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Patrick Boyle: The Copy-Paste Professor

28 points · 28 comments · galkk

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hehjee · 1790351751 · focus · HN ↗
My spidey senses went off years ago regarding this guy.
I thought I was crazy as nobody else seemed to feel the same.
Glad it turns out I wasn’t wrong that something was really off about this guy.
Another grifter.
1. blobbers · 1790353571 · focus · HN ↗
  This guy oozes grifter.
  Shocked he didn’t end up a crypto maximalist disgraced by FTX ads.
  1. tmp10423288442 · 1790353780 · focus · HN ↗
    Always room for anti-crypto, anti-AI, etc. grifters to go against the pro-crypto, pro-AI grifters. Both side improve their counterparts' business!
  2. topranks · 1790498845 · focus · HN ↗
    He was knocking crypto from the very start
    registeredcorn · 1790715739 · focus · HN ↗
    > He was knocking crypto from the very start
    Is it fair to even say that much, though? Given how profound his level of plagiarism has been, it's hard to say if he has much of an opinion on anything at all.
    I suppose we could guess that he might plagiarize whatever article generally favored his own stance on things, but personally, I would instead argue that given his complete lack of ethical scruples he probably instead opted for whatever would "play" best to the audience over whatever his actual belief or opinion might have been. For instance, he's repeated articles that have done a hefty amount of (rightful) moralizing and grandstanding over LLM's, while also sponsoring LLM-based companies, and (presumably) using them to write what little of his content wasn't word-for-word stolen from articles.
    I would think that as long as he could put a script together with the awkward, stilted cadence persona he has adopted, then any worries over trivial things like: belief, thought, or sincerity were immaterial.
    Talk to the camera, upload the video.
    Put another way, "Who cares about cattle? Fill the bucket!"
ShinyLeftPad · 1790352157 · focus · HN ↗
I never saw where he claimed to be a professor and hedge fund manager, I just thought he used to work/teach and now makes entertaining videos.
Also as far as I remember (I wasn't yet watching back in 2020 so no comment on that part) it's pretty clear what he bases videos on, he specifically mentions the whatever FT article or book and I expect his script quotes a lot from them. I watch(listen) anyway because it's fun, easy to understand for laypeople and I'm not subscribing to FT/not buying a book anyway... Don't think I'll stop because of this
1. blobbers · 1790353344 · focus · HN ↗
  Glad you support someone who shows a shocking lack of integrity, and is selling textbooks from Wikipedia while claiming intellectual thought.
  May want to let that marinate.
  1. surgical_fire · 1790357027 · focus · HN ↗
    > Glad you support someone who shows a shocking lack of integrity
    My brother in Christ, you are posting in a forum associated to VC.
    cwkelley5 · 1791108255 · focus · HN ↗
    My bother in Christ is the funniest thing I've ever seen in the internet, thank you
    cwkelley5 · 1791108389 · focus · HN ↗
    "My brother in Christ" is the funniest thing I've seen on the internet, thank you. I signed up to this site just to post this
2. throw0101a · 1790370298 · focus · HN ↗
  > I never saw where he claimed to be a professor and hedge fund manager, I just thought he used to work/teach and now makes entertaining videos.
  From his uni bio:
  > Patrick Boyle is a Visiting Professor of Finance at Queen Mary University of London in the School of Economics and Finance. He has taught at Queen Mary University since 2009. Patrick teaches the Financial Derivatives and Portfolio Management Classes to Master’s in Finance Students.
  > Patrick Boyle is a Founding Partner at Palomar Capital Management, a quantitative Hedge Fund. Patrick began his finance career in 1997 and has worked with Victor Niederhoffer, a former partner of George Soros' and has been a Portfolio Manager at RBS, Millennium and Nomura.
  […]
  * <a href="https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sef/staff/patrickboyle.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sef/staff/patrickboyle.html
  So the university itself vouches for the academic side of things, and the UK business registry has a "BOYLE, Patrick" for Palomar Capital Management (resigned as of 2018):
  * <a href="https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/OC366560/officers" rel="nofollow">https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
  1. ShinyLeftPad · 1790410705 · focus · HN ↗
    sure. I just don't remember him claiming it in any video. And i wouldn't assume he's anything like it... if he was a genius fund manager would he be making youtube videos?
