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> the goal of our human pursuit is to advance our technologies and systems to the point we can all live carefree lives where the focus of our pursuits is self d

> the goal of our human pursuit is to advance our technologies and systems to the point we can all live carefree lives where the focus of our pursuits is self defined. Agreed! > the future should not be about preserving some peoples rights to limit our collective advancements over their personal wants. Systems that don't allow people to extract value from the hard work they put into collective advancement do not seem to lead to collective advancement over time and at scale. Incentives matter. No one's going to spend all day making candy and put it in the "free candy" bowl when that one asshole kid down the street just takes all of the candy out of the bowl every single day. At small scales (i.e. relatively few participants with a relatively high number of interactions between them) then informal systems of reciprocity and reputation are sufficient to disincentivize bad actors. At large scales where many interactions are one-off or anonymous, you need other incentives for good-faith participation. There's a reason you don't need a bouncer when you have a few friends over for drinks, but you do if you open a bar.

naillo 3y ago
> Systems that don't allow people to extract value from the hard work they put into collective advancement [...] one's going to spend all day making candy and put it in the "free candy" bowl On the other hand this is what researchers do all day every day. PhDs and professors work for the common good and get barely any pay in return. Maybe the future model in art and music is more like the academic researcher.
- pschuegr 3y ago
  "Maybe the future model in business and sales is more like the academic researcher" funny how nobody ever suggests that.
  - zztop44 3y ago
    To the contrary, the future of the academic researcher is business and sales.
- cpill 3y ago
  yeah, but they also get to work on what they love as opposed to what ever the corporate interest currently is. it's rare you get paid will for doing what you love i.e. music, teaching, designing hand bags etc
  - karencarits 3y ago
    Well, researchers usually have to get their own grants and must thus work on whatever various funding sources deem worthy. Further, academic positions typically have duties that researchers may not like - administration, reporting, teaching, etc
- chefandy 3y ago
  No it's not-- researchers generally get paychecks. Even if they're small, they can pay for their housing and buy their kid food. Artists don't see a single red cent from their work being sucked up into some AI content blender. Their work is being taken and used-- often in service of others making a profit-- and they receive nothing. Not even credit. Edit: Well, they don't receive nothing-- they get a bunch of people telling them they're selfish jerks for wanting to support themselves with their work.
  - cwkoss 3y ago
    The majority artists never receive a single red cent from the humans who consume their work. This is how it has always been, and fundamental to the economics of art. Things people are willing to do regardless of financial compensation rarely pay well.
    - chefandy 3y ago
      Putting commercial artists, aspiring fine artists, and hobby artists in the same bin doesn't make sense. There are a ton of career commercial artists that make money solely off of their work. If you think there are more aspiring career fine artists that don't end up making it than career commercial artists, you're wrong. They're not even in the same business.
      - cwkoss 3y ago
        Did you notice how you called all of them artists?
        chefandy 3y ago
        You're not serious, right? How about sandwich artists? Custodial artists? Con artists? Are Social engineers, microsoft certified systems engineers, cisco certified security engineers, mechanical engineers, technical support engineers, train engineers, and agricultural engineers all functionally and economically equivalent? Are professional cooks and home cooks economically equivalent because they're both cooks?
- munificent 3y ago
  PhDs and professors are paid a living wage (though less so over time as federal funding for higher institutions has dwindled). Academia is a carefully constructed system whose incentive structure is based on highly visible explicitly measured citations and reputation. People aren't generally just trying to maximize wealth. They're trying to maximize their sense of personal value, which tends to be a combination of wealth, autonomy, and social prestige. Academics (and some creative fields) tend to be biased towards those who prioritize prestige over wealth.
oceanplexian 3y ago
> No one's going to spend all day making candy and put it in the "free candy" bowl when that one asshole kid down the street just takes all of the candy out of the bowl every single day. Software is an infinite candy bowl. Taking candy out of the bowl does not take any candy from the person who made it. Imagine if this was the physical world, and you had a machine that could end world hunger. You could copy food like you could copy and paste information on a computer. Imagine someone who would keep that machine to themself, out of a sense of entitlement to make a few bucks. Any person with any sense of morality can see the obvious problem with that.
- wpietri 3y ago
  > Software is an infinite candy bowl. More in theory than in practice. Ask any open-source maintainer how much running a popular project is unlike putting out an infinite candy bowl and then going on with your life.
- munificent 3y ago
  > Software is an infinite candy bowl. Taking candy out of the bowl does not take any candy from the person who made it. Software is not a finite candy bowl. It is also not an infinite candy bowl. It's not like physical goods at all, not even like physical goods that can be magically cloned. It's just different, entirely. The incentive and value structures around data creation and use just can't be directly mapped to physical goods. You have to look at them as they actually are and understand them directly, not by way of analogies. Why do people make software and give it out for free? Is it purely from the joy of creation? Sure, that's part of it. The desire to make the world better? Probably some of that too. Are those forces enough to explain all open source contribution? Definitely not. Here's one quick way to tell: Ask how many open source maintainers would be happy if someone else were to clone their open source project, rename it, claim that they had invented it, and have that clone completely overshadow and eradicate their original creation? If the goal was purely altruistic, the original creator wouldn't mind. More candy in the infinite candy bowl, right? But, in practice, many open source maintainers strongly oppose that. There is a strong culture of attribution in open source, largely because there is a compensation scheme built into creating free software: prestige. One of the main incentives that encourages maintainers to slave away day after day is the social cachet of being known as the cool person who made this popular thing. > Imagine if this was the physical world, and you had a machine that could end world hunger. You could copy food like you could copy and paste information on a computer. Analogies are generally bad tools for real understanding, but let's go with this. Let's say this machine took fifty years of someone's life to invent, toiling away in obscurity. Basically, an entire working career spent only on this invention with nothing else to show for their adult life. If, at the end, no one would ever know it was you who invented it, how many people would be willing to sequester themselves in that dark laboratory and make that sacrifice?
cwkoss 3y ago
The idea of intellectual property being property that someone owns is a purely social construct though. Candy can be consumed to depletion. Art gets richer the more it is consumed. A much better analogy would be having a sculpture in your front yard. The idea that a kid would be an asshole for appreciating the sculpture too much is obviously laughable. People choose decorate their yards for the status having an attractive yard brings, without the expectation of profit from it.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >The idea of intellectual property being property that someone owns is a purely social construct though So is the idea of real property being something that someone owns.

