Hi Ben and others, After some more thinking, I decide to try the virtual credit approach afterall.
Last time Ben's argument was that the virtual credit method confuses for-profit and charity emotions in people. At that time it sounded convincing, but after some thinking I realized that it is actually completely untrue. My approach is actually more unequivocally for-profit, and Ben's accusation actually applies to OpenCog's stance more aptly. I'm afraid OpenCog has some ethical problems by straddling between for-profit and charity. For example: why do you need funding to do charity? If you want to do charity why not do it out of your own pockets? Why use a dual license if the final product is supposed to be free for all? etc. It is good for a company to be charitable, but you're forcing me to do charity when I am having financial problems myself. Your charity victimizes me and other people trying to make money in the AGI business. I can understand why you dislike my approach: you have contributed to AGI in many intangible ways, such as organizing conferences, increasing public awareness of AGI, etc. I respect you for these efforts. Under the virtual credit system it would be very difficult to assign credits to you -- not impossible -- but then if you try to claim too many credits you'd start to look like a Shylock, and that may be very embarassing. Secondly, there may be other people in the OpenCog devel team who dislike virtual credits for their own reasons, and you may want to placate them. So, either we confront the embarassing problem and try to assign ex post facto credits, or, another alternative is to keep our projects separate. The world may be able to accomodate two or more AGIs (it may actually be a healthy thing, from a complex-systems perspective). I don't suppose my virtual credit approach can universally satisfy all AGI developers. But neither can your approach (under which I cannot get any gaurantee of financial rewards). I'm open to other suggestions, but if there're aren't any, I'd proceed with virtual credit. I guess some people will like it, and some will hate it. This is just natural. At least I'm honest about my motives. PS. The argument that "AGI should be free because it is such an important technology" can equally apply to other many technologies such as medicine and (later) life extension or uploading. It can even apply to things like food, housing, citizenship, computer hardware, etc. In the end I think we need to admit that the "good way" lies somewhere between charity and for-profit. And my project aims to be charitable in its own way too. The only difference between my way and OpenCog is that I want to make the accounting of contributions transparent, and to reward contributors financially, while being charitable in some other ways, that depend on how much profits we'll make. (Making the software opensource is already very charitable and we may not be able to make that much money at all). YKY ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
