LindyMan—Serial Plagiarist (Part 1)

Never-ending copy-paste saga

Feb 19, 2023

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This is not a story about Lindyman, I just need to clean my achieves, as I don’t want to keep this garbage forever. I have no idea who the guy is or if he/she is real. There was a rumor that she is a rebellious nun who escaped from Cambodia, now living in Oslo, practicing Mahayana, and occasionally travelling to France and US, but it is probably not more than a rumor.

Below, here is a collection of hectic thoughts, screenshots from Twitter, opinions which are judgmental and erroneous. Ignore them.

Twitter Glitch

LindyMan appeared out of nowhere. It was a Twitter glitch. Some folks thought of him seriously though.

mash tun timmy @MashTunTimmy

In the last two years @PaulSkallas has probably contributed more to the understanding of our society and culture than entire departments of universities. Not hyperbole.

The guy had a witty mind, pretty rational, never actually sliding to the edge of “utter insanity” like Tyler mentioned.

Machine generated alternative text:
LindyMan
@PaulSkallas 2m
People joining crazy twitter clones run by shadowy groups because they are
afraid of "censorship"
Just tweet in code. That's what poets, artists and writers have done for
centuries under repressive regimes.
@lnsanitylsFree 9h
Jeremiah Harding
Parler:
- funded by former Cambridge Analytica
- founded and run by Secret Service agent
- demands ID to do basic things
- like DM and comment links
- was advertised for "free speech"
- but censors people and bans "obscenity'
- not racism and fascism tho
Nice honeypot, there.

Machine generated alternative text:
LindyMan
@PaulSkallas lh
the black work laptop is the company's embassy in my home. It's their
territory. What happens on that laptop is under their jurisdiction. But I have
to protect it
It's completely separate from everything else in my home
18
0 289

Some of his posts were subjectively original and provocative to the point of being offensive. And quite often it was a lie, but he made sure his audience was entertained.

Machine generated alternative text:
LindyMan
@PaulSkallas
Peterson is back from his 2 year drug abuse rehab
world tour. The money is starting to run out.
It's time to teach discipline and accountability to the
kids again.
Dr Jordan B Peterson
@jordanbpeterson Oct 19
I'm home: Return Home youtu.be/6_6zwVNn880
4:04 PM • Oct 20, 2020 • Twitter Web App
Li kes
58
Retweets Quote Tweet
550

Machine generated alternative text:
LindyMan
@PaulSkallas • Dec 29, 2020
Writing a screenplay about a man who runs a popular trad account while
living in a "homstead" in rural NH. He terrorizes his wife and their baby by
forcing them to take vanity pics near fireplaces and forests. everyday. He
slowly spirals into insanity during the 10 month winter
Q 30
67
0 848
LindyMan
@PaulSkallas • Dec 30, 2020
A good film for Darren Aronofsky or Gaspar Noe to direct
0 87
LindyMan
@PaulSkallas 2m
But I'm the real LindyMan" he says to himself while he opens the incognito
mode window on the browser to look over the tweets of someone who
blocked him two years ago. A daily ritual.
His wife, meanwhile, hurriedly prepares a meal, solely meant to be photo'd
for the account
0 12

Some scandalous tweets he often deleted almost instantly. You can see why.

Machine generated alternative text:
LindyMan
@PaulSkallas
Europe is having a terrorism problem with its immigrant
and refugee population
Why don't they just do what the US does and just
import Mexicans?
Mexicans are not going to cut off innocent people's
heads for a cartoon.
They'll work hard.
2:44 PM • Nov 2, 2020 • Twitter Web App

Evidently, his numerous fans viewed him as a great writer. He resisted as much as he could.

Machine generated alternative text:
LindyMan
@PaulSkallas
Hello lindyman, i hope you're having a nice day.
I want to ask u a question if you are interested.
Where are the great contemporary writers like
Hemingway was in the 50s, and why dont they
exist now? Back when he was alive people knew
his work was great and that he would go down
as a great, but i haven't noticed that at all in my
relatively short life so far. Any thoughts are
appreciated
Yesterday, 1:30 AM
You accepted the request
I may be the only one
4:55 PM V
9:56 PM • Apr 1, 2021 • Twitter Web App

Twitter community have always had enough rationally thinking people, able to detect a fraud, but not everyone was as smart as Joe:

Machine generated alternative text:
@normonics Dec 20, 2020
Joe Norman
Skallas has a screw or two loose and that sometimes translates into
entertaining commentary
Part of the fun of a cult is that it's a cult
15

LindyMan also compiled few “books”, one of them is Life & The Lindy Effect . When you read some commentary, you can feel the depths of the context.

