引用にまつわる個人的な体験と疑問
Hey Len. Hey Asami, how's it going? Things aregoing.
All right, you today have a topic prepared? I do,yes, I do. And today's topic is...
I'll give a little short anecdote about whathappened to me, which is going to be theinspiration
behind this. So I was, you know, as perhaps Iusually am doing, I'm thinking like, oh, okay,
how can I better organize myself and like, youknow, direct my energy towards particular,
let's say, career outcomes and, you know, teachingoutcomes and all these other things, right? I'm
doing some self-reflection and I'm thinking, whatare some ways that I could do this? And through
some conversations, I ended up being like, well,you know, I guess I could do that thing that
people tend to do, which is they find quotes thatthey really like. The inspirational quotes. Yes,
yes. With a caveat, right? Because when I hear theword inspirational quote, I cringe.
And yeah, I don't know if you could hear, but itwas a lot of quoted inspirational quotes for me.
It was an air quotes, inspirational quotestatement. Yeah, I got it. Yep. Which,
which sidebar, we might've talked about thisbefore, air quotes doesn't mean we're quoting
something. It means like sarcasm or possibly thatthat's not really what it means or irony or
something. Very, very dynamic. Like allegedly.Yes. Allegedly is a good one, I think attached
to the, the air quotes. But yeah, so theseallegedly inspirational quotes, you know, I,
I hesitated to do so because the cringe factor,right? The, whoa, you know, they feel kind of
fluffy, you know, they feel not misplaced, butjust they're missing like the real point. I,
you know, they get to, to like, you know, be, behappy and love life. All right. Like, and it's,
it has a tendency, right? To sound a little woowoo. Because, yeah, because sometimes that's the
intention. But other times, because it's taken outof context. And right, you know, if you put it
around the context, it's a quite normal thing tosay. But if you take it out of the context,
it sounds a little woo woo. Great. Perfect. Sohold on to that, everyone.
Context. Okay, let's hold on to the idea thatcontext is there. Because I said, Okay, well,
you know what, I'm gonna try it because there aretimes like when I'm doing writing, which right
now I'm actually doing a lot of. And when I'mtrying to do writing, especially where it's
incorporating other ideas, and sort of trying toweave them together. And, you know, a quote,
a well said sentiment or idea is something that Iwill attach to, I might even try to use it,
right, depending on where I'm writing. And so Ican appreciate the value in context of what that
quote means, as well as it's sort of properlycontextualized afterwards, or to the best of our
ability. Understanding that this is imperfect,right? Sometimes meaning can shift slightly
between usage. But yeah, anyway, so I'm like,fine. There are some quotes that I've seen,
because everybody probably has, right? Thesequotes pop up on social media. And, you know,
pick your favorites, tick tock, Instagram, youknow, dead bird app, like whatever, whatever it
is. They're always floating around the zeitgeist.They're always floating. And there's also plenty
of those pages and accounts, which are like, justquotes, right? They're like solid, you know,
screen snaps of a quote and a, you know, anattribution to somebody. Usually it's to somebody
like, you know, famous or well known or somethinglike that. Right. And so I go, okay, I found I
had seen some earlier, and they were listed asbeing from Dostoevsky and Kafka, which okay, fine,
big name, you know, philosopher guys and writersin the in the past, you don't need to know who
they are, right, right now. But there's a sensewhen you see it, you're like, oh, okay. Right.
Some big names. There's probably some contextaround this. Yeah, right. Yeah. And so I was
like, all right, I'm gonna you know what, I likethis one, I'm feeling some sort of emotional
resonance with what this is saying. And I'm, I'mwilling to bet there's something here.
I'll write it out in a journal or something. AndI'll look at it and see if I like doing this.
And right, right before I do that, I, I register,right, like the context, like I don't really have
the context, I'd really like to have the contextfor this. And honestly, I think there was a bit
of suspicion. Something about the quotes was like,resonant in a way that now that I've done some
research on this was maybe too modern. Right.Okay. And so, so I was like, all right, well,
let me try to find it. I'll do I'll do I want tocite it, I'd like to have at least the book or
the article or the interview or the whatever itmight have been, right that this comes from.
