Re: Oversimplifications in HtN -- Philosophy and biology

[Richard Stallman]

    > You seem to be arguing that we should try to understand certain
    > actions of hackers without using the rest of what we understand about
    > people generally

    Hardly.  My understanding draws widely on neoclassical economics, legal
    history, anthropology, sociology, primate ethology, and game theory.

I am sure it does, but in this discussion you said that predicting the
hacking behavior of hackers is the only thing we should consider when
we try to understand hacking and hackers.  You said this to justify
your claims about hacker's motivations.  You even went so far as to
say that Ian's statements of his own motivations count for nothing.

I am not sure whether such a limited theory would accurately predict
most of the hacking behavior of hackers.  It might fit most hackers;
it could conspicuously fail to fit the GNU Project and the development
of a complete free operating system.  But checking that carefully is
more than I have time for.

But I know from other aspects of life that people have a variety of
feelings and motivations, and I know this applies to hackers as well
as other people.  So I am not interested in a theory based on denial
of this, even if it does "predict [certain aspects of] the behavior of
hackers" well enough.