wonder why they never invited us to their GoT parties. >8^D

On 7/5/20 4:47 PM, Edward Angel wrote:
> Consequently, the holders of the copyright have no protection at all other than some people having ethical issues with libgen. Sadly, I find many of my colleagues and students do not see this as an ethical issue.

On 7/6/20 4:04 PM, Edward Angel wrote:
> You are just touching the surface of how authors are not making profits.
>
> If a book is sold in a college bookstore (all of which rip off students) I get my contractual royalties (18% of net which is about 80% of gross). Sounds good but then there are a number of side deals (my six monthly royalty statement is over 20 pages long). 
>
> Net from an Amazon sales is almost nothing.
>
> Any international sales reduce any royalty by 50%. An Amazon sale in India or China nets me almost nothing.
>
> But it gets worse.
>
> There is an International Edition which is handled through Pearson in Hong Kong. To avoid  possible copyright issues they get the tex files from Pearson USA and change some of the exercises such that the pagination is exactly the same. The changed problems are idiotic and I believe violate my contract. The best I could do for the new edition is get a clause in my contract that forces them to take my name off a version if they make changes I don’t approve.
>
> But there’s more.
>
> Pearson HK competes with Pearson US and other Pearson subsidiaries, So they can offer a lower cost International version on the web to US students. So not only are my royalties reduced by over 50% but Pearson HK is said to be doing well and Pearson US and my editor are not even though they and he did all the work. (he’s not longer with the company).
>
> And finally there’s China. Pearson sells the rights to China for a few thousand dollars, of which I get a small piece, and China can then print as many Chinese copies as they like. When I questioned management about what appeared to me to be a ridiculous deal, the answer was that if they asked for more, the Chinese would simply copy it for free.


--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[thompnickson2]

Sorry, Glen.  I left out a crucial detail.  Before "things get tough", they reproduce by cell division.  So, each cell has  the choice to throw in with the group, or to continue to reproduce by division.  This sets up the "group selection problem" because only some of the individuals that form the fruiting body ever get to be spores.  

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of ? u?l?
Sent: Monday, July 6, 2020 4:28 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

I don't know why I inverted the Mach number. [sigh]

What do you mean "when things get tough"? Wikipedia says when food is in short supply. But that sounds like the trigger to become social and, once collected, there might be another (set of) trigger(s) to reproduce? Or is it the case that, once together, they will inevitably reproduce? So, 3 collective behaviors reproduce, move, and harden up? I can imagine that the signal(s) to harden up can be more non-local than the signal(s) to reproduce, whatever it(they) might be.

On 7/6/20 2:11 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Speaking of Reynolds numbers?
>
> A great many years ago I had an undergraduate honors student who wanted to work with slime molds.  These are social single celled organisms that, when things get tough, flow together to form a stem and a fruiting body.  From the fruiting body are distributed spores for the next generation. Only some small percentage of the original cells get into the fruiting body, so they pose a problem of the "group selection" type.  We were wondering whether we should be thinking of fruiting bodies as like dandelions or like burrs.  A little reflection about scale and viscosity suggested that dandelions was a stupid model.  The student devoted some time to mimicking with a probe what would happen if an ant brushed up against a fruiting body, and found that, indeed, they were extremely sticky.  We were overjoyed.  But then the student  fell in love, and I never saw him again.  

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[Edward Angel]

Gil,

Personally there are no financial gains in the form of residuals or research royalties from my research. In most colleges and universities, especially in science and engineering, successful researchers are expected to have a lot of external support through grants and are paid better, often much better, than their colleagues. If any of their work is patentable or leads to a commercial entity, they have to work out a split with the university. It can get complicated if the work is done through allowable consulting time or one’s personal time.

Right to creative work like books, music and art has traditionally belonged to the faculty member.

Policies with respect to software have evolved over the past 30 years. Generally, if I develop software as part of my teaching or research and commercialize it in some way, I have to negotiate the terms with the university, I can, however, make anything I develop open source. It took a while for universities to agree that that that decision is totally up to the faculty member.

The rules on IP for students are totally different and embedded in federal law. Generally, students own the rights to anything they produce, whether or not it’s part of assigned work in a class.

Ed

__________

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon

Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home)   [hidden email]

505-453-4944 (cell)  http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

On Jul 6, 2020, at 7:06 PM, Gillian Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I did not know that either about india. Thanks!

Ed do you get residuals and research royalties from your work? (not to pry) just curious to get my head around the economics of this.

On Mon, Jul 6, 2020 at 5:28 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick has asked us to consider ways in which society, given its current structure including sci-hub and libgen, peer network theft, "late stage" capitalism (including things like Amazon and the gig economy), the decline of universities, youtube, and everything else, might *facilitate* non-credentialed, paid, authorship ... or more generally intellectual work outside academia. I don't have any kind of response, yet. But given that question and your calling out libgen (and its use) as an ethical question *and* given your description that the creators aren't paid much as things are, I'd like to know how you (and everyone else) parse things like Aaron Schwartz' Open Access Manfesto, the FAIR principles, CopyLeft, etc.