So that even if I don't look at it now, I can lookat it later, if I choose to.
引用の誤謬のメカニズムと動機
Yeah. You know, something about, you know,
using just a quote and feeling and and runningwith that, but like, that might cause thisproblem.
Or one part of the cost. Yeah, good on you. And soyeah, so I'm like, thank you. Yeah,
this is I go out of my way to try to find it. Andso I use several search engines,
including various AI tools, and cannot find anyconnection to Dostoevsky or Kafka for these two
quotes. And the only things that pop up are likein these Instagram related sort of, you know,
posting things, right. And I spend the nextprobably hour and a half, like, trying to uncover
what is happening, and why this exists, like, whatis the point behind this, I can, I can start
taking shots in the dark. And a lot of them, Ithink are still the case. But honestly, I didn't
even come up with very clear, you know, sort ofconclusions, like people hadn't necessarily
been researching, why do people do this? Or what'shappening? Like why people intentionally
misattribute quotes, right? Because I'm looking atthis, and I'm going, this can't be the only
time and it isn't. This this happens. This is athis is an ongoing sort of issue. And it is,
as far as I can tell. Oh, yeah, go ahead. No, goahead. Go ahead. No, but like, for me,
it's like that easy to figure out why people wantto misattribute certain quotes. Because
if it's as often it is, it's like historical, youknow, figure or someone in the past that is
fairly well known, right? There's usually somestereotype or like impression that is attached
to this person. And maybe that doesn't gel wellwith how you want to use the quote. And if you
have no morals, you could like, you know what, Iwould really like to use this quote that came from
Adolf Hitler. But it just doesn't fly that well toquote Hitler. So I'm gonna put some other
miscellaneous like, leader of a nation to like,you know, put it because it sounds like a good
leadership quote. And you know, we don't want tobelieve that Hitler was a great leader.
But we don't mind if it comes from like, a nationthat is less controversial, right? And if the
quote user has zero moral, and they don't care,you just want to like, make a nice TED talk,
then, you know, they're like, well, they're notgonna catch it.
I love this version as one of the there are somany others. And actually, out of all the ones
that I have, like written down here, that's notone of them. Yeah. And so I didn't find it. But
like, because a lot of these I didn't find anyparticular, like, maybe I don't know how to search
the field per se, right. But like, it has someadjacency to like, or I just trust people less.
So right. So okay, like the trust, in some sense,which is I think why I was so like,
all right. I know people, you know, can lie, andthey do it a lot. But also, I just I couldn't get
an understanding of the motivation, right. Andthis motivation you've just described,
like, I want to share a quote that resonates withme. But it's against somebody who would
probably flag as you know, bad, right? You know,yeah, etc. or controversial, controversial. Yeah.
Good, good point. So I'll switch it, right. Andnow that has like an interesting level of,
I guess it's intentional, but almost unintentionalmalice, right to, I'd say intentional malice in a
way where they, you know, I think people don'tthink of it as as such a crime to do that, right?
Like, you know, oops, somebody else found that itwas actually from a different person.
Well, I didn't know it. And it's just a quote,right? I feel like there's that impression.
Because, okay, people do unintentionally misquoteso many things. It was just one of them. And
the blame is less on you precisely because it'squoted. And yeah, like sounds like easy crime for
a person who really wants to deliver a good TEDtalk.
That is totally...
Are you just mind boggled by how little I trustpeople?
