ihoby wog

reply to ZDnet post “Using selfishness to put crowds to work for you”

Self interest is only one of many factors one must factor in attaining a goal with other people – a detail which must be balanced along with everything else.

Seeking to promote selfishness as the prime mover is an inherently flawed tactic. Using the stock market as an example – hello Enron anyone? Even with all the criminal prosecutions every year from constant policing of Wall Street, there are still countless acts of swindling and corruption that plague this market and as far as choice of investment goes – we’ve all now seen where the self-interested masses have placed the most “value”: the hollow future payments of predatory loans, price-fixed commodities (diamonds, oil, etc), war profiteering, and book-cooking corporate monopolies. The market turns out to be unfairly anti-competition, completely corrupted, and driving the world economy off a cliff. Great.. good job, capitalism. Unregulated self interest at work.

But back to coding..

The main reason why documentation doesn’t happen is because of a combination of culture clash and isolation.

The personalities of people that like to code are not the same as people who like to document. People who like to document don’t gravitate toward code people, the code itself, or seek to understand code. People who like code gravitate toward function, and any documentation that appears to serve no immediate function is dismissed as superfluous. There are of course, rare individuals that span both sides of the fence.. but they’re not the norm.

Many coders are also traditionally solitary or a small isolated group. Isolation not only discourages empathy but it acts to remove it from a person’s reality – therefor making it an irrelevant factor.

So the proposed suggestion of encouraging the clash and isolation will just lead to further instances of esoterica being driven into the outer reaches of specialization – doomed eventually to be lost in obscurity. No matter how good the code is, if its pushed out of reach for future understanding then it will be forgotten – only to be needlessly re-invented later on.

A better path is to recognize the many factors of human nature and personality culture to build and maintain inclusive community. I say inclusive because community with a purpose must have enough diversity for empathy to stay relevant between all personality types, making a complete project a common goal. That way, self interest, group interest, project interest, and outsider interest are all taken into account and real factors for every member of the project. A balance of self-to-other.

So with an intelligent mix of coding types, documenting types, and the various other types of personalities being intentionally “included” in a project community, there is translation between the specialties and basic knowledge spreads. Personal culture lives inside of project culture.

Altruism is not just sacrifice for strangers, it’s sharing your own interest with the interest of others. It’s tapping into the (usually present) innate human capacity to relate to other people and realize/simulate how you would feel as them.. knowing the joy and pain of others as you do your own.

And besides that, altruism isn’t even necessary for many forms of people doing things for others.. many people either by ideology or by circumstance are just compelled to assist others because it is entertaining to do so. Maybe it’s a talent, a hobby, a way to socialize, a means to another end.. a thousand reasons could be in the mix.

“Hey, you want a beer, too?” – Altruism at work.

(comment on ZDnet about security admin pet peeves)

Of course people don’t like security, it tends to be obtrusive, unfriendly, difficult, oppressive, and demanding practices that are very un-human. It also is something that can often be bypassed with varying ease by anyone determined to do so.

For any kind of security to gain real traction, it has to be tailored to people and become extensions to individuals as much as possible. Remove the oppression. Imagine for instance, being able to remotely “feel” if your house is being intruded.. see and hear who they are, and if you want them out, being able to do so as easily as moving your own body. Your house would know you, it becomes part of you. Regulations should keep it non-violent but no agency would dictate your interactions with your house.

That’s the kind of sci-fi that should be the goal with security for a variety of functional and ethical reasons.