It strikes me one could decide using libgen is ethically necessary, or at least virtuous.

I don't think that. But I have a friend who comes close. He hosted Game of Thrones nights at his house, attended by several of their friends [†]. Early on, he stole the episodes with Torrent. When that dried up, they shared a single Netflix login so all of them (maybe 10 or so) could watch while minimizing the cost. And every single one of these households pulls in >$100k per year. There's literally zero financial reason to go to such extents to steal that sort of content ... *except* if they believe they're "justified" or "right" in doing so.

So, if the existence of, contribution to, and use of libgen is an ethical question, do you think someone who decides they *should* participate in the project has made a reasonable ethical choice?


[†] I still wonder why they never invited us to their GoT parties. >8^D

On 7/5/20 4:47 PM, Edward Angel wrote:
> Consequently, the holders of the copyright have no protection at all other than some people having ethical issues with libgen. Sadly, I find many of my colleagues and students do not see this as an ethical issue.

On 7/6/20 4:04 PM, Edward Angel wrote:
> You are just touching the surface of how authors are not making profits.
>
> If a book is sold in a college bookstore (all of which rip off students) I get my contractual royalties (18% of net which is about 80% of gross). Sounds good but then there are a number of side deals (my six monthly royalty statement is over 20 pages long). 
>
> Net from an Amazon sales is almost nothing.
>
> Any international sales reduce any royalty by 50%. An Amazon sale in India or China nets me almost nothing.
>
> But it gets worse.
>
> There is an International Edition which is handled through Pearson in Hong Kong. To avoid  possible copyright issues they get the tex files from Pearson USA and change some of the exercises such that the pagination is exactly the same. The changed problems are idiotic and I believe violate my contract. The best I could do for the new edition is get a clause in my contract that forces them to take my name off a version if they make changes I don’t approve.
>
> But there’s more.
>
> Pearson HK competes with Pearson US and other Pearson subsidiaries, So they can offer a lower cost International version on the web to US students. So not only are my royalties reduced by over 50% but Pearson HK is said to be doing well and Pearson US and my editor are not even though they and he did all the work. (he’s not longer with the company).
>
> And finally there’s China. Pearson sells the rights to China for a few thousand dollars, of which I get a small piece, and China can then print as many Chinese copies as they like. When I questioned management about what appeared to me to be a ridiculous deal, the answer was that if they asked for more, the Chinese would simply copy it for free.


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[gepr]

Continuing down the open access thread and the ethics of Schwartz' JSTOR theft, libgen, and sci-hub:

Retractions and controversies over coronavirus research show that the process of science is working as it should
https://theconversation.com/retractions-and-controversies-over-coronavirus-research-show-that-the-process-of-science-is-working-as-it-should-140326

From the article: "The database provided by the tiny company Surgisphere – whose website is no longer accessible – was unavailable during peer review of the paper or to scientists and the public afterwards, preventing anyone from evaluating the data."

The point I made in response to EricS's worry that emphasizing paper consumption over book consumption was that the paper publishing process is more agile and, I argue, can stick more closely to the referent(s). With that agility comes some of the criticisms of Science™ (as well-expressed by Dave recently). To my mind, those criticisms target the wrong thing. They're failures of us to understand that there is no unified scientific method [†] and, along with *openness* comes an understanding that the whole process is messy and intensely social. I think it was Randy Burge who used to repeat a mantra like "Not being right, but getting it right." That journals (as well as newspapers) don't *require* open source and open data at the outset boggles me.

Coincidentally, this popped up in my queue the other day:

Let's talk about why people are moving left....
https://youtu.be/2g0qUxgwHmo

Ed's story about authors seeing very little compensation for their work, Nick's plea for a way to harvest the minds of non-academics, the ethics of Schwartz' theft, are all *old* issues targeting the same problems with late stage capitalism now being targeted by BLM and antifa. Perhaps the incentive and motive systems are the causes; and outcomes like libgen are the symptoms.


[†] I'm currently (slowly, as usual) reading a nice little book called "Ignorance" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13574594-ignorance that makes this point nicely. I put the book down in disgust when he started yapping about quantum mechanics. Why does everyone always do that even if they admit upfront they don't know what they're talking about? [sigh] Anyway, I got over it and have started again.

