The spiritual equivalent of plagiarism, books world

Twice in the past three years or so I've read a book that, when I went to review it, I realized had at least partially "stolen" (you can't copyright titles) of another book, but had also "stolen" a fair chunk of the main idea concept of the former book.

In both cases, the former book had been written less than three years previously. In both cases, the author of the latter book was probably in good place to know about the previous book. In both cases, no credit was offered.

Since this is now twice, I decided to blog about it. (In both cases, I had already noted the issue in my reviews.)

The most recent one, earlier this month, was Adam Grant with "Think Again."

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam M. Grant
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Solid 4-star book. Grant's right that we all could stand to admit more of what we don't know, and from that, rethink about what we think we know. He's also right that getting group rethink going, or interpersonal group rethink without entering "politician mode" or "preacher mode" is also good. Grant talks about how to move beyond all that.

He's even more right about trying to oversimplify issues, and to avoid caveats. This portion reminds me of Idries Shah reminding us that issues have more than two sides to them. This applies to group rethinking especially.

That said, since the subtitle of the book is, whether consciously or not, a riff on Socrates' claim to be the wisest man in Athens by recognizing his own ignorance, we can go "meta" on some of the ideas in the book by the fulcrum of going meta on Socrates, whose self-claims are themselves problematic.

Did Socrates really know more about what he didn't know, or admit more about this, than anybody else in Athens? Or, is this just Platonic PR? Or maybe, per the title of a modern psychological syndrome, old Socrates had himself a bit of Dunning-Krueger syndrome.

And, that leads to an issue in Grant's book.

He doesn't talk about going meta on ourselves, on rethinking our rethinking (without being obsessive). Nor does he talk about the possible reality of D-K syndrome from people claiming they're great rethinkers.

Nor does he address the possibility of people claiming this as a new way to shut down conversation.

"I've already thought through, then REthought through, this issue, and I'm still fine with my position."

I think that Grant (and a few other people who have written longform articles in places like Atlantic on this issue) also underestimate the difficulty of using various reasoning tools in today's world to reach people. People ultimately have to make themselves reachable, and without that, per Omar, my moving vocal cords, having spoken, will have to just move on.

AND ... change!

Given that a philosopher wrote a book with the same main title (Think Again: How to Reason and Argue), and seemingly the same ideas, based on the editorial blurb, three years ago, I've dropped my rating to three stars.

Since Sinnott-Armstrong is a fairly prolific author himself, while I won't say Grant went as far as plagiarism or even the moral equivalent of it, it does come off as sketchy. And, this is the second time in three years I've seen someone, whether intentionally or not, partially hijack the main title of a previously written book on largely the same topic with largely the same angle. Also, S-A taught at Dartmouth while Grant was getting his BA at Harvard.

See, Adam? Rethinking. THAT's going meta.

Beyond that? Sinnott-Armstrong's book just sounds better. In fact, it sounds enough better that I asked for it on interlibrary loan. Unfortunately, his "Moral Skepticisms" is only available as an ebook. (But, it's used for less than $10 on Yellow Satan.)

Update: It IS better. But not THAT close to perfect. And, more important for this blog post, enough different from Grant's book that the spiritual equivalent of plagiarism claim is more attenuated now. (I'm still not ready to dismiss it, though. Per Sinnott-Armstrong and my own previous study in informal logic, and what I know about Bayesian probability ideas, I'd cut my estimate by 2/3 from the original, but I wouldn't get rid of it.

Beyond that, to add to Grant's own book? Finding out he cowrote another book with Sheryl Sandberg, and she blurbed another one? Blech.

The second book is 24/6 by Tiffany Shlain.

24/6 The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week by Tiffany Shlain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Good but not great. If it had been ranked a bit higher by others, I would have 3-starred to counteract.

The idea of a digital Shabbos is nice. So is the bit of history Shlain had at the start about other "weeks." That said, the first, if not error, a misstep is there.

She said nobody knows why the Roman 8-day week didn't stick. Sure we do. Christians took over the Jewish 7-day week and things went from there when the Roman Empire Christianized. Indeed, Wiki notes that Constantine officially established it.

The big misstep from my point of view? Why not discuss adults ditching smartphones and tablets entirely? Or never getting them in the first place?

I have a flip phone and never want anything else. I have an old Kindle Fire that, cuz it charged all the way to zero and won't work any more cuz the clock won't reset, that I used to take on vacations rather than the laptop I did before. And, that had to be for a full week's vacation, not just a Thanksgiving or something.

Especially if you do that, the idea of having to hardcore a digital Sabbath isn't as necessary. For instance, I live about 30 minutes from a decent-sized metro area. Every other Saturday, usually, I go there for special grocery shopping and other things. With just a dumbphone, I'm disconnected for half a Saturday right there.

Two other mistakes, or misinterpretations.

Green Bank, West Virginia isn't Net-free because residents have some cozy desire for old time life. As home of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, astronomers don't want WiFi or cellphones interfering with their work in general, or the hunt for extraterrestrials in particular. (Really.)

Steve Pinker, in "The Better Angels ..." did not at all prove or empirically demonstrate that human society is becoming more and more violence-free.

Lest I sound like I'm totally knocking her, she does get the general idea, and need for it, right. If you are going to do a full-on digital Sabbath, she has detailed ideas of how to prepare for it. And she's right about getting out in nature and journaling.

The key is digital detachment.

I decided to take it down to 3 stars for one other reason. This isn't new for today's age. There's two other "24/6" books, yes with that title. One's a non-conservative evangelical Christian who calls for Sabbathing in general. The other is CEO of a tech company who (I presume) looks at digital detachment, and perhaps has even more insight into it from his business side.

Shlain might not have heard of the evangelical Xn's book, from 2012. But Aaron Edelheit wrote just 18 months earlier, and he lives somewhere in Silicon Valley himself. And he's Jewish. (And a hardcore Zionist who hates Corbyn and conflates antizionism and antisemitism, but that's another story.)

Without saying the book was plagiarized, I smell plagiarization of the concept.

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