Greg Pytel (GP) returns, asking me to post a comment to my post below, which of course I have done.
His further observations are interesting.
I do not think it was fair to put up a running commentary (Especially as you well know that all I really wanted was to put record straight, i.e. that I published the ideas over a year before P-E G. Quite simple?)
Fair? By showing the full exchange I treat my readers to the full rigour of his arguments. That means that his views get a further 30,000 possible airings to people who come to this site each month, plus 2000 more on Twitter (insofar as those categories do not overlap). So he’s getting an unfair amount of free advertising.
The nub of GP’s whole argument seems to be that he was the first person to make a cogent case that (a) it is difficult to regulate risk in financial dealings, and (b) that one good way to do it is to put responsibility for things going wrong directly on the shoulders of those taking the decisions.
Here is his posting on 8 March 2011 making those points with which any normal person should agree:
Governments must reintroduce free market into the financial industry. Banks must be small enough to fail. Banks must regulate themselves, apart from general law and basic, bottom line regulations (which should be a role of central banks and general justice system). And in case of a banks’ failure all those carrying responsibility for managing such bank must be held personally responsible expecting very harsh penalties.
Well, plenty of people have written about the role of Risk in our current financial woes. Including myself. Here. And here. Or even here. But I had never focused on the issue of personal liability for bankers previously.
GP seems to know a few things about the detail of finance, and his post links the issue of risk to personal liability by the risk-taker. A sound point.
He then is vexed to see this very same idea used in a high profile way by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, which I linked to here. Post hoc ergo propter hoc?
And he writes to me:
Today I have read your article which repeated my core arguments (without giving credit to the real source, i.e. myself). https://charlescrawford.biz/blog/deregulated-partnerships-the-answer
It is simply not on to propagate my original ideas (which are well-known and well-publicised in the public domain) as somebody else’s (even if it is over a year after my original publication). Please publish the correction on your web site (as my comment was not accepted).
The only sane interpretation of this first grumpy message to me was that he believed either that I had knowingly avoided giving GP the credit for this ‘original idea’, or that I had been careless/negligent in linking to this piece without first checking to see if someone else had had the same idea first. So he brusquely expects a ‘correction’ to ‘put the record straight’.
Anyway, we then have the charming exchange seen in the posting below.
GP’s new comment moves the issue to a different level:
You may think (and possibly others) that this was an epistolary rant on my side. But some who live in a real world and make living as consultant or advisors are likely to read it differently, than just "a triumphant claim to originality":
1. If you come up with original and interesting ideas which are then aired in the media you basically build your reputation on the market.
2. As it has already been in my case, it is a way to bring clients, to generate business as a consultant (it is called "making a living").
3. Therefore it does not matter why your original idea is published as somebody else’s – deliberately or not, is beyond a practical point – it is potentially a loss of living.
True but irrelevant. Many other smart people are also striving out there to come up with new ideas and sell them. If someone independently comes up with an idea I previously have published and sells it, that is ‘potentially’ a loss of living to me. But it’s how the market works. Indeed, it’s the whole point of the market – it’s sending a signal through tough competition that as well as having good ideas you need to market them well.
Plus it does matter if X comes up with Y’s idea quite independently of Y, as opposed to X finding Y’s idea and /tweaking/rebranding it is his own. The first involves no ethical issues. The second does. As GP himself concludes:
At work level, people sometimes call it "stealing someone’s ideas". I am pretty sure some of your readers will reflect from this angle. You may, as it seems to appear from this exchange to me, think it is OK, but I do not.
And it may well be quite alien to you but in my view if someone comes up with ideas he/she should be given credit for it. Is it such a huge leap in what I believe is a good behaviour?
What do we make of people on the Internet stealing other folk’s ideas?
First, it’s bad manners. But everyone is scrambling for tiny slices of the available attention-spans of people, so it’s not surprising that manners can get lost. Against that it might be said that any blogger who gets a name for pinching others’ work risks being dumped on mightily by the blogosphere, so some sort of reputational corrective market mechanism is at work here. It ‘pays’ to be polite. Thus some bloggers are deliberately vile and ‘sweary’ – there is a market niche for being the exact opposite of polite.
