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Comment by Y_Y | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

That 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".

rsync was co-developed for his PhD dissertation - Google "rsync phd thesis" real quick to get an overview.

> 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.

Isn't a rational actor with emotions called an irrational actor? ;p

It'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.

Why did you define money as a goal?

That would fall under "perceived benefit" and thus not free, according to the parent's definition.

The 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:)

Theory is good when it makes specific predictions, that can be shown to be true or false, like theory of gravity.

If a rational actor might do anything for any reason, then it's of limited use. I think that by changing the utility function to include personal feelings, you are putting the cart before the horse.

The parent's definition basically defines "free" as something that doesn't exist. It's not very useful.

The vast majority of people I meet, including myself, are highly irrational. Ironically, that is not where my user name comes from ;-)

humans are not "rational actors"

Which explains a lot about how capitalism works out in the real world.

it's complicated. capitalism is just one tool of many and shouldn't be used for every single thing. it is great at some problems though

I think you overestimate the amount that some people think their decisions through.

It'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.

Gah! 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?

One 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.

Yes, 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.

I 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.

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