naillo 3y ago

> Systems that don't allow people to extract value from the hard work they put into collective advancement [...] one's going to spend all day making candy and put it in the "free candy" bowl On the other hand this is what researchers do all day every day. PhDs and professors work for the common good and get barely any pay in return. Maybe the future model in art and music is more like the academic researcher.

pschuegr 3y ago
"Maybe the future model in business and sales is more like the academic researcher" funny how nobody ever suggests that.
- zztop44 3y ago
  To the contrary, the future of the academic researcher is business and sales.
cpill 3y ago
yeah, but they also get to work on what they love as opposed to what ever the corporate interest currently is. it's rare you get paid will for doing what you love i.e. music, teaching, designing hand bags etc
- karencarits 3y ago
  Well, researchers usually have to get their own grants and must thus work on whatever various funding sources deem worthy. Further, academic positions typically have duties that researchers may not like - administration, reporting, teaching, etc
chefandy 3y ago
No it's not-- researchers generally get paychecks. Even if they're small, they can pay for their housing and buy their kid food. Artists don't see a single red cent from their work being sucked up into some AI content blender. Their work is being taken and used-- often in service of others making a profit-- and they receive nothing. Not even credit. Edit: Well, they don't receive nothing-- they get a bunch of people telling them they're selfish jerks for wanting to support themselves with their work.
- cwkoss 3y ago
  The majority artists never receive a single red cent from the humans who consume their work. This is how it has always been, and fundamental to the economics of art. Things people are willing to do regardless of financial compensation rarely pay well.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    Putting commercial artists, aspiring fine artists, and hobby artists in the same bin doesn't make sense. There are a ton of career commercial artists that make money solely off of their work. If you think there are more aspiring career fine artists that don't end up making it than career commercial artists, you're wrong. They're not even in the same business.
    - cwkoss 3y ago
      Did you notice how you called all of them artists?
      - chefandy 3y ago
        You're not serious, right? How about sandwich artists? Custodial artists? Con artists? Are Social engineers, microsoft certified systems engineers, cisco certified security engineers, mechanical engineers, technical support engineers, train engineers, and agricultural engineers all functionally and economically equivalent? Are professional cooks and home cooks economically equivalent because they're both cooks?
munificent 3y ago
PhDs and professors are paid a living wage (though less so over time as federal funding for higher institutions has dwindled). Academia is a carefully constructed system whose incentive structure is based on highly visible explicitly measured citations and reputation. People aren't generally just trying to maximize wealth. They're trying to maximize their sense of personal value, which tends to be a combination of wealth, autonomy, and social prestige. Academics (and some creative fields) tend to be biased towards those who prioritize prestige over wealth.

oceanplexian 3y ago

> No one's going to spend all day making candy and put it in the "free candy" bowl when that one asshole kid down the street just takes all of the candy out of the bowl every single day. Software is an infinite candy bowl. Taking candy out of the bowl does not take any candy from the person who made it. Imagine if this was the physical world, and you had a machine that could end world hunger. You could copy food like you could copy and paste information on a computer. Imagine someone who would keep that machine to themself, out of a sense of entitlement to make a few bucks. Any person with any sense of morality can see the obvious problem with that.

wpietri 3y ago
> Software is an infinite candy bowl. More in theory than in practice. Ask any open-source maintainer how much running a popular project is unlike putting out an infinite candy bowl and then going on with your life.
munificent 3y ago
> Software is an infinite candy bowl. Taking candy out of the bowl does not take any candy from the person who made it. Software is not a finite candy bowl. It is also not an infinite candy bowl. It's not like physical goods at all, not even like physical goods that can be magically cloned. It's just different, entirely. The incentive and value structures around data creation and use just can't be directly mapped to physical goods. You have to look at them as they actually are and understand them directly, not by way of analogies. Why do people make software and give it out for free? Is it purely from the joy of creation? Sure, that's part of it. The desire to make the world better? Probably some of that too. Are those forces enough to explain all open source contribution? Definitely not. Here's one quick way to tell: Ask how many open source maintainers would be happy if someone else were to clone their open source project, rename it, claim that they had invented it, and have that clone completely overshadow and eradicate their original creation? If the goal was purely altruistic, the original creator wouldn't mind. More candy in the infinite candy bowl, right? But, in practice, many open source maintainers strongly oppose that. There is a strong culture of attribution in open source, largely because there is a compensation scheme built into creating free software: prestige. One of the main incentives that encourages maintainers to slave away day after day is the social cachet of being known as the cool person who made this popular thing. > Imagine if this was the physical world, and you had a machine that could end world hunger. You could copy food like you could copy and paste information on a computer. Analogies are generally bad tools for real understanding, but let's go with this. Let's say this machine took fifty years of someone's life to invent, toiling away in obscurity. Basically, an entire working career spent only on this invention with nothing else to show for their adult life. If, at the end, no one would ever know it was you who invented it, how many people would be willing to sequester themselves in that dark laboratory and make that sacrifice?

cwkoss 3y ago

The idea of intellectual property being property that someone owns is a purely social construct though. Candy can be consumed to depletion. Art gets richer the more it is consumed. A much better analogy would be having a sculpture in your front yard. The idea that a kid would be an asshole for appreciating the sculpture too much is obviously laughable. People choose decorate their yards for the status having an attractive yard brings, without the expectation of profit from it.

thfuran 3y ago
>The idea of intellectual property being property that someone owns is a purely social construct though So is the idea of real property being something that someone owns.