I feel well, it's actually in this case, becauseI'm relatively on board with you on at least in
the way that I have now seen people misattributequotes. But like, the way in which you've you've
positioned this right that somebody could alsooffload their responsibility. We've talked about
this. Yeah. Well, I mean, off script, you talkedabout it with respect to AI and usage and things
as well, I think, as well. But the, the offloadthere is fascinating, because I personally,
if somebody did that, I think I would, I would notallow them to slip, right? Like that version
of misattribution, to me, is, is notablyimportant. And that is a failure on your part,
right? Like, it's not some misattributed quote.And it's just a quote. It's like, right, both
misapplied somebody else's ideas, for yourbenefit, you put them in a new context,
changed them and adjusted who they came from, youcompletely manipulated the messaging,
right? Without without respect for the originalauthor, the original meanings, you know, as close
as you could have, right? Right, maybe in like,the situation of being like, Oh, I just I just
tried to get that message of leadership across.People would do what you're saying, where it's
like, all right, fair enough, you know, you know,good. I can't, I don't want to mention aparticularly
gnarly, like, person's name as a quote, because Idon't want to be quoted myself as having said
something super sarcastic to them. But like, youknow, oh, such and such, you know, had said that,
you know, leadership requires diligence andaggression, you know, and it's, you know,
instead of it being from, I don't know, like yousaid, Adolf Hitler, right? It's, you know,
they've re attributed to like, Martin Luther King.And it's like, excuse me, you know, like,
you know, there is a there is a huge, like, Imaybe I maybe I'm going extreme here, butcriminal,
like offense. Yeah. So I was gonna say, I wasgonna point out that example is a little too
extreme for it to be a good example. Because,because most of the time, the people who would
do something like an intentional misattribution ofa quote, the quote itself is kind of vague enough,
and like applicable enough in many situations,okay, that, you know, there's a reason why they
want to pull somebody else, right. And if it's twodifferent, like Hitler versus MLK, then people
are gonna sense it's like, that doesn't sound likesomething Hitler would say, you know,
or that doesn't sound like MLK, what MLK wouldsay.
But now we're back to trusting people. Like, to beable to have this, you know,
criticality. But like, the easiest way to foolpeople and not get caught misattributing is to
pick something a little bit more sensibly, youknow, someone who's like, okay, maybe not Hitler,
but like some other dictator that is like, alittle bit less controversial.
Or, yeah, something like that, right. And like, ifit's quoted from like, like, let's say,
oh, I'm gonna put this as a quote from like, Idon't know, like Ming Dynasty's emperor.
Like, and you're talking to a Western audience.Yeah, they're all gonna know.
And it's easier to, you know, get away withmisattributing. And, oh, man.
And again, like, you also have the power as amanipulator to kind of like make it sound a
little bit more like something this, you know,wrong person are saying. And, you know, just
here and there, tweak a little word and voila.Right. But it's interesting, though. I'm sorry,
I keep interrupting you. But no, no, what was yourthought on this misattribution of quotes?
So, I know, I'm glad that you've interrupted it inthese ways. And I wouldn't say interrupted,
I think you've you've interjected, right? Like,clearly, first off another way of looking at this,
which is a lot more. It's a lot more personally,like, manipulative of the quote. So the closest
that I had gotten with, with one of these was, youknow, attributing somebody's name to a quote
that isn't from a famous person, because a lot ofthese, I didn't even find attached to another,
like, sort of big name, right? They were just someother write up, which felt like sort of...
But the write up did exist.
Well, the write up sometime only existed withinthat social media post. Right. So it's like,
so this, this Dostoyevsky Kafka one, which I'm noteven...
That's like a next level of misattribution.
Right. So like, there's, I think, a few thingsgoing on. And your version actually starts to,
I think it applies to a bunch of other sort ofphilosopher associated quotes,
where I ended up finding this guy, Gregory Sadler,who has like a YouTube, a series of
YouTube videos that are just like, 10 quotes thatare misattributed to, you know, Aristotle,
like, you know, philosopher, right? Like videoslike this, and just kind of goes through them,
right? And the essence being, you know, itsometimes in the maybe best of cases,
so to speak, it's like a bad translation, youknow, something quite isn't quite right,
but it's right. It's like an honest mistake, maybea modern version.
It's like a partially honest, partially lazy,maybe just be kind of, you know, it's kind ofright,
but it doesn't have the, you know, there's that.Then there's like,
kind of a bit of a human thing, a little bit oflaziness, where somebody has summarized
an author's works, and then like, later on, theyquote the summary as from the author.