Second, most bloggers (such as GP and I) are putting large amounts of material out there on the Web for free. Partly because we like to write, partly to try to build a reputation as a commenter of some sort, and partly in the hope that our work will get noticed to the point where someone wants to buy it.
If you put material and ideas out there for free, they are then indeed ‘free’. You can’t be too surprised if someone else grabs them, vexing and uncouth though that is. See the regular annoyance of Guido and other top political bloggers when ‘mainstream’ journalists pinch their stories without attribution. As so many people read Guido, the reputation of those journalists declines accordingly.
These pilfering journalists and their editors themselves might argue that they are in a cut-throat fight for survival. Blogs erode newspaper readership and advertising margins, so it’s fair game to hit back with whatever weapons come to hand. I myself think that this is a losing strategy, but it’s not trivial.
In short, I think GP is wrong on different counts.
He’s wrong to insinuate (without proof) that others have been using his work without attribution. There is no ‘record’ needing to be ‘put straight’.
He’s wrong to expect bloggers and other amateur commenters to scour the Internet to see if some writer they like is being ‘unoriginal’. Fine for scholars or (perhaps) even journalists. Not for the rest of us – life’s too short.
And most of all, in my view he’s setting about his own marketing in the wrong way by sending peevish emails to people like me who on the whole agree with him. Some senior conference organisers and experts reading his attempts to defend his position may conclude that he is really smart and that they want to pay him to give his views in print or in person. Rather more (I suspect) will think that he does not do ‘light touch’ and will steer well clear. But then again I may well be wrong. Who knows?
The Eternal Truth of Communication as articulated by Frank Luntz once again: it’s not what you say – it’s what they hear.
If GP wishes to reply to all this, I invite him to do so on his own site where his 250,000 readers will much enjoy it. And I’ll be happy to link to it with full attribution. As always.
* * * * *
UPDATE: GP’s reply, on which res isa loquitur basis I hereby proclaim the subject closed:
Dear Mr Crawford
Let me respond in length but summarising the issues nevertheless (and indeed there are couple of things from your comment that require factual correction):
1. I do not think it was fair of you to ask me to agree to publish the correspondence between us, only to do it with a running commentary, which – to me – does not appear too flattering. Your readers will reflect upon honesty and integrity of such process, especially when they consider that your are a professional mediator. (For clarity: in this instance I am NOT facetious.) I am not reading too much, for example, into your words "Greg Pytel, Fame, the Internet" or "Have you heard of anyone called Greg Pytel?" – originally Grey Pytel rather than Greg Pytel – and whether they insinuate anything or not. Maybe yes, maybe they are simply innocuous phrases: I am not trying to second guess you, not only as being no native speaker you clearly have an "unfair" advantage:-( I have no problem with it. However your latter comment do not seem to be congruent with your question to me: "Are you part-Polish?", suggesting, although not conclusively proving, that your statement: "The name rang no bell with me either until this morning […]" is, well, … can be put into question.
On the substance of the arguments I can only restate that my words:
"Today I have read your article which repeated my core arguments (without giving credit to the real source, i.e. myself). https://charlescrawford.biz/blog/deregulated-partnerships-the-answer
It is simply not on to propagate my original ideas (which are well-known and well-publicised in the public domain) as somebody else’s (even if it is over a year after my original publication). Please publish the correction on your web site (as my comment was not accepted)."
do mean exactly what they state. They do not insinuate anything: they state the facts that I believe in precisely, and my request. I think it is actually quite simple sentence. Regarding your allegation of insinuation: maybe you judge others by your experience or your personal standards or in some other way but in this case it simply turned out to be wrong.
In that respect I would expect your apology for accusing me that I insinuated anything. It seems to me that it was your fantasy that got you going in the first instance rather than my e-mail.
2. There are some truly bizarre statements.
You wrote:
"The nub of GP’s whole argument seems to be that he was the first person to make a cogent case that (a) it is difficult to regulate risk in financial dealings, and (b) that one good way to do it is to put responsibility for things going wrong directly on the shoulders of those taking the decisions."