On 7/7/20 4:59 AM, Edward Angel wrote:
> I have to negotiate the terms with the university, I can, however, make anything I develop open source. It took a while for universities to agree that that that decision is totally up to the faculty member.
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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Carnegie Mellon's intellectual property policy was described in a ~50 page summary  document when I worked there.  But it was apparently more complicated than that.  I had to testify in Federal Court regarding software that had been developed by chemistry professor and Nobel Laureate John People and his students.  A company named Gaussian Inc was selling the software and one of my tasks was to keep the version made available by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center current. PSC is jointly operated  by CMU and Pitt and it makes supercomputers and software available to researchers.  The simplified understanding was that any artifact created by CMU researchers could be sold commercially but that the University could not be charged for its use.  When I asked for Gaussian 94 (a new version was released every two years) the company stalled for weeks and eventually said we had to buy it.  To shorten the story, after months of litigation and just before the judge was to issue his ruling, an out-of-court settlement was reached which was confidential.  IP is a complex area.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020, 7:05 AM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Continuing down the open access thread and the ethics of Schwartz' JSTOR theft, libgen, and sci-hub:

Retractions and controversies over coronavirus research show that the process of science is working as it should
https://theconversation.com/retractions-and-controversies-over-coronavirus-research-show-that-the-process-of-science-is-working-as-it-should-140326

From the article: "The database provided by the tiny company Surgisphere – whose website is no longer accessible – was unavailable during peer review of the paper or to scientists and the public afterwards, preventing anyone from evaluating the data."

The point I made in response to EricS's worry that emphasizing paper consumption over book consumption was that the paper publishing process is more agile and, I argue, can stick more closely to the referent(s). With that agility comes some of the criticisms of Science™ (as well-expressed by Dave recently). To my mind, those criticisms target the wrong thing. They're failures of us to understand that there is no unified scientific method [†] and, along with *openness* comes an understanding that the whole process is messy and intensely social. I think it was Randy Burge who used to repeat a mantra like "Not being right, but getting it right." That journals (as well as newspapers) don't *require* open source and open data at the outset boggles me.

Coincidentally, this popped up in my queue the other day:

Let's talk about why people are moving left....
https://youtu.be/2g0qUxgwHmo

Ed's story about authors seeing very little compensation for their work, Nick's plea for a way to harvest the minds of non-academics, the ethics of Schwartz' theft, are all *old* issues targeting the same problems with late stage capitalism now being targeted by BLM and antifa. Perhaps the incentive and motive systems are the causes; and outcomes like libgen are the symptoms.


[†] I'm currently (slowly, as usual) reading a nice little book called "Ignorance" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13574594-ignorance that makes this point nicely. I put the book down in disgust when he started yapping about quantum mechanics. Why does everyone always do that even if they admit upfront they don't know what they're talking about? [sigh] Anyway, I got over it and have started again.

On 7/7/20 4:59 AM, Edward Angel wrote:
> I have to negotiate the terms with the university, I can, however, make anything I develop open source. It took a while for universities to agree that that that decision is totally up to the faculty member.
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[Frank Wimberly-2]

John Pople not John People.  

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020, 7:39 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

Carnegie Mellon's intellectual property policy was described in a ~50 page summary  document when I worked there.  But it was apparently more complicated than that.  I had to testify in Federal Court regarding software that had been developed by chemistry professor and Nobel Laureate John People and his students.  A company named Gaussian Inc was selling the software and one of my tasks was to keep the version made available by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center current. PSC is jointly operated  by CMU and Pitt and it makes supercomputers and software available to researchers.  The simplified understanding was that any artifact created by CMU researchers could be sold commercially but that the University could not be charged for its use.  When I asked for Gaussian 94 (a new version was released every two years) the company stalled for weeks and eventually said we had to buy it.  To shorten the story, after months of litigation and just before the judge was to issue his ruling, an out-of-court settlement was reached which was confidential.  IP is a complex area.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020, 7:05 AM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Continuing down the open access thread and the ethics of Schwartz' JSTOR theft, libgen, and sci-hub:

Retractions and controversies over coronavirus research show that the process of science is working as it should
https://theconversation.com/retractions-and-controversies-over-coronavirus-research-show-that-the-process-of-science-is-working-as-it-should-140326

From the article: "The database provided by the tiny company Surgisphere – whose website is no longer accessible – was unavailable during peer review of the paper or to scientists and the public afterwards, preventing anyone from evaluating the data."

The point I made in response to EricS's worry that emphasizing paper consumption over book consumption was that the paper publishing process is more agile and, I argue, can stick more closely to the referent(s). With that agility comes some of the criticisms of Science™ (as well-expressed by Dave recently). To my mind, those criticisms target the wrong thing. They're failures of us to understand that there is no unified scientific method [†] and, along with *openness* comes an understanding that the whole process is messy and intensely social. I think it was Randy Burge who used to repeat a mantra like "Not being right, but getting it right." That journals (as well as newspapers) don't *require* open source and open data at the outset boggles me.