szge · 1790352179 · focus · HN ↗
his videos from the past few months have classic AI tells. the scripts are generated by AI and he's just reading them. this is not surprising news in light of this. he presents himself as super professional but doesn't put in the work beyond presentation.
bayarearefugee · 1790352314 · focus · HN ↗
> Patrick Boyle: The Copy-Paste Professor
The main practical problem for him now career-wise is that he's seen as leftist (a label which already kinda only makes sense in the context of how far the rightward shift in the US has been until relatively recently) so he'll probably be held accountable for this.
If you are sufficiently right-coded like Lex Fridman you can get away with this sort of thing forever.
See also: Media response to Biden gaffes vs Trump, or the outcome for Al Franken vs... virtually any modern Republican Senator.
1. karmakurtisaani · 1790360247 · focus · HN ↗
  Interesting point, and I tend to agree. People really require integrity from anyone perceived to be on the left, whereas you can be as disgusting as you want on the right and it won't hurt you even a bit. Works in politics too.
2. topranks · 1790498562 · focus · HN ↗
  Such an odd world where someone like Patrick Boyle is considered “left wing”.
glimshe · 1790352332 · focus · HN ↗
I like his videos. He's funny and I don't have time to read his sources... So I'll take copy and paste, he's providing a good service.
1. karmakurtisaani · 1790360092 · focus · HN ↗
  Not sure whywhy people hate on you. YouTube is about presentation, not original research.
2. throw0101a · 1790422370 · focus · HN ↗
  > * He's funny and I don't have time to read his sources... So I'll take copy and paste, he's providing a good service.*
  See also Ben Felix:
  * <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@BenFelixCSI/videos" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/@BenFelixCSI/videos
  Puts (DOI) links to the peer-reviewed papers he cites. And he often gets the authors of those papers on the podcast his co-hosts:
  * <a href="https://rationalreminder.ca" rel="nofollow">https://rationalreminder.ca
  1. glimshe · 1790496632 · focus · HN ↗
    Ben Felix is also pretty good.
torginus · 1790352643 · focus · HN ↗
eceleb drama is leaking...
altmanaltman · 1790352821 · focus · HN ↗
Who cares. He makes content on youtube, not running for president. Just don't watch if you don't like it.
1. Maxatar · 1790353364 · focus · HN ↗
  People who actually did the original work care because this guy appears to be strip mining their content, running it through LLMs, and repackaging the result as if it were his own expertise. He also leans on inflated credentials to sell the illusion that he independently understands or developed the material. He's laundering other people's work through AI and personal branding, then taking the credit, so yeah that can piss people off and if you don't care then by all means continue supporting this hack.
  1. karmakurtisaani · 1790360365 · focus · HN ↗
    Mate, this is how almost anyone on YouTube operates. They're presenters, not researchers. The AI tells only bothers me if it distracts from the video.
tossandthrow · 1790352994 · focus · HN ↗
I thought he was ai
whall6 · 1790353140 · focus · HN ↗
Here’s a useful rule of thumb: if they’re spending all their time making YouTube videos they’re not running a successful hedge fund.
Copenjin · 1790353458 · focus · HN ↗
Copying from the options book by Hull is something I don't know how many people would have done.... I mean...
jmoggr · 1790353771 · focus · HN ↗
I read the economist regularly and notice that a number of his videos almost exactly match content from the economist. His presentation is reasonably good, reasonably correct, somewhat entertaining, and condenses what would otherwise be a number of economist articles over several weeks. Sometimes he has new-to-me perspectives.
To his credit he cites his sources and seems to keep clean of the various youtube grifts.
Its not top notch stuff, but you could do a lot worse for infotainment. His recent scripts have had AI tells which has been disappointing; I've been watching fewer of his videos.
vancekai · 1790359374 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
rwz · 1790367141 · focus · HN ↗
I watch YT videos for entertaining presentation and packaging, not for original groundbreaking research.
I don't care if he reads a Forbes article verbatim, so long as I find it funny and can watch it on my TV while eating lunch sitting on my couch or doing house chores, I'm going to continue doing so.
malephex · 1790373387 · focus · HN ↗
Next we'll learn he doesn't even listen to rap music :(

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