Plagiarism is very, very easy to understand: It boils down to money. Students plagiarize their homework to pass exams / get good grades, and to get better jobs.

Plagiarism is very, very easy to understand: It boils down to money. Students plagiarize their homework to pass exams / get good grades, and to get better jobs. Researchers plagiarize in order to get grants and / or recognition which will strengthen their reputation, and thus ability to work. Programmers plagiarize to get work done, authors plagiarize to publish stuff, musicians plagiarize to release better music. workers plagiarize to get credit, and hopefully a promotion. And the list goes on. In the end, people plagiarize because there are incentives to do so. Siraj plagiarized because he's an "influencer", so to speak, in the Machine Learning beginners scene. Why did he do it? Probably to build reputation and credibility. I'm gonna go ahead and guess that he did it not to impress researchers or industry workers, but to look more productive and legit to his followers. In the end, he probably doesn't give a sh!t about getting caught. If his main focus is on teacher beginners, then that's where the bank is. It's like with stand-up, when someone shamelessly lifts a famous routine - other stand-up comedians will ostracize him/her, but that's a exceedingly small group of people. The audience will still laugh. So, that's my take. As long as there's a clear incentive, and no punishment, then plagiarism will continue. And unfortunately, you're more likely to hear "Who give a sh!t?" from casual bystanders. When discussing plagiarism, I've heard so, so many variants of just that. "Who cares, everyone does it once in a while" "Most would do the same in his/her position" "That's not cheating, it's just solid problem solving" "It's been happening forever" etc.