Coincidentally, this popped up in my queue the other day:

Let's talk about why people are moving left....
https://youtu.be/2g0qUxgwHmo

Ed's story about authors seeing very little compensation for their work, Nick's plea for a way to harvest the minds of non-academics, the ethics of Schwartz' theft, are all *old* issues targeting the same problems with late stage capitalism now being targeted by BLM and antifa. Perhaps the incentive and motive systems are the causes; and outcomes like libgen are the symptoms.


[†] I'm currently (slowly, as usual) reading a nice little book called "Ignorance" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13574594-ignorance that makes this point nicely. I put the book down in disgust when he started yapping about quantum mechanics. Why does everyone always do that even if they admit upfront they don't know what they're talking about? [sigh] Anyway, I got over it and have started again.

On 7/7/20 4:59 AM, Edward Angel wrote:
> I have to negotiate the terms with the university, I can, however, make anything I develop open source. It took a while for universities to agree that that that decision is totally up to the faculty member.
--
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[Edward Angel]

At least at CMU there are people competent enough to make decisions about the merits of faculty work. At one point at UNM, the intellectual property person at UNM declared that any software we produced, even for a class, had to be turned over to him and he would make the decision as to whether or not it had commercial potential before we could put it on our websites.The guy knew nothing about software and was also pretty incompetent as a IP lawyer. 

Long ago I was an expert witness on a case in which the Feds went after someone who had manipulated the thermostats in a Sandia building.They were using pretty draconian computer hacking laws to go after him. We were able to convince the prosectors to drop the case at least partly on the argument that almost everything has an embedded processor so their argument would convert thousands of actions into computer crimes.

Ed 

_______________________

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon

Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home)   [hidden email]

505-453-4944 (cell)  http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

On Jul 7, 2020, at 7:39 AM, Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

Carnegie Mellon's intellectual property policy was described in a ~50 page summary  document when I worked there.  But it was apparently more complicated than that.  I had to testify in Federal Court regarding software that had been developed by chemistry professor and Nobel Laureate John People and his students.  A company named Gaussian Inc was selling the software and one of my tasks was to keep the version made available by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center current. PSC is jointly operated  by CMU and Pitt and it makes supercomputers and software available to researchers.  The simplified understanding was that any artifact created by CMU researchers could be sold commercially but that the University could not be charged for its use.  When I asked for Gaussian 94 (a new version was released every two years) the company stalled for weeks and eventually said we had to buy it.  To shorten the story, after months of litigation and just before the judge was to issue his ruling, an out-of-court settlement was reached which was confidential.  IP is a complex area.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020, 7:05 AM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Continuing down the open access thread and the ethics of Schwartz' JSTOR theft, libgen, and sci-hub:

Retractions and controversies over coronavirus research show that the process of science is working as it should
https://theconversation.com/retractions-and-controversies-over-coronavirus-research-show-that-the-process-of-science-is-working-as-it-should-140326

>From the article: "The database provided by the tiny company Surgisphere – whose website is no longer accessible – was unavailable during peer review of the paper or to scientists and the public afterwards, preventing anyone from evaluating the data."

The point I made in response to EricS's worry that emphasizing paper consumption over book consumption was that the paper publishing process is more agile and, I argue, can stick more closely to the referent(s). With that agility comes some of the criticisms of Science™ (as well-expressed by Dave recently). To my mind, those criticisms target the wrong thing. They're failures of us to understand that there is no unified scientific method [†] and, along with *openness* comes an understanding that the whole process is messy and intensely social. I think it was Randy Burge who used to repeat a mantra like "Not being right, but getting it right." That journals (as well as newspapers) don't *require* open source and open data at the outset boggles me.

Coincidentally, this popped up in my queue the other day:

Let's talk about why people are moving left....
https://youtu.be/2g0qUxgwHmo

Ed's story about authors seeing very little compensation for their work, Nick's plea for a way to harvest the minds of non-academics, the ethics of Schwartz' theft, are all *old* issues targeting the same problems with late stage capitalism now being targeted by BLM and antifa. Perhaps the incentive and motive systems are the causes; and outcomes like libgen are the symptoms.


[†] I'm currently (slowly, as usual) reading a nice little book called "Ignorance" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13574594-ignorance that makes this point nicely. I put the book down in disgust when he started yapping about quantum mechanics. Why does everyone always do that even if they admit upfront they don't know what they're talking about? [sigh] Anyway, I got over it and have started again.

On 7/7/20 4:59 AM, Edward Angel wrote:
> I have to negotiate the terms with the university, I can, however, make anything I develop open source. It took a while for universities to agree that that that decision is totally up to the faculty member.
--
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[Leigh Fanning]

My version of UNM incompetence was the patent agent dropped a critical deadline that permanently prevented
patentability of one of my research outcomes that had merit.  