So like, it's not the person who summarized it,it's like the paraphrased words. Yeah, exactly.
And this is, this is a challenge within the sortof, when we're quoting and citing things,
right? How do we properly sort of trace back thesource, right? It's hard, it can be verydifficult.
And when the source is like, Greek philosophersfrom back in the day, it's a tad bit hard.
When there's a huge distance in time and languageand medium, right? There is greater and greater
difficulty here. Librarians out there, you know,sort of archivists, everybody who deals with this
stuff on a regular basis, I salute you, greatrespect. I am very appreciative of all the work
that you do. I hope that you continue to get lotsof funding. So like, this, this is some of them,
and then, mind you, these are from like tidbits,right? I've pulled from a few articles, I found,
you know, that one guy who had like a post andYouTube videos. And like, you start ending up
in kind of misinformation, academic territory, andlike social media techniques, or sort of ways
of manipulating things. But they're not reallyrelated. It's kind of this weird niche of
misattribution that's been around kind of for awhile and internet made it. Yeah. And so one other
piece as like a, so you know, attach authority toit, you know, with somebody's name, even on
something that like they just wrote, or they justkind of whipped up, or maybe nowadays, Gen AIwrote.
Right. And this is to create clicks. But it soundsmore credible if you put like, a certain person's
name. Yeah, yeah. And you might get more saves,you might get more reshares, you might get more,
right, then it becomes a bit of this, you know,possibly money territory of motivations. Yep.
So those are the ways in which I found might behappening. And sort of in the more theoretical
space, there was like one. I can't even rememberexactly who it was by the name is escaping me.
引用の正確性と探求心の重要性
But there was one suggestion that there is aconversation or a shifting in the sort of human
interaction and discourse, especially online, fromlike factual truths to like emotional truths.
And there's, I think, some relationship to theidea of a vibe. Right. So, you know, when it
resonates with people emotionally, the need forthere to be an underlying truth, such as to who
it is associated to, or the greater context thatit sits within, or the whether or not it's even
sort of generated by a person who's had thatexperience or something, right, or has tried
to understand the experience, that is not asimportant as feeling emotionally resonant with
the piece. And that is a huge can of worms thatI'm not saying that we unpack now. Yeah. But
yeah, you see, let's do that some other day. Yeah.This another day, right? The question being
essentially, you know, what does it what is thatwhat is the value behind something that is
emotionally resonant, resonant, but perhapsfactually false, invalid, or, you know, yeah,
yeah, it's used, but like, that's what's somethinglike those things is happening here.
And it's really annoying, because I like cannotunderstand once I realized that I took a moment
and said, I would like to use one of these quotethings, maybe it's like a, you know,
social media can act as a sprinkling of ideaswhere you can sort of choose to dive deeper
into certain things. Right? Yes. But if thingslike that are not properly attributed,
then what you have is me diving into a whole,like, you know, sort of rampage of finding out
whether or not something is truly based in fact,and why it's not being based in the person's name,
and what is actually right in this person's name,which feels a lot more distracting than what I
intended to have. And so, you know, now I come tothe end, and I'm like, well,
I guess the answer is double check your quotes.And you know, if you come across quotes,
you know, double check them. And like, doublecheck that and double check, especially if you
felt compelled to share it with other people. Yes.Right. Like, yes. Because it's one thing for you
to Oh, I thought this favorite quote of mine thatI thought was attributed to, I don't know,
Virginia Woolf was this whole time actuallyattributed to somebody else, right? It's just
like, like, it's one thing, like, might bepersonally a little bit upsetting, but otherwise,
okay. Yeah. If you're trying to spread that,though, to convey additional meaning,
giving your other message that you're hopefullytrying to deliver, you know, that is a fire
hazard, and that you should do it extremelycarefully. I have never tried to quote people
in my public writing, or private writing, really,I don't hate collecting quotes, as an idea,
right? Sometimes it's just, you know, concisedistillation of the way this person lived,
who I admire, who I, you know, think is great.And, and it's kind of like a fun trick to throw
it around to other people in conversation. Itcould be as benign as that. Or it could be,
you know, have unintended or intendedconsequences. If you share it, so double checkregardless,
but double check, especially triple check, ifyou're trying to share it with other people.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think as a two piecesthere, one, the double checking is especially
important, because when these things spread, theyinfluence the perceptions of what that
author and person are like. So so that's numberone, right? It changes their perception of them
of other people perceiving them if they don't alsodo the check. But even if they aren't, right,
it's it's a lot of information. Yeah. And it couldeven definitely create biases towards or against
without actually having that person there. It'slike speaking, you know, it's like a weird game
of telephone, you know, where you say one thing toone person. Yeah, yeah. Next.