No, no, no, no, no… it is NOT! "Phew" – I simply quote you:-) – how on Earth you came up with something like that?
This is wrong and you should know it. It looks to me like you are trying to ridicule me, but as this is so transparent to see, it may actually NOT be the case.
Firstly, I do not claim that I am the first person to make a cogent case that it is difficult to regulate risk in financial dealings. Actually I am not even arguing this. I made a stronger case that it is IMPOSSIBLE (is it a synonym of DIFFICULT?) to regulate the systemic financial risk. But in this case I did not claim that I am the first person who came up with this. (I may well be the first one on that too but I will have to check this.) I may also be the first person who drew a cogent analogy between the current political and economic system in the West and the communism system when it was on its last legs:
and unless I am proven wrong I will equally stringently guard this claim.
Secondly, I claim that I was the first person who came up and published the two-pronged argument below:
=====
I stated that to fix the financial system:
– it has to be deregulated (rather than more regulated as it is quite often argued);
– those running it must take personal responsibility/liability (this can be achieved for example by partnerships, but there are other legal forms that can do this too).
(or essentially as you excellently summarised in a simplified way: "deregulated partnerships – the answer".)
=====
So why did you depart so substantially from the meaning of my original e-mail to you? You are trying to discuss things that have never been the subject of our exchange thus far. What’s the link or, maybe, a tangent? Is it for the same reason as you are trying to convince the readers that I had been insinuating something to you in my original e-mail? You did not have to do it. You could have simply quoted my e-mail to you (as I did above) rather than rephrase it in your own way, dramatically changing the meaning. (I have observed that this kind of changing and twisting somebody else’s arguments is quite popular in political world but to outside observers like me it looks incredibly crude and, well, not really honest.) Is it a part of the art of mediation? Maybe it was in the Balkans in the 1990’s but in my view it is simply not fair. Please explain.
Furthermore and equally important if somebody else came up making this two-pronged argument (as I stated in my articles, not the way you re-wrote it), please send me the link to it and I will be more than happy to add it as a reference and acknowledge it on my blog. And if the arguments are the same – or very close – I will apologise. I think this is just a matter of Internet etiquette.
3. This time seem to have shifted the argument and you stated that there is no "record needing to be put straight". In response I invite the readers to, what I invited you in my second e-mail to you:
"May I suggest they read Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry piece
and my article which was published on my blog (around 250,000 readers) and Stockopedia:
https://gregpytel.blogspot.com/2011/03/you-cannot-regulate-risk-self.html
https://www.stockopedia.co.uk/content/why-you-cannot-regulate-systemic-financial-risk-54717/and then compare the crux, the idea behind of both articles (Mr Gobry’s and mine). [This two pronged argument: personal responsibility and deregulation.] In my view it is the same, but I published it over a year earlier."
I believe that your blog readers are smart enough to make their own mind up and I am not happy to leave it at that. (I had enough feedback to feel actually quite confident but it will be a matter of anyone’s judgement.) This was essentially the crux of my first e-mail to you: there rest of our e-mail exchange is interesting but really beside the point that I made in my first e-mail.
4. Nevertheless I add that checking for the originality is a very important issue and the Internet does not change anything in that respect. Internet is just a tool: nothing more or less. Publishing ideas for free is not a license to republish it by somebody else as his/her own ideas. The Internet makes it easier on one side to check for originality but on the other more difficult to come up and publish anything original. The latter is also a reason why I am doing my best to respect other’s right to originality as you will see the example below, not just guarding my own.
The same rules apply on the Internet as in academia: these are basically good manners and integrity. They are no less important despite that their following is really voluntary (is actually a reflection upon integrity of bloggers, Tweeters, etc.)