But that wasn't enough.  He followed that up by unbuttoning his shirt and unzipping his pants in a meeting
which only became apparent when he went to stand up and couldn't hide behind the conference
table; then there was the email telling me how great I looked that night and the mega melt down screaming
at me over the phone after he learned I reported the incident.  UNM STC told me I had to continue to work
with him despite these actions and despite the fact that he didn't know WTF he was doing in the first place.

All of this could have been prevented.  I had emailed STC to say something was wrong fairly early on.  
Receiving 30 emails in 24 hours was a red flag.  They ignored this and acted like it was my fault.
I had a lot of stress with these things.  

Leigh Fanning

On 07 Jul 2020 at 08:46 AM, Edward Angel related

> At least at CMU there are people competent enough to make decisions about the merits of faculty work. At one point at UNM, the intellectual property person at UNM declared that any software we produced, even for a class, had to be turned over to him and he would make the decision as to whether or not it had commercial potential before we could put it on our websites.The guy knew nothing about software and was also pretty incompetent as a IP lawyer.
>
> Long ago I was an expert witness on a case in which the Feds went after someone who had manipulated the thermostats in a Sandia building.They were using pretty draconian computer hacking laws to go after him. We were able to convince the prosectors to drop the case at least partly on the argument that almost everything has an embedded processor so their argument would convert thousands of actions into computer crimes.
>
> Ed
> _______________________
>
> Ed Angel
>
> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>
> 1017 Sierra Pinon
> Santa Fe, NM 87501
> 505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>
> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel <http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel>
>
> > On Jul 7, 2020, at 7:39 AM, Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:
> >
> > Carnegie Mellon's intellectual property policy was described in a ~50 page summary  document when I worked there.  But it was apparently more complicated than that.  I had to testify in Federal Court regarding software that had been developed by chemistry professor and Nobel Laureate John People and his students.  A company named Gaussian Inc was selling the software and one of my tasks was to keep the version made available by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center current. PSC is jointly operated  by CMU and Pitt and it makes supercomputers and software available to researchers.  The simplified understanding was that any artifact created by CMU researchers could be sold commercially but that the University could not be charged for its use.  When I asked for Gaussian 94 (a new version was released every two years) the company stalled for weeks and eventually said we had to buy it.  To shorten the story, after months of litigation and just before the judge was to issue his ruling, an out-of-court settlement
> was reached which was confidential.  IP is a complex area.
> >
> > ---
> > Frank C. Wimberly
> > 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> > Santa Fe, NM 87505
> >
> > 505 670-9918
> > Santa Fe, NM
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 7, 2020, 7:05 AM ??? u??l?? <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
> > Continuing down the open access thread and the ethics of Schwartz' JSTOR theft, libgen, and sci-hub:
> >
> > Retractions and controversies over coronavirus research show that the process of science is working as it should
> > https://theconversation.com/retractions-and-controversies-over-coronavirus-research-show-that-the-process-of-science-is-working-as-it-should-140326 <https://theconversation.com/retractions-and-controversies-over-coronavirus-research-show-that-the-process-of-science-is-working-as-it-should-140326>
> >
> > >From the article: "The database provided by the tiny company Surgisphere ??? whose website is no longer accessible ??? was unavailable during peer review of the paper or to scientists and the public afterwards, preventing anyone from evaluating the data."
> >
> > The point I made in response to EricS's worry that emphasizing paper consumption over book consumption was that the paper publishing process is more agile and, I argue, can stick more closely to the referent(s). With that agility comes some of the criticisms of Science??? (as well-expressed by Dave recently). To my mind, those criticisms target the wrong thing. They're failures of us to understand that there is no unified scientific method [???] and, along with *openness* comes an understanding that the whole process is messy and intensely social. I think it was Randy Burge who used to repeat a mantra like "Not being right, but getting it right." That journals (as well as newspapers) don't *require* open source and open data at the outset boggles me.
> >
> > Coincidentally, this popped up in my queue the other day:
> >
> > Let's talk about why people are moving left....
> > https://youtu.be/2g0qUxgwHmo <https://youtu.be/2g0qUxgwHmo>
> >
> > Ed's story about authors seeing very little compensation for their work, Nick's plea for a way to harvest the minds of non-academics, the ethics of Schwartz' theft, are all *old* issues targeting the same problems with late stage capitalism now being targeted by BLM and antifa. Perhaps the incentive and motive systems are the causes; and outcomes like libgen are the symptoms.
> >
> >
> > [???] I'm currently (slowly, as usual) reading a nice little book called "Ignorance" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13574594-ignorance <https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13574594-ignorance> that makes this point nicely. I put the book down in disgust when he started yapping about quantum mechanics. Why does everyone always do that even if they admit upfront they don't know what they're talking about? [sigh] Anyway, I got over it and have started again.
> >
> > On 7/7/20 4:59 AM, Edward Angel wrote:
> > > I have to negotiate the terms with the university, I can, however, make anything I develop open source. It took a while for universities to agree that that that decision is totally up to the faculty member.
> > --
> > ??? u??l??
> >
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[thompnickson2]

Glen wrote;

 

I put the book down in disgust when he started yapping about quantum mechanics. Why does everyone always do that even if they admit upfront they don't know what they're talking about? [sigh]

Physics envy.  A terrible, awful, terminal disease of the mind. 