That might be why I prefer to quote from likedirectly from the sources that I have access to.
Right. Yes. Way better. Whether it's a book orlike a biography or something, right? I veryrarely
get like one to quote, you know, historicalfigures that are like before records areavailable,
because, you know, there's a lot ofmisunderstanding happening. Even the records thatlike I don't have
personal access to, like if it's written in Latin,I don't know, you know, yeah.
So I tend to sort of stay away from it. Yeah.Modern sources like, you know, after
19 18th century, it's like things are betterrecorded, better translated.
Have I have a little bit more faith in that. Yeah.But yeah, having said all of this,
just to wrap it up, do you have a favorite quote?Do I have a I can I can share in in a sort of
final piece. It's not particularly a favoritequote, but I found one that I appreciated. And I
found it on a website that that same GregorySadler had had recommended at one of his videos,
which helps you check some of these quotes. Sothere's a variety of questions out there that
collect quotes. But yeah, I want to use myfavorite quote on that website right now. Okay.Okay. So
so I'm gonna I don't know how expansive it is. Thewebsite itself, I just came across it.
Like I said, from from the end of his video. Thisone is the quote, you think your pain and
your heartbreak are unprecedented in the historyof the world. But then you read. And so this has
essentially the way they start out with this isthey after their investigation, they have like,
you know, is it by this person, this person? Or isit apocryphal as in it's just been sort of,
you know, made up and passed around. And then theyhave a general, you know,
where did this thing come from? And in whatcontext? Somebody like writes in and seems to ask,
you know, quote investigator, which maybe is ateam of people, I actually don't know anything
about the site just yet. But then they go throughand they dig it up. So this one in particular,
seems to have been from James Baldwin in Lifemagazine, during a sort of, you know, profile
interview, where Baldwin had said, you think yourpain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the
history of the world. But then you read, it wasDostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the
things that tormented me most were the very thingsthat connected me with all the people who
are alive or who ever had been alive. So, youknow, there's some additional context. And then
they seem to when they do get a quote, and they dohunt down the stuff, they go through like,
all of the other places that they could find whereit pops up. There are like four or five different
times over the next three decades, this quote isslightly adjusted or slightly said, and quoted.
And then they, you know, sort of conclude, rightwith a with a final credit. So interesting. Yeah.
Interesting. That is, so at the end of the day, Iguess, the quote that you resonated with still
had some connection to Dostoevsky, even though itwas not directly from him. Is that what it is?
But you've just you've just nailed that otherpiece, which I didn't get to, which was,
there is a like slippery sort of, you know, thequotes are designed with a feeling, a vibe that
matches the now but is technically what you mightimagine the author could have read, right?
It's the leap that one needs to take forimagination is not that big, which is,
which is more nefarious in a way. Yeah, but let meshare. Let me end this episode
by sharing a real quote, at least as real as Ithink I can get with because of the way I received
this quote, right? So the context of me beingfirst exposed to this quote, was my organic
chemistry exam. I think it was one of the finalexams. Okay, we were all passed around a pencil
as sort of like a souvenir for surviving organicchemistry, even though I think that last
exam was like a deciding factor of whether youactually survive or not. That aside,
Professor handed out these, you know, classic bluepencils with pink rubber at the end,
with a quote from Marie Curie saying, nothing inlife is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
And the quote goes on a little bit longer, butjust just that part was on the pencil.
