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A rational actor never works for "free", they derive some perceived benefit (not necessarily money) from their action, like reputation or self-satisfaction or w
by Y_Y 7y ago
A rational actor never works for "free", they derive some perceived benefit (not necessarily money) from their action, like reputation or self-satisfaction or warm fuzzies. I think it's brilliant that we can use these carrots to get good work out of people that can be shared on the internet.
All the same that's no excuse to abuse people who are acting far from rationally.
- ptah 7y agohumans are not "rational actors"
- cesarb 7y ago> they derive some perceived benefit (not necessarily money) from their action, like reputation or self-satisfaction or warm fuzzies You forgot what is perhaps the most important one: using the resulting software. For instance, when Linus wrote git, it was because he wanted a source control system with certain characteristics for himself to use.
- reaperducer 7y agoThat appears to be how we got rsync. From the rsync man page: EXAMPLES Here are some examples of how I use rsync. To backup my wife's home directory, which consists of large MS Word files and mail folders, I use a cron job that runs rsync -Cavz . arvidsjaur:backup each night over a PPP connection to a duplicate directory on my machine "arvidsjaur".
- gravitas 7y agorsync was co-developed for his PhD dissertation - Google "rsync phd thesis" real quick to get an overview.
- cycloptic 7y agoI think you overestimate the amount that some people think their decisions through.
- Avamander 7y agoYes, but once they get bored they move on, to the dismay of the community, if there's money involved however that would give the community more stability.
- wslh 7y ago> A rational actor never works for "free" A rational actor with emotions can work for free is that work makes him/her feel well. Some people even call this a hobby.
- samuellavoie90 7y agoIsn't a rational actor with emotions called an irrational actor? ;p
- jerf 7y agoIt's kinda hard to sit down and formulate a "rational actor" that has no emotions or drives or goals, and put that into any sort of useful theory of the world. You end up calling rocks rational actors when they, having no goals or negative stimuli, "rationally" sit there and do nothing. (Which may be "true" in some sense, but isn't a terribly useful definition.) Rationality is more about how goals are obtained than what those goals are. The latter can still play a part (e.g., are the goals coherent? that's a proper question for rationality), but it's lesser.
- marcosdumay 7y agoWhy did you define money as a goal?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- zulln 7y agoThat would fall under "perceived benefit" and thus not free, according to the parent's definition.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y agoThe joy of a "rational actor" is that their utility function can be anything, and therefore their "rational" behavior can be anything - including things that an outside observer would consider irrational:)
- Scoundreller 7y agoI know I do. The amount I’ve railed against companies I don’t like... oyyy, they should have put me on their payroll to sit on a beach and drink. And a few others should have put me on their marketing payroll.
- chaostheory 7y agoOne thing not mentioned in the article is that working on open source, especially when your project gets popular, helps a lot with the resume and may let you skip the interview quiz fest since your future employers are already familiar with your work and its quality. That said, it would be nice if corporations would give their teams donation money for the smaller projects that they rely on. With easy options like OpenCollective and GitHub having a donation option, it would be good time to start.
- circlefavshape 7y agoGah! A "rational actor" is not a person, and "free" has a commonly-understood meaning that you're redefining in order to ... what? Claim the headline is false? Why?
- irrational 7y agoThe vast majority of people I meet, including myself, are highly irrational. Ironically, that is not where my user name comes from ;-)
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoIt's a miracle we get what we do. If we found a better way to properly compensate these people for altruistic acts (making the acts more "rational") we'd probably get a ton more.