This is a dumb book. It's stupid and poorly written, often copy and pasting from other sources without attribution or even formatting. Mister S. appears to be struggling with understanding how to use a word processor even more than he struggles with his lack of ability to write past a fifth grader's level.
Paul Town’s review

Kaboom! trajectory

Then one gloomy day (at least January 2021 in Switzerland was pretty grey), folks on Twitter realized LindyMan had been massively copy-pasting from different uncredited sources, websites, books, and articles to his tweets and newsletters. Massively is the key word here, casual quoting without reference would not be deemed as something worrying.

Here’s a list of some authors, whose content was (re)used by LindyMan without any attribution. We have no idea how many authors are affected in total. The biggest part of the material is screenshots, as LindyMan used to publish on Substack, but then he was expelled from there, so those articles are not available anymore, except new reposting on

Beehiiv

like this one.

Nassim Taleb

Nassim Taleb is a “trader-philosopher-statistician”, writer of a truly ingenious Technical Incerto and few popular airport books, and also a psychologist as per Daniel Kahneman.

Lindyman copied few excerpts from Taleb’s Skin In The Game book in the most cynical manner, “improving” the wording as he wished.

Alleged opus of Lindyman:

[now reposted here: https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/4hour-life ]

Original text in the book SITG by Taleb:

y lifetime motto is that mathematicians think in (well, precisely
defined and mapped) objects and relations, jurists and legal
thinkers in constructs, logicians in maximally abstract operators,
and ... fools in words.
Two people can be using the same word, meaning different things,
yet continue the conversation, which is fine for coffee, but not when
making decisions, particularly policy decisions affecting others. But it is
easy to trip them, as Socrates did, simply by asking them what they
think they mean by what they said—hence philosophy was born as rigor
in discourse and disentanglement of mixed-u notions, in precise op-
position to the sophist's promotion of rhetori Since Socrates we have
had a long tradition of mathematical science and contract law driven by
precision in mapping terms. But we have also had many pronounce-
ments by fools using labels—outside of poetry, beware the verbalistic,
that archenemy of knowledge.
Different people rarely mean the same thing when they say "religion,"
nor do they realize it. For early Jews and Muslims, religion was law. Din
means law in Hebrew and religion in Arabic. For early Jews, religion
was also tribal; for early Muslims, it was universal. For the Romans,
religion was social events, rituals, and festivals—the word religio was a
counter to superstitio, and while present in the Roman zeitgeist it had

and also that piece was rewritten from SITG:

Mike van Eerden

Alleged opus of Lindyman:

https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/light

Copy-pasted by LindyMan from here

Anthony Skews

Alleged opus of Lindyman:

LindyMan copied big chunks of text from here

Machine generated alternative text:
A bunch ofWEIRD-os.
Gottlieb's biographical sketches demonstrate a point that perhaps the publishers who selected his
book titles might like to disguise: very few of the heroes of the Western canon had a firm grasp on
what Reason or the Enlightenment even were. The degree to which these founders of Western
philosophy constituted a collections of weirdos, prophets and sages cannot be underestimated. Very
few participated in formal education or empirical research, and most spent their time focused on
questions of what we might think of today as theology and mysticism. Gottlieb notes how much of
later Christian thought is infused with the mysticism of earlier Greek thinkers such as the
numerology of the Pythagoreans, the Orphic belief in souls and Plato's music of the spheres.
Descartes and Leibniz were also very much of this mould. Descartes, of course, is largely responsible
for the metaphysical tendency in Western thinking that sees the mind and body as separate entities;
two centuries later, Leibniz constructed an elaborate system of 'monads' in which material entities
are merely imperfect reflections of abstracted pure entities. For these thinkers, Ideas were not only
real entities but in some way more real than the material world which could be observed, sensed and
experienced. Reason was not merely a tool, but a fragment of divinity that provided the only source
of True knowledge, including about moral and ethical subjects. In these terms, many of Gottlieb's
subjects were effectively panpsychics - an equivalently absurd modern revival of such beliefs. In
contrast, empiricists such as Democritus, Epicurus and Hume come across as eminently sensible.

James C. Scott

Alleged opus of Lindyman:

LindyMan copied that from the book of James C. Scott Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

James Harris

Alleged opus of Lindyman:

LindyMan copied that from the book of James Harris Fractal Architecture: Organic Design Philosophy in Theory and Practice