 

n

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of ? u?l?
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2020 7:05 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

 

Continuing down the open access thread and the ethics of Schwartz' JSTOR theft, libgen, and sci-hub:

 

Retractions and controversies over coronavirus research show that the process of science is working as it should

https://theconversation.com/retractions-and-controversies-over-coronavirus-research-show-that-the-process-of-science-is-working-as-it-should-140326

 

From the article: "The database provided by the tiny company Surgisphere – whose website is no longer accessible – was unavailable during peer review of the paper or to scientists and the public afterwards, preventing anyone from evaluating the data."

 

The point I made in response to EricS's worry that emphasizing paper consumption over book consumption was that the paper publishing process is more agile and, I argue, can stick more closely to the referent(s). With that agility comes some of the criticisms of Science™ (as well-expressed by Dave recently). To my mind, those criticisms target the wrong thing. They're failures of us to understand that there is no unified scientific method [†] and, along with *openness* comes an understanding that the whole process is messy and intensely social. I think it was Randy Burge who used to repeat a mantra like "Not being right, but getting it right." That journals (as well as newspapers) don't *require* open source and open data at the outset boggles me.

 

Coincidentally, this popped up in my queue the other day:

 

Let's talk about why people are moving left....

https://youtu.be/2g0qUxgwHmo

 

Ed's story about authors seeing very little compensation for their work, Nick's plea for a way to harvest the minds of non-academics, the ethics of Schwartz' theft, are all *old* issues targeting the same problems with late stage capitalism now being targeted by BLM and antifa. Perhaps the incentive and motive systems are the causes; and outcomes like libgen are the symptoms.

 

 

[†] I'm currently (slowly, as usual) reading a nice little book called "Ignorance" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13574594-ignorance that makes this point nicely. I put the book down in disgust when he started yapping about quantum mechanics. Why does everyone always do that even if they admit upfront they don't know what they're talking about? [sigh] Anyway, I got over it and have started again.

 

On 7/7/20 4:59 AM, Edward Angel wrote:

> I have to negotiate the terms with the university, I can, however, make anything I develop open source. It took a while for universities to agree that that that decision is totally up to the faculty member.

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[gepr]

That's horrifying. I hope you got some closure. I have no idea how common such things are. Not the same, but similarly, less than 2 years ago, one of Renee's (male) coworkers (with whom we'd been relative friends up to then) pinned [†] her in the hallway of the hospital to yell at her about some anesthetic protocol he thought she'd messed up (but was actually his own fault according to others involved). The disrespect was shocking. I was more outraged than she was, though. Apparently she's experienced this sort of belittling on a regular basis for decades ... something I'd never really looked out for before. Thanks to people who *tell* their stories, I'm starting to see things I'd never seen.


[†] By which I mean put his arm up on the wall above her, leaned in way too close, etc. ... physical intimidation.

On 7/7/20 8:50 AM, Leigh Fanning wrote:

>
> My version of UNM incompetence was the patent agent dropped a critical deadline that permanently prevented
> patentability of one of my research outcomes that had merit.  
>
> But that wasn't enough.  He followed that up by unbuttoning his shirt and unzipping his pants in a meeting
> which only became apparent when he went to stand up and couldn't hide behind the conference
> table; then there was the email telling me how great I looked that night and the mega melt down screaming
> at me over the phone after he learned I reported the incident.  UNM STC told me I had to continue to work
> with him despite these actions and despite the fact that he didn't know WTF he was doing in the first place.
>
> All of this could have been prevented.  I had emailed STC to say something was wrong fairly early on.  
> Receiving 30 emails in 24 hours was a red flag.  They ignored this and acted like it was my fault.
> I had a lot of stress with these things.  

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[gepr]

Is it, though? I think it's an appeal to authority rather than an envy. When my cancer survivor friend confided in me that they'd survived cancer too, and that they strongly believed a "good attitude" and "hopeful thoughts" were critical to survival, then goes on to cite The Tao of Physics [Fritjof Capra] as justification for their belief, I don't see *envy*. I see them desperately, pareidoliacally thrashing around for *any* justification they can get their hands on.  To me it feels like any justification for such beliefs is somehow better than just admitting we're LUCKY.