And I truly hope I still have that pencil. Becausewhen I saw that, this is and coming from
Marie Curie, and like any PKM person, I am, youknow, Marie Curie is like, a big giant that we
all stand on, you know, her shoulders off and, andespecially as a woman in PKM field, she
trailblazed so many things for all of the peoplebehind her. So so coming from that, and also,
because so because of that, I have read herbiographies that are written by her daughter
and like stuff like that, right. And okay, havinga bit better understanding of what Marie Curie
was like, and by no means she was perfect. Butboy, was she so focused on understanding things,
you know, she, nothing, nothing stopped her fromtrying to understand the stuff that she
tried to understand. And it's both the sort ofthis concise nature of it, and the way she lived,
and to an extent the way she died as well, youknow, that makes this quote, something that I
kind of like to keep in my heart to wheneversomething is scary, whenever something is
something that I like fear appears, I try tothink, you know, is this part of like,understanding,
like, do I want to understand this, then take theyou know, then then you have to take the risk to
overcome the fear? Is there nothing to beunderstand, like in here? Is there nothing to
be understood here, then don't have to do it, youknow? So like, it kind of goes both ways for me,
like, if, if it's something that I want tounderstand that I think is worth understanding.
And if the only hindrance is fear, or just like myinsecurity, or like my, you know,
lack of confidence, maybe this is something thatyou need to jump. But at the same time, it's like,
if on the other end of this, will I learn morethan what I already know? If not, then
maybe you're going the wrong way. Maybe maybe jumpfor something worth understanding.
Yeah, yeah. So okay, that it is. But the fullquote goes on. So after, after nothing in life isto
be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is thetime to understand more so that we may fear less.
That's the whole quote. Oh, that's a nice, there'sa, there's a linguistic sort of, you know,
technique at play there, right? A bit of, youknow, coming back around kind of bit. Yeah.
Very nice. I like it. I like how concise it is.Yeah. I like it. Just in general. Yeah. No, it,
it, it does a nice job of validating or trying tomotivate exploration, right? As a way.
Yeah. Both of removing a fear and sort of choosingthe exploration in face of, you know, or, or
when presented, you know, with the option of fear.She doesn't condemn fear or feeling scared.
Yeah. Right? Yeah. She just gives you a way toreframe, you know, the fear and maybe
after reframing, it might become something else orit might become something useful.
And yeah, like it has got stuck with me far a lotmore than whatever I learned in organic chemistry
to, I think, look, sometimes the things that stickwith us, in fact, a lot of the time,
things that stick with us are like those littleevents, right? Those moments that aren't really
little, they feel, it feels odd. Like it's like,Oh, it's just that little thing that I,
but no, that was a, a notably high point at anotably intense, you know, end of organicchemistry
time point. And I'm pretty sure I didn't ace thatexam either, you know, just cause I was a little
bit fearless. I don't think I aced the exam, butit's stuck with me. Yeah. Yeah. Fearless doesn't
mean that it's all going to go well. I had aseparate thing, which maybe we could talk about
here at some other point, but like, just becausethere's no fear or just because there's a sense
of belief and certainty, that by itself doesn'tguarantee anything, but it's nice to have those.
Oh, no. Cults are full of people who believe sohard.
Oh, man, went right to the cult. Yeah, you'reright. No, you're right. Absolutely right.
Well, with that, folks, try not to think aboutcults and, uh, yeah, and enjoy,
enjoy exploring things in the face of fears. Buttriple check your quotes.
Yes. Do the exploration, check, check your quotes,dive into rabbit holes. You know,
you don't have to take an hour and a half andlike, try to learn a whole new field and see
if it exists. Like I do. Please don't do that.Most of the time you probably have other things
to do. Um, so do I. But at least check. Yeah. Butplease, please check before sharing.
General. All right. Thanks, Glenn, for this topic.Bye-bye.
That's it for the show today. Thanks for listeningand find us on X at Eigo de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. See you nexttime.