THE ABSTRACT TRAJECTORY TO THE FRACTAL MODERNIST FORM
THE MODERN MOVEMENT
AND FRACTAL GEOMETRY
The McKiern movement has undoubtedly arched toward abstraction
and a reduction of ornament. T%is trend has Iken correlat«l with a
movement away from organic architecture. Benoit Mandelbrot. the
father of fractals, has in fact expressed a preference for Beaux Art
architecture, such the Paris Opera House, as exhibiting fractal
qualities from its of detail as the scale of perception
Changes. as to the Modernist work Of Mies Van Der
fractal dimension Of various types of architectural expression
has twen presented as proof that Modernist architecture fails the test
of organic architecture. The fractal dimension can be calculated us•
ing the methcd. in which a series of diminishing grids
are placed over a line drawing elevation of a building. Each Ix:.x that
has a line Of the drawing inters«ting it is noted. From these data, a
logarithmic calculation the fractal dimension that eleva-
tion_ more the object has hits in an increasing diminishing grid
Of the higher its fractal dimension is. From this methodology,
the proponents make the argument that certain architecture, such as
a decorative Beaux Art structure. which has a h igher calculated fractal
dimension by the box•counting methodology. is more organic or frac•
tal than Modernist buildings." This damning assertion is incorrect.
detail is a fundamental aspect Of great architecture—as Mies
Van Der said, is in the Simple presence Of
it not constitute fractal architecture. A Structure based on brick
masonry and windows with divided lites is not necessarily given the
distinction ofbeing organic, though it has a fractal dimension
from a high box•counting score due to the use of many small comp
nents. The critical aspect of forms that ewke emotional and cognitive
responses similar to those experienced when perceiving natural forms
is the presence of a unifying aspect based on the part-to-whole to part
association. This attribute can present in any part ofthe sp«trum
Of architectural Styles inclusive Of the Modernist movement.

Matthew Walker

Alleged opus of Lindyman:

LindyMan copied that from the book of Matthew Walker Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

MY RHYTHM IS NOT YOUR RHYTHM
Although human beings display an unyielding twenty-four-hour pattern, the respective peak
and trough points are strikingly different from one individual to the next. For some people, their
peak of wakefulness arrives early in the day, and their sleepiness trough arrives early at night.
These are "morning types," and make up about 40 percent Of the populace. They prefer to wake
at or around dawn, are happy to do so, and function optimally at this time of day. Others are
"evening types," and account for approximately 30 percent of the population. •ney naturally
prefer going to bed late and subsequently wake up late the following morning, or even in the
afternoon. The remaining 30 percent of people lie somewhere in between morning and evening
types, with a slight leaning toward eveningness, like myself.
You may colloquially know these two types of people as "morning larks" and "night owls,"
respectively. Unlike morning larks, night owls are frequently incapable of falling asleep early at
night, no matter how hard they try. It is only in the early-morning hours that owls can drift off.
Having not fallen asleep until late, owls Of course strongly dislike waking up early. They are
unable to function well at this time, one cause of which is that, despite being "awake," their
brain remains in a more sleep-like state throughout the early morning. This is especially true ofa
region called the prefrontal cortex, which sits above the eyes, and can be thought of as the head
office of the brain. The prefrontal cortex controls high-level thought and logical reasoning, and
helps keep our emotions in check. When a night owl is forced to wake up too early, their
prefrontal cortex remains in a disabled, "offline" state. Like a cold engine after an early-morning
start, it takes a long time before it warms up to operating temperature, and before that will not
function efficiently.

André Burguière

Alleged opus of Lindyman:

LindyMan copied that from the book of André Burguière The Annales School: An Intellectual History

VIEW EBOOK
Get this book in print
O Reviews
Write review
The Annales School: An Intellectual
History
By André
Search in this book
About this book
My library
My History
Books on Google Play
Pages displayed by permission of Cornell
university Press Copyright
ANNALES SCHOOL
An Intellectual History
ANDRÉ BURGU1iRE
to the studv of
in
around
The
as it to grew to
eminent
Le Rov .
Goff.
In Andre

Alexandra Lange

Alleged opus of Lindyman:

LindyMan copied that from the article of Alexandra Lange here

It is a funny example as the paragraph was heavily edited.

modernism with the quirky planning Of the Italian hill town. These projects, like one I
visited in Vancouver, seemed to have successfully made family-friendly urbanism from
scratch.
The pattern that united them was Pattern 68, "Connected Play." "Children need other
children. Some findings suggest that they need other children even more than they need
their own mothers," Alexander writes. Indeed, one of the chief difficulties of contemporary
parenthood is connecting your children to other children in healthy, inexpensive ways. Can
urban design make helicopter parents extinct? It might if we had more play spaces right
outside our front door and not blocked off by lines of parked cars and traffic.
n my own early childhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts, children in my neighborhoo
emerged from their houses and congregated on the brick sidewalks, occasionally taking o
the narrow street for kickbal!, or tunneling through centers of blocks by jumping the fences
between adjacent yards. My favorite photograph of me and my first best friend is of us,
perched on stools, conversing over the fence between our backyards.
"A Pattern Language" is not about architecture, but
about how specific design choices can help us build
better relationships.