So, it's not physics envy, even in Firestein's case in "Ignorance". It's simply fallacious reasoning ... for my cancer surviving friend a defense mechanism ... for Firestein a prominent *hook* with boatloads of authoritative cargo.

On 7/7/20 9:20 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Physics envy.  A terrible, awful, terminal disease of the mind. 

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[thompnickson2]

Glen,

That physicists have such authority is what psychologists have envied.  

Nick



Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of ? u?l?
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2020 11:01 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Is it, though? I think it's an appeal to authority rather than an envy. When my cancer survivor friend confided in me that they'd survived cancer too, and that they strongly believed a "good attitude" and "hopeful thoughts" were critical to survival, then goes on to cite The Tao of Physics [Fritjof Capra] as justification for their belief, I don't see *envy*. I see them desperately, pareidoliacally thrashing around for *any* justification they can get their hands on.  To me it feels like any justification for such beliefs is somehow better than just admitting we're LUCKY.

So, it's not physics envy, even in Firestein's case in "Ignorance". It's simply fallacious reasoning ... for my cancer surviving friend a defense mechanism ... for Firestein a prominent *hook* with boatloads of authoritative cargo.

On 7/7/20 9:20 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Physics envy.  A terrible, awful, terminal disease of the mind.

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Well, if psychologists didn't disagree with each other so much people might respect their authority more.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020, 11:49 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen,

That physicists have such authority is what psychologists have envied. 

Nick



Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/



-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of ? u?l?
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2020 11:01 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Is it, though? I think it's an appeal to authority rather than an envy. When my cancer survivor friend confided in me that they'd survived cancer too, and that they strongly believed a "good attitude" and "hopeful thoughts" were critical to survival, then goes on to cite The Tao of Physics [Fritjof Capra] as justification for their belief, I don't see *envy*. I see them desperately, pareidoliacally thrashing around for *any* justification they can get their hands on.  To me it feels like any justification for such beliefs is somehow better than just admitting we're LUCKY.

So, it's not physics envy, even in Firestein's case in "Ignorance". It's simply fallacious reasoning ... for my cancer surviving friend a defense mechanism ... for Firestein a prominent *hook* with boatloads of authoritative cargo.

On 7/7/20 9:20 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Physics envy.  A terrible, awful, terminal disease of the mind.

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[gepr]

Ah! OK. So, it's not physics envy, it's authority envy. There's still something off about what (I think) you're saying, though. It strikes me that NONE of the physicists I've ever talked to speak with the kind of pseudo-authority the psychologists I've talked to speak with. I.e. in my (limited) experience, psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists in general, speak with authority. Physicists don't talk that way (again, in my experience). They don't say, for a lame example, "Classical mechanics is false." They use hedge words like "in some circumstances" or "to some approximation" or whatever. And given that the physcicists don't *assert* the authority those you're claiming are "envious" of that authority, it *still* feels to me like fallacious reasoning, rather than an actual envy.

It's totally reasonable to envy something someone actually has, like a muscle car or something. But can you really envy something another person does NOT have ... and, indeed, denies having if pressed?

They're really just trying to trick you into believing whatever nonsense they spout. They're not really envious of the work physicists do. I'm not confident that their fallacy is appeal to authority, though. I think it's something else ... appeal to *mystery* or somesuch. I need to review the fallacies to see if there's one that fits better than appeal to authority.

On 7/7/20 10:49 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> That physicists have such authority is what psychologists have envied.  

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Clinicians (therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, etc) use data that is based on private, highly sensitive personal information, it's very difficult and often impossible to apply the methods of experimental psychologists to that data.  The clinicians do write papers but by the experimenters standards the sample sizes are so tiny as to merit dismissal of the results.  

So, imagine you are a clinician.  Every case you have ever seen of a person with paranoid delusions involves significant grandiosity.  (Why would the CIA be focusing on you, Marvin) Your colleagues have observed the same with few exceptions.  Some clinician writes an article which mentions this.  Experimental psychologists read it and say you need to do a double blind study to assert that.  You realize that's impossible so you learn to disregard experimentalists just as they disregard you.  You both think, "I wish I were a physicist but I hated math".

Take it for what it's worth.

Frank

 

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020, 12:16 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Ah! OK. So, it's not physics envy, it's authority envy. There's still something off about what (I think) you're saying, though. It strikes me that NONE of the physicists I've ever talked to speak with the kind of pseudo-authority the psychologists I've talked to speak with. I.e. in my (limited) experience, psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists in general, speak with authority. Physicists don't talk that way (again, in my experience). They don't say, for a lame example, "Classical mechanics is false." They use hedge words like "in some circumstances" or "to some approximation" or whatever. And given that the physcicists don't *assert* the authority those you're claiming are "envious" of that authority, it *still* feels to me like fallacious reasoning, rather than an actual envy.

