kleiba (u/kleiba) - Readit News

kleiba commented on Sci-Hub has been blocked in India sci-hub.se/sci-hub-blocke... · Posted by u/the-mitr

$20,000 annually to keep up on the latest science makes it prohibitively expensive for most of the world to do meaningful science. If only the rich can do science then we miss out on crucial scientific advancements. Less scientific advancements means less people get life saving medicines, less environmental disasters are uncovered and dealt with.

Plus, I was just using your own logic of replacing "paper" with anything else that I might consume in my everyday life.

kleiba · 2 days ago

I worked in research for decades - no idea where you get that $20,000 number from. Also, I cannot follow this argument of "only the rich can do science", this seems to bear any relation to reality.

kleiba commented on Sci-Hub has been blocked in India sci-hub.se/sci-hub-blocke... · Posted by u/the-mitr

calf · 3 days ago

Your unpopular opinion is fallacious, markets can fail and as a result grey/black markets arise. This sci-hub issue is plausible evidence of that. Moreover there are systems where markets could be entirely inappropriate. But there's no law of nature or god that tells us how to decide as a society. Indeed it is your very mention of consumerism that belies this presupposition.

kleiba · 2 days ago

Why shouldn't we abolish any digital markets then, because in theory, you could have a service similar to sci-hub for books, movies, music... And these exist and existed (and are regularly shut down by the authorities).

kleiba commented on Sci-Hub has been blocked in India sci-hub.se/sci-hub-blocke... · Posted by u/the-mitr

lotharcable · 2 days ago

Copyright exists to protect publishers, not the people actually doing the work.

Copyright was created for the specific purpose of censorship.

kleiba · 2 days ago

If anything you could argue that copyright has shifted in that direction but it was certainly created originally to foster the development of art and science by protecting creators, not publishers.

kleiba commented on Sci-Hub has been blocked in India sci-hub.se/sci-hub-blocke... · Posted by u/the-mitr

thrance · 3 days ago

Profiteering is bad, even more so when it's about science. That's my moral justification. Using Sci-Hub is illegal, but far from immoral in my book.

kleiba · 2 days ago

Why is that? Most relevant research in AI is done outside of universities and instead by companies these days. Shouldn't they have the right to sell their findings? Their research is not funded by tax money.

(Note that that's not usually where the price tag for a research paper comes from these days, it's publishers charging for their added value. You might find it debatable whether said added value warrants the amount of money they ask for, but that's orthogonal to the underlying issue.)

kleiba commented on Sci-Hub has been blocked in India sci-hub.se/sci-hub-blocke... · Posted by u/the-mitr

Eddy_Viscosity2 · 3 days ago

> Replace "paper" with anything else you consume in your everyday life.

You eat apples, but if you replaced "apples" with "human babies", then by eating them you would be committing murder and cannibalism. It's an unpopular opinion, but this logical argument proves you are a murdering cannibalistic monster.

kleiba · 2 days ago

Er, what?

kleiba commented on Sci-Hub has been blocked in India sci-hub.se/sci-hub-blocke... · Posted by u/the-mitr

pahool · 3 days ago

Just because something has a price associated with it, that does not make the pricing model inherently correct or just. The majority of research papers, at least in the U.S., are (or historically have been, I don't know the data now under the current administration) publicly funded, one way or another. Publicly-funded research should not be behind paywalls.

https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb202326/funding-sources-of-acad...

kleiba · 2 days ago

> Just because something has a price associated with it, that does not make the pricing model inherently correct or just.

And just because a pricing model is not correct or just does not automatically give you liberty to circumvent that pricing model. If you think that Nike shoes are overpriced and hey, there's Chinese counterfeits readily available, does not automatically make the latter legal or even morally justified.

kleiba commented on Sci-Hub has been blocked in India sci-hub.se/sci-hub-blocke... · Posted by u/the-mitr

ahoka · 3 days ago

Science brings humanity forward, your Netflix subscription does not. Simple as that. The former should not be the subject of economic rent.

kleiba · 2 days ago

It does not matter if it should or shouldn't. Since someone else brought up insulin before, you could also argue that all medication should be free - alas it isn't.

It is totally fine to object the status quo of certain aspects of life or society. But in a democracy, the right way to go about changing them is not to just simply take what you can.

kleiba commented on Sci-Hub has been blocked in India sci-hub.se/sci-hub-blocke... · Posted by u/the-mitr

megaloblasto · 3 days ago

That's what I tell diabetic patients struggling to afford insulin. "Hey that's the price, that's just how it is, if you don't like it, don't buy it"

kleiba · 2 days ago

Please, let's stay real. How is comparing a vital drug even remotely comparable to scientific papers?

kleiba commented on Sci-Hub has been blocked in India sci-hub.se/sci-hub-blocke... · Posted by u/the-mitr

megaloblasto · 3 days ago

I have to read a lot of papers for work. Sometimes 2 or 3 a day. Often when I find one I'm interested in, they want $60 to read the one paper. If I have to read one paper a day, that's about $20,000 a year just to stay up to date with the science.

That's ridiculous. Thankfully someone is breaking down these barriers to science.

kleiba · 3 days ago

Replace "paper" with anything else you consume in your everyday life. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but to me, if there's something offered to you for a certain price, and you're not ready to pay that price, the alternative should be to either get something comparable that's cheaper (hardly possible with scientific papers) or, unfortunately, abstain from getting that thing at all.

I don't see how "what they're charging is ridiculous, and the money isn't even going to the authors, so it's okay for me to get the papers through sci-hub" is morally justified.

Independent of the above: if it's for work, your employer should pay for the paper access (unless you're self-employed, of course).

kleiba commented on AI 'deadbots' are persuasive – and researchers say, primed for monetization npr.org/2025/08/26/nx-s1-... · Posted by u/iamben

kleiba · 4 days ago

> [A] bearded AI avatar of Chris Pelkey, the deceased victim of a road rage incident in Arizona, gave a video impact statement at the sentencing of the man who fatally shot Pelkey. Pelkey's family created the deadbot. "I feel that that was genuine," said Judge Todd Lang after hearing the AI generated impact statement. He then handed down the maximum sentence.

This is nuts!