Scott Alexander

https://twitter.com/slatestarcodex

Mark Allan Bovair

This one actually is quite hilarious rewriting, if you notice what he changed in the original. “It feels like I’m in a spaceship”.

Mark Allan Bovair @markallanbovair

Why would this guy @PaulSkallas plagiarize my tweet and use it in his newsletter? You can still make the same point by sharing or linking to the original. Weird.

Joe Henrich

https://twitter.com/JoHenrich

Alleged opus of Lindyman:

Machine generated alternative text:
In polygynous societies, a higher percentage of men never experience the testosterone
declines observed in men from monogamous societies. In societies with monogamy,
which is most, but not all of societies on earth. Getting married lowers a man s
testosterone. If he divorces, his T levels climb again.
Aggregating these effects across an entire population, we can being to see how
monogamous norms suppress testosterone at a societal level. By prohibiting higher-
status men from monopolizing potential wives, monogamous norms allow many more
lower-status men to both get married (pair-bond) and father children. Thus
monogamous marriage ensures that a higher percentage of men will experience the
lower-T that attends both monogamous marriage and caring for children
Testosterone Replacement Therapy
But the story doesn't end there. During the last 10-15 years there has been an explosion
of men taking Testosterone Replacement Therapy. Men, whose T levels would be
dimimshing because they engage with the monogamous social norms of their society
and naturally aging. Essentially, we're using science to get around a practice of culture.
What are going to be the effects of this new phenomenon? At the individual level? At
the scaled up society level?
Nobody knows. It's an experiment. But we'll find out soon because this phenomenon
has been growing fast in recent years.

LindyMan copied that from the book of Joe Henrich: The WEIRDest People in the World

Antonio García Martínez

https://twitter.com/antoniogm

Antonio García Martínez (agm.eth) @antoniogm

Paul Skallas (@PaulSkallas), AKA the LindyMan, is a plagiarist. His last post is cut-and-paste theft of my verbatim tweets, and a thin rehashing of ideas I've been posting about for a while. Let's look at the evidence, shall we? (Free link below.)

newsletters.feedbinusercontent.com5 Things Americans Get Wrong About Europe

Sententiae Antiquae

https://twitter.com/sentantiq

sententiae antiquae @sentantiq

Bridge troll and biblioklept @PaulSkallas still using his Taleb fanboy account to spread my translations and selections without attribution There goes my immortality and eternal glory.

There are more authors he plagiarized that are not mentioned here.

Apogee (sort of)

Most (big) authors have never reacted to that. I suppose some of them are not aware at all, and prefer to stay that way. In fact, it can be seen is an insignificant petty accident, and who cares anyway about few plagiarized excerpts in a newsletter nobody heard about. You can be more in trouble by trying to settle the dispute, rather than simply ignoring it.

I personally know someone who Lindyman plagiarized from, who seriously debated whether to write a blog post to the effect of 'Lindyman is a plagiarist', but ended up not doing so. It would've taken a lot of time and effort, and probably attracted the wrath of Lindyman's followers, and possibly led to several frustrating weeks of back and forth, and is that really worth it? And that's for plagiarism of large blocks of text, which is probably the single most provable and clear-cut kind of misbehavior, much harder to argue about than the lies Glass or Bourgoin put forward. Eventually someone got fed up and made the plagiarism public, but it'd been a running joke in certain circles for a while before then.
Liars by Kelsey Piper

So, he kept posting like a genius about archeology, sleep, design, ceiling height, literature, culture, social issues, testosterone replacement therapy, history, and many other things with profound details. Some UIs started to broadcast he was the greatest living writer indeed, despite his style was jerky (now we know why).

At the peak of LindyMan’s success The New York Times published an article by an U.I. Ezra Marcus. The audience did not know yet that the guy was practically manipulating them for quite a while.

Ezra Marcus @ezra_marc

I really enjoyed talking to @PaulSkallas, the LindyMan, about the Lindy life.

nytimes.comThe Lindy Way of Living (Published 2021)A technology lawyer named Paul Skallas argues we should be gleaning more wisdom from antiquity.

The reaction of Nassim Taleb has been remarkable however…

Coming next [25.03.2023]:

Twitter community
LindyMan and Nassim Taleb
Jolly Aftermath

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All materials were taken from open sources, which is publicly available information appearing on internet or elsewhere.

Local Wrath Substack

LindyMan—Serial Plagiarist (Part 1)

Never-ending copy-paste saga

Twitter Glitch

Kaboom! trajectory

Nassim Taleb

Mike van Eerden

Anthony Skews

James C. Scott

James Harris

Matthew Walker

André Burguière

Alexandra Lange

Scott Alexander

Mark Allan Bovair

Joe Henrich

Antonio García Martínez

Sententiae Antiquae

Apogee (sort of)

Coming next [25.03.2023]: