Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
On 07/15/2015 05:07 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: To tie this back to the original question, I was thinking of actual open source projects. It is common when a group of people form to build a software package that the concept for what the capability is, is reasonably clear to the founding members. Make a better FOO. Then, some other people come along and don't understand that mission or try to advocate a different mission, like another BAR mission. The relevance of their input can be higher if they are productive people, but often they are not, and they are just in the way and taking up space, participating in advocacy of dubious value, etc.It is different from a commercial enterprise in so far as make a better FOO is measured some way other than by ROI in money. Better can mean technical properties that the group understands and see worth pursuing for its own sake. Yes, but the same hypothesis applies: those with the most extreme opinions (about FOO or BAR) will have more extreme opinions about non-FOO or non-BAR, creating noise of dubious value. And that would allow the middlings to be both productive _and_ there primarily for the sake of being part of the community, with little skin in FOO or BAR. Unless what you're saying is that, in your experience, the hypothesis does not hold ... that, perhaps particularly where $$ isn't the measure, the extremists can have only extreme opinions about the 1 thing and that it's the cohesion of the extremists that predicts success? But if that's what you're saying, then it's _not_ an argument for why there are fewer user-facing open-source tools than back-end open-source tools. Since user-facing tools tend to be multi-aspect, if the hypothesis is false and someone holding extreme views about one aspect can have middling views about all the other aspects, then they can be just as productive re: the aspects on which they don't hold extreme views. Similarly, they can cooperate nicely with others who hold extreme views about other aspects. But if the hypothesis is right, then getting a FOO-extremist to work productively with a BAR-extremist will be difficult because they'll both be extremists in both aspects: hence user-facing tools will likely be built for money, not ideology. -- ⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella Then I'm afraid you'll have to cry FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
I suspect that aspirations are, like most ideological constructs, less causal than we think they are. Going back to what Marcus actually meant, it seems to me that (most) humans are so ultimately/fundamentally social, that all they _ever_ do is seek out community just for the comfort of being in the community ... that those of us who look for, or form, or switch amongst, communities in order to achieve various objectives are somehow psychopaths ... or narcissists, abusers or exploiters. In that same vein, these articles caught my eye: http://www.girlfriendcircles.com/blog/index.php/2013/08/not-a-joiner-club-class-meet-people-make-friends/ http://www.salon.com/2015/07/11/addiction_is_not_a_disease_how_aa_and_12_step_programs_erect_barriers_while_attempting_to_relieve_suffering/ http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/10/joiners-v-middlers.html The last one, in particular, seems to imply that those who are most likely to think a community really has a mission (as opposed to the illusion of a mission) are the most extreme of the bunch, the hard-liners, the obnoxious ones. Everyone else just kinda buys into it (or the illusion of it) and goes about socializing. With AA, perhaps what happens is that most people just join the community to burn time and socialize _until_ they spontaneously mature out of their habit (the extremes become evangelicals or have lots of lapses). As such, perhaps rather than people voting according to their aspirations, they just vote according to whatever forcing structures their embedding social system tells them to vote for. I hope I'm wrong and you're right, because this would make me a psychopath, narcissist, abuser, exploiter, et al, concept with which I don't really want to identify. 8^) On 07/15/2015 02:34 PM, Vladimyr Burachynsky wrote: Sometimes I wonder if our society may in fact be a collaboration of the criminal minded. The fact that it appears to promote civilization seems a convenient Cover-Up story. If money is the only incentive how can we distinguish corporation execs from drug lords or war lords. Even the courts seem to be nothing more than an appendage of the system that defines itself as much as politicians define their labours as Hard work, deserving of ample rewards. Well I am somewhat cheered that a machine is delivering pictures from Pluto. Civilization thrives beyond the planet but apparently not in our neighborhoods. Let 's assume civilization and society have less in common than a Hot dog vendor and a bank robber. Given a choice the people would always vote for the one that appears to represent what common people aspire to be... Glamourous Rascals. -- ⇔ glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
The last one, in particular, seems to imply that those who are most likely to think a community really has a mission (as opposed to the illusion of a mission) are the most extreme of the bunch, the hard-liners, the obnoxious ones. To tie this back to the original question, I was thinking of actual open source projects. It is common when a group of people form to build a software package that the concept for what the capability is, is reasonably clear to the founding members. Make a better FOO. Then, some other people come along and don't understand that mission or try to advocate a different mission, like another BAR mission. The relevance of their input can be higher if they are productive people, but often they are not, and they are just in the way and taking up space, participating in advocacy of dubious value, etc.It is different from a commercial enterprise in so far as make a better FOO is measured some way other than by ROI in money. Better can mean technical properties that the group understands and see worth pursuing for its own sake. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
Sometimes I wonder if our society may in fact be a collaboration of the criminal minded. The fact that it appears to promote civilization seems a convenient Cover-Up story. If money is the only incentive how can we distinguish corporation execs from drug lords or war lords. Even the courts seem to be nothing more than an appendage of the system that defines itself as much as politicians define their labours as Hard work, deserving of ample rewards. Well I am somewhat cheered that a machine is delivering pictures from Pluto. Civilization thrives beyond the planet but apparently not in our neighborhoods. Let 's assume civilization and society have less in common than a Hot dog vendor and a bank robber. Given a choice the people would always vote for the one that appears to represent what common people aspire to be... Glamourous Rascals. vib -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: July-14-15 7:06 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q I'd (probably wrongly) interpreted Marcus' comment to mean something about keeping the corporate drones (who can't imagine doing work for anything other than incentive) away from people who have the knowledge to create weapons of mass destruction, particularly biological weapons ... hence, the article about DIYBio myths. It was a little bit of agreement with a little bit of disagreement combined. BTW-FWIW, since we're talking about motivation vs. incentive, I just saw this in my inbox: The Ethics of Whistleblowing with Edward Snowden http://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/ethics-whistleblowing-edward-snowden John: A lot of people see you as a hero. But others, intelligent ones too, have called you a narcissistic traitor ... How do you see yourself at this point? Snowden: I don't think about myself. I don't think about how I'm going to be perceived, because it's not about me. It's about us. This is the type of thing that makes me think Snowden is, at least, disingenuous, if not worse. He's clearly not afflicted with any of the major psych disorders that prevent him from reflective thought. Hence, he _does_ think about himself and how he'll be perceived. If he'd just answer the damned question honestly ... like Hell yeah, I think about myself and how I'm perceived! I think about how my fellow US citizens view me. I think about how/whether they want to know the information I leaked, whether a jury of my peers would convict me if presented with the evidence ... Etc. If he'd answer that way, I might start to trust him. Instead he answers with this pseudo-altrustic nonsense, public-relations/politician-speak. Ugh. On 07/14/2015 04:43 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote: So, I'm not getting the relevance of the DIYBio movement to Marcus' comment. Are you suggesting that it is an example of community for community's sake? On Jul 14, 2015, at 4:15 PM, glen wrote: On 07/14/2015 02:58 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Sometimes I think circles such as yours and the people Glen is talking about just must be kept apart from one another, if they don’t avoid each other naturally.That’s about as close I get to advocating community for community’s sake. http://phys.org/news/2013-11-first-ever-survey-do-it-yourself-biology -myths.html -- ⇔ glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