It's totally reasonable to envy something someone actually has, like a muscle car or something. But can you really envy something another person does NOT have ... and, indeed, denies having if pressed?

They're really just trying to trick you into believing whatever nonsense they spout. They're not really envious of the work physicists do. I'm not confident that their fallacy is appeal to authority, though. I think it's something else ... appeal to *mystery* or somesuch. I need to review the fallacies to see if there's one that fits better than appeal to authority.

On 7/7/20 10:49 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> That physicists have such authority is what psychologists have envied. 

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[gepr]

Hm. In these cases, where Firestein talks about quantum mechanics as an exemplar of how we navigate ignorance and my cancer survivor friend as a defense mechanism for avoiding nihilism or depression or whatnot, there is no "I wish I were a physicist". Firestein is a credentialed neuroscientist and my friend is a graphic artist. Neither seem to feel inadequate in their disciplines or wish their disciplines were more like physics. So, I really doubt it's envy. What it sounds more like is captured well by "There are more things in heaven and earth ...". Both Firestein and my friend are using physics to lend some credibility by proxy to their rhetoric. I just can't warp my way to thinking it's physics envy.

Even in this tangent, the clinicians I've worked with don't disregard experimentalists or vice versa. It's simply a practical acceptance. Where large N experiments can be run, GREAT! Where they can't, we use expert experience and heuristics. [†] In fact, gathering "raw", private, data from patients is a common practice and the toolkits used to translate between contexts is diverse. (We had a meeting about just such a thing yesterday.)

So, I remain unconvinced. It's not physics envy. It's appeal to authority.


[†] Now, if you instead argued that by "physics envy", you simply mean "we'd like to have more data, but we don't YET", then *maybe*. But why call that "physics envy"? That would be a misleading moniker for having to work with less data than you'd otherwise prefer.

On 7/7/20 11:53 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Clinicians (therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, etc) use data that is based on private, highly sensitive personal information, it's very difficult and often impossible to apply the methods of experimental psychologists to that data.  The clinicians do write papers but by the experimenters standards the sample sizes are so tiny as to merit dismissal of the results.  
>
> So, imagine you are a clinician.  Every case you have ever seen of a person with paranoid delusions involves significant grandiosity.  (Why would the CIA be focusing on you, Marvin) Your colleagues have observed the same with few exceptions.  Some clinician writes an article which mentions this.  Experimental psychologists read it and say you need to do a double blind study to assert that.  You realize that's impossible so you learn to disregard experimentalists just as they disregard you.  You both think, "I wish I were a physicist but I hated math".


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[Frank Wimberly-2]

...don't disregard experimentalists or vice versa. It's simply a practical acceptance...  

I'll accept that characterization.

Frank

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 1:41 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hm. In these cases, where Firestein talks about quantum mechanics as an exemplar of how we navigate ignorance and my cancer survivor friend as a defense mechanism for avoiding nihilism or depression or whatnot, there is no "I wish I were a physicist". Firestein is a credentialed neuroscientist and my friend is a graphic artist. Neither seem to feel inadequate in their disciplines or wish their disciplines were more like physics. So, I really doubt it's envy. What it sounds more like is captured well by "There are more things in heaven and earth ...". Both Firestein and my friend are using physics to lend some credibility by proxy to their rhetoric. I just can't warp my way to thinking it's physics envy.

Even in this tangent, the clinicians I've worked with don't disregard experimentalists or vice versa. It's simply a practical acceptance. Where large N experiments can be run, GREAT! Where they can't, we use expert experience and heuristics. [†] In fact, gathering "raw", private, data from patients is a common practice and the toolkits used to translate between contexts is diverse. (We had a meeting about just such a thing yesterday.)

So, I remain unconvinced. It's not physics envy. It's appeal to authority.


[†] Now, if you instead argued that by "physics envy", you simply mean "we'd like to have more data, but we don't YET", then *maybe*. But why call that "physics envy"? That would be a misleading moniker for having to work with less data than you'd otherwise prefer.

On 7/7/20 11:53 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Clinicians (therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, etc) use data that is based on private, highly sensitive personal information, it's very difficult and often impossible to apply the methods of experimental psychologists to that data.  The clinicians do write papers but by the experimenters standards the sample sizes are so tiny as to merit dismissal of the results.  
>
> So, imagine you are a clinician.  Every case you have ever seen of a person with paranoid delusions involves significant grandiosity.  (Why would the CIA be focusing on you, Marvin) Your colleagues have observed the same with few exceptions.  Some clinician writes an article which mentions this.  Experimental psychologists read it and say you need to do a double blind study to assert that.  You realize that's impossible so you learn to disregard experimentalists just as they disregard you.  You both think, "I wish I were a physicist but I hated math".


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