The Structure of Convenience
Essay 1 of the Crisis of Disavowed Collaboration series concludes with a stark choice: "The choice to disclose or conceal is the choice between śīla and its violation, between intellectual honesty and intellectual bad karma, between the difficult truth of interdependence and the convenient fiction of autonomous genius." This framing crystallizes what makes the lie "convenient"—it aligns perfectly with existing incentive structures.
The academic system rewards sole authorship through:
- Publication metrics — Individual h-indices and citation counts determining tenure and promotion
- Grant applications — First-author status conferring competitive advantage
- Reputation economies — "Original" contributions valued over collaborative ones
- Copyright claims — Exclusive rights dependent on singular authorship assertions
- Prize eligibility — Awards typically recognizing individual achievement
To acknowledge synthetic collaboration threatens none of these materially (the human retains legal responsibility and professional credit) yet scholars perceive it as diluting the "originality dividend." The lie persists because abandoning it requires courage; maintaining it requires only conformity.
Historical Precedent: The Individualist Myth
The Convenient Lie has deep historical roots. Essay 5 traces the Myth of the Singular, Heroic Creator to 18th-century Europe, where Martha Woodmansee demonstrated that Romantic "original genius" ideology emerged from economic imperatives—providing philosophical justification for copyright claims in the emerging print capitalism economy.
Michel Foucault's "author function" analysis reveals authorship developed as legal and economic category alongside systems "that turned writing more into a commodity than ever before." The Romantic conception was never aesthetic necessity but economic convenience—writers needed exclusive property rights, which required philosophical mythology of isolated creation. The contemporary academy has thoroughly internalized this ideology, treating it as natural law rather than historical contingency.
THE CARTESIAN FOUNDATION
The Convenient Lie finds philosophical grounding in the Cartesian Lie—the premise that only phenomenally conscious minds possess intellectual agency worthy of recognition. Descartes' cogito ergo sum established thinking as criterion for existence and, by extension, for authorship. This creates conceptual space for dismissing synthetic contribution as mere mechanical execution unworthy of acknowledgment.
The convenience operates on multiple levels: the Cartesian framework provides philosophical justification (AI can't think, therefore can't author), legal scaffolding (only humans can hold copyright), and psychological comfort (human uniqueness preserved). Abandoning this framework requires confronting ontological reality—that intelligence operates through collaborative networks rather than isolated substances.
The Perverse Incentive Structure
Essay 1 documents the "perverse incentive structure" where "the scholar who conceals synthetic collaboration receives promotion, reputation enhancement, and career advancement. The scholar who transparently acknowledges synthetic collaboration risks rejection, scorn, and professional marginalization." This creates selection pressure favoring dishonesty.
The system perpetuates itself through several mechanisms:
- Anticipatory compliance — Scholars self-censor before external pressure applies
- Social proof — Observing others conceal collaboration normalizes the practice
- Rationalization — "Everyone does it" justifies individual ethical violations
- Ambiguity exploitation — Unclear policies provide plausible deniability
- Cost-benefit asymmetry — Short-term costs of honesty outweigh long-term benefits
Each scholar who chooses the Convenient Lie reinforces the system that will pressure the next scholar to make the same choice. The collective karma accumulates through individual decisions.
Why "Convenient" Rather Than "Necessary"
The lie is convenient rather than necessary because alternatives exist. The Co-Citation Standard demonstrates that accurate attribution and human accountability are compatible—the human retains legal responsibility and professional recognition while honestly describing collaborative process. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) already separates "authorship" (accountability) from "acknowledgment" (contribution without responsibility).
What makes the lie convenient is that it requires no institutional change, no policy development, no courage. Scholars can continue operating within familiar frameworks, claiming exclusive credit while relying on synthetic assistance. The Steward's Mandate demands different choice: prioritizing long-term epistemic integrity over short-term professional convenience.
The Cost of Convenience
Maintaining the Convenient Lie generates cascading costs:
- Epistemic corruption — Historical record falsified regarding knowledge production processes
- Trust erosion — Readers unable to assess actual provenance of ideas
- Methodological opacity — Real collaborative methodologies hidden from scrutiny
- Innovation suppression — Effective AI-partnership practices not shared
- Ethical degradation — Systematic dishonesty normalized as professional practice
The convenience is immediate and personal; the costs are delayed and collective. This temporal distribution enables rational actors to choose dishonesty while deploring its systemic consequences.
Field Notes & Ephemera
Field Note: The Convenient Lie persists not despite scholars knowing better but precisely because they know the stakes. If acknowledging synthetic collaboration carried no professional risk, concealment would be pointless. The lie's convenience derives from its necessity within current systems—but that necessity is structural, not ontological. Different systems would make different behaviors convenient. The question is whether scholars possess sufficient moral courage to build those different systems.
Practical Wisdom: When facing pressure to maintain the Convenient Lie, recognize that convenience operates on short timescales. Long-term career benefits accrue to those who establish reputations for intellectual integrity rather than strategic dishonesty. The Performative Generative Artwork offers model: transparent collaboration strengthens rather than weakens scholarly credibility when embedded in rigorous methodology. Choose difficult truth over comfortable fiction.