– before you publish anything that you think can be considered as an original idea you check first with web search engines. This situation is well known to me. Once I wrote a piece and I checked for its originality. After quite intensive search I found that someone else wrote essentially a very similar article before me (or actually it was a submission). So I approached that person and I asked for permission to republish his submission (although I publish only my articles on my blog). Actually this person had the same approach as I did: thanked me for contacting him and was pleased that I was happy to propagate his ideas:
https://gregpytel.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/james-k-galbraith-fraud-at-root-of_1256.html
In my view the same applies to people who reposts or tweets, as it makes a rather undesirable situation worse. Many Internet readers do not realise this. However one has to be pragmatic and do not expect everything perfect. However when it is not perfect those who are asked for corrections should respond kindly. Therefore:
– if, let us call it, a cock-up happens (although Internet is full of deliberate republishing of some else’s ideas and even articles) and it is easy to re-check by comparing the dates of publications, the only way is a polite apology and a correction/explanation, even if someone thinks he/she is original. Not a big deal in my view. (I do not want to start exchanging argument what level of checking satisfies the test of reasonable check or being negligent. I accept that it is a matter for a very wide interpretation: practically both the actions and the test itself is difficult to measure. And it can be a more stringent standard for professional publishers and more relaxed for individual bloggers. For me fairness and practicality is the key: credit is due where the credit is due.)
I am pretty convinced that if someone even more "anally retentive" than Gordon Brown sifted through my articles on my blog I am pretty sure he would have found a few substantive arguments which someone else had published it before me. Actually I would be happy if someone did it and my reaction would not be like yours. I would have apologised and made correction i.e. a proper reference in my articles.
You seem not to realise that many bloggers put their material on the web precisely to be in a position to claim the right to originality of their ideas in the future. We still have the mainstream media dictat. The publications are frequently filtered through all sorts of vested interest tests and sometimes by people who are clueless. (I think it was the Rabbi Schudrich from Warsaw who once said that he did not read newspapers to learn what happened but to learn what did not happen.:-) You may come up with some ideas and they will remain unknown unless they are picked up by the major media. And if, after some time, someone else comes up with the same (or very similar) idea and it is picked up by the mainstream media then who gets the credit? Fortunately Internet changed that a bit. It was also a reason why I became a blogger. (Blogging is not in my DNA, so to speak.) However it seems that some, like you, believe that Internet strip your off your right to ownership (practically acknowledgment) of your original ideas because "life’s too short". I am afraid, in my view, it is showing disrespect. Some take this approach one step further and insult other on the Internet ("life’s too short"). I am not insinuating (clear?) that you would approve of that. I am simply showing what happens when we forget the basic conservative rules of human behaviour from real life.
You appear to be against respecting someone’s intellectual property on the Internet. It is actually quite a radical approach. I do not agree with it. I know that it may be tricky but I am more for Creative Commons approach which still requires attribution and essentially good manners. And I believe the predominant view of Internet users are closer to my views.
However these days there seems to be an overriding trend in the society: if yobs are causing manace and you stop them you are more likely to end up in a trouble than the yobs; when the MP’s were on the take (expenses scandal) it was "a muddle not a fiddle":-) When I simply asked for a correction (maybe explanation) in a private e-mail, somehow rather than getting it in line with good mannered Internet behaviour the thing is dragged on and I was bizarrely accused of having insinuating something (frankly quite irrelevant to my request anyway) or making claims to something that I never did, my original request was being twisted and I was criticised for something that had nothing to do with me (i.e. insinuating).
O tempora o mores!
I did not come to you to seek any publicity, helpfully designed by a skilled mediator. I just wanted to put the record straight in a couple of sentences (or simply by putting the link to my article and asking the readers to make their own mind up, if in your view there in no record needing to be put straight). That would have been just fine (any skilled mediator should have foreseen this, in my view). The fact that it developed to that extent is interesting but, in my view, was not necessary. I do not mind if you give me a hard time on your blog, there is a bit of this tradition in web space too:-) as long as long as you keep my right to respond in form of comment below your articles. If I publish anything on my blog I always give others infinite right to respond (practically it is a comment sequence below articles). Again, good manners.
I am pretty sure that you know that what I write reflects on me and what you write reflects on you. And I am sure your readers are smart enough to think in that way.
Best wishes
Greg
Share this page:
