scrape_r_rational/data/cache/3b6tkz.md

[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

Post:

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this probably isn't the place for those.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

Comments:

• u/DreadChill:

  So r/rational, how do you feel about piracy? Piracy in general and piracy of books in particular.
  
  I ask because, I'll be honest here, I've pirated almost every book I've read. But I do this because of a lack of a decent library in my city and because I simply cannot afford the 4 or 5 books I read every month, some of which I don't even end up finishing.
  
  But when I think about it from the perspective of the author, I would hate a pirate, especially one who pirates books that are just 2 or 3$ in e-book form.
  

  • u/DataPacRat:

    Via https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tim_O%27Reilly : 
    
    > For a typical author, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy.
    

    • u/None:

      The typical author can jolly well offer their own works for free, then. 
      
      The argument that "no, really, me robbing you actually helps you" has always pissed me off. Even if it was true, which is rather questionable, to say the least, it still obviously not okay with regard to anything actually respected as property. You wouldn't be okay with someone breaking into your house to rearrange your furniture, even if the room did look better afterward.
      

      • u/DataPacRat:

        There are certain differences between physical property and potentially copyrightable works, which lead to there being reasons for the two things being treated differently - the first is rivalrous and the second non-rivalrous (eg, two people can use the same informational good at the same time), plus the first is excludable and the second is non-excludable (eg, it's possible to keep someone else from using your physical property). ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Terminology.2C_and_types_of_goods is probably as good a starting point as any to get into the theory.) Copyrights and patents are ways to try to legislatively turn non-excludable information into excludable information; DRM is a technologial attempt to turn non-rivalrous information into rivalrous information. There are all sorts of complications and nuances, but based on my previous experience, attempting to discuss the topic is as much SPIDERS as politics is, so I'll pause here to try to gauge your reaction, if any, to the basic framework described.
        

        • u/None:

          > the first is rivalrous and the second non-rivalrous (eg, two people can use the same informational good at the same time), plus the first is excludable and the second is non-excludable (eg, it's possible to keep someone else from using your physical property).
          
          True, but the biiiiig complication is that they only become nonrivalrous *after* the creator made the initial investment of labor in making a work good enough that someone else wants to steal it.
          

        • u/None:

          I studied this stuff, I know the argument for producing zero marginal cost goods at zero price and why it's dumb as shit (no price means no signal of value to the market). It's an argument for making information not exist because you think you already have it ("Hey, I know *I* want to pirate this."). Non-excludable just means that it's hard to protect your property, which, duh, no one would pirate if it was moral but difficult. But they definitely would pirate if it was immoral but easy. 
          
          Anyway, what I said in my comment was simply that if an author wants the benefits of more attention at the expense of not making any money, then that's a choice they can make. But it's really shitty to disregard the choice the author did make, on the assurance that, no, really, you should've chosen differently. If you're going to disregard people's choices because you think they're wrong, you might as well just admit you don't respect their property (try telling someone that you sold their car and bought them a new one because they bought the wrong one). Maybe you think the property shouldn't be property, and maybe you're definitely wrong about that, but it's *aggravating* to be told that you're being disrespected for your own good.
          

          • u/DataPacRat:

            > the benefits of more attention at the expense of not making any money
            
            Then I suppose the people who give away their content and still make money from it don't exist, such as Penny arcade and so many other webcomics; Cory Doctorow who makes all his novels available for free download yet still sells lots of physical copies; and so on and so forth?
            
            (As an aside, I'm currently downloading the latest episode of 'Star Trek Continues', have recently time-shifted an episode of My Little Pony as I was busy when it was broadcast, and format-shifted a book I own into ebook format as my ebook reader is smaller and more convenient than a hardcover printed edition, and have recently updated my 'watches' on Kickstarter and Patreon for certain content-producers I follow. Then maybe I'll engage in some [political speech](http://yro.slashdot.org/story/04/08/11/0221253/using-copyright-to-suppress-political-speech), refresh my memory on [optimal copyright lengths](http://rufuspollock.org/papers/optimal_copyright.pdf), and go over some [quotes](http://www.datapacrat.com/sketches/quotes.html) I've excerpted from published works to see if I can think of some new ones to add.)
            
            > There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
            

            • u/None:

              They exist, it's just their own choice. I wouldn't hack their websites to put everything behind a paywall and tell them that the additional money is worth the cost of obscurity.
              
              Particular copyright laws might be dumb, I don't care about that.
              

  • u/alexanderwales:

    I'm of two minds on the issue.
    
    The Copyright Clause from the Constitution:
    
    > To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
    
    That's a pretty damned good reason to provide people with copyright, irrespective of any moral claim to the property. If authors don't have a way to get paid, they're not going to create as much. If I could write full time, I would do that, but because I have to hold down a job to pay the mortgage, my writing is limited. If *as a society* we pay authors for their works, then we're going to end up with more (and better) works, *especially* because editing is the more important part of writing, and editing is the kind of tedious drudge work that most people will only do with monetary incentive.
    
    So in that sense, piracy is a tragedy of the commons issue. You are taking those books for free, in a way that's rational self-interest. You will never be punished for it. But if *everyone* did that, we wouldn't have as much (or as good) of fiction. And there are some social reasons not to, like the author not liking it; generally, I think if you like a work, you should probably respect the author's wishes. Some authors care about piracy, some are just happy to have people reading and only publish because of the ancillary benefits (like professional editing and marketing departments).
    
    So at the same time, I think that putting information out there and expecting people not to pirate it is ... well, not *stupid*, but you have to expect people to act in their own rational self-interest, especially in those cases where there's no chance that they'll get caught and no difference to them. There are a few ways to react to this; the Hollywood response has mostly been an aggressive one (DRM, litigation), while there are certain sections of geek/tech world where they've tried to embrace it. There's also a middle road where you accept that piracy is going to happen and just don't do that much about it, because there's not much that you *can* do (which isn't to say that simply giving things away or as pay-what-you-want is necessarily correct).
    
    For me personally, exposure is far more important than money, and not just because I think exposure is the path to money.
    

    • u/FeepingCreature:

      Yeah but the counterpoint is copyright can be _judged_ by the Copyright Clause, since it sets goals for copyright to achieve, and we can ask "does copyright achieve these goals?"
      
      For instance, I don't see how providing income to the heirs of an author "promotes the Progress of Science and useful Arts". I also don't see how shutting down remixes or fan works achieves this goal. Also, more controversially, I don't see how it promotes anything to punish people if they dare to consume more than the comparatively small volume of content they could actually afford to consume on minimum income.
      
      Copyright seems more aimed at promoting income streams for middlemen.
      
      ^^^Vote ^^^Pirates!
      
      Personally, I'm currently in favor of something like a nationwide personal copyright exemption flatrate, where you pay a fixed amount per month (maybe related to income level, distributed according to opt-in statistics about consumption, possibly in cooperation with sites like goodreads or last.fm that already track what you read or listen to) and in exchange get immunity to claims of non-commercial copyright violation for certain classes of media, ie. books, songs, movies etc. Though that's more of a hotfix; long-term I think projects like Creative Commons and Patreon can pave the way to cutting out the publishing industry entirely, which will let us scale back copyright terms with less pushback.
      

      • u/alexanderwales:

        Well, copyright itself is kind of crap. I can agree with that. Especially when it's copyright in its current incarnation that lasts for*ever*. Authors being paid for their work, so that they can create more and better work, is not crap (at least, I hope we can agree on that).
        
        There are all sorts of ways that authors can potentially be paid, especially in the modern day:
        
        * Work on commission. Kickstarter does this.
        * Patronage. Patreon does this.
        * Donations. Fairly easy to set up with PayPal, Google Payments, etc.
        * Merchandise. Physical stuff that you can't really pirate, like physical books, t-shirts, posters, etc. Set up with Breadpig or something similar.
        
        There's a significant question about whether these methods are sustainable or attainable for the average author looking to make some money. And when we're talking about piracy, that's not really the question that we're asking. What we're asking is this:
        
        > If an author tells you to pay for something he's created, do you have the moral right to copy it from him without paying?
        
        I don't think you do. I think you *can*, and any author would be foolish to pretend there's a damned thing he can do about it, but I don't think that it's particularly moral. (That doesn't always stop me, but just because piracy is convenient and free doesn't mean that I'm going to claim that it's *right*.)
        

        • u/FeepingCreature:

          I edited my comment, btw!
          
          Okay, first of all, the way you phrased it is weird.
          
          What you mean is
          
          > If an author tells you that you're not allowed to consume something he's created without paying them, do you have the moral right to consume it anyway?
          
          You're not copying _from the author_, you're copying from other people, and that is actually important.
          
          The problem is that the question has tendrils. To enforce copyright properly, you can't just reduce it to not letting you take something that the author has. You also have to stop people from giving the content to others, viewing it at others' houses; ultimately, you could go so far as to allow authors to define whether their content can be stored in libraries! The problem is that you're trying to stretch the concept of physical scarcity to cover content that is endlessly reproducible; "Intellectual Property" is bullshit, it's all of it a question of _licensing_. And licensing requires the ability to put content out there while "fine-tuning" what happens to it; it's fundamentally a non-local process, and I think it's not obvious how far the moral right of the author should stretch there; considering how much of culture is a process of digestion and remixing and reproduction, should authors have the right to control how their content interacts with this process, even when it on net reduces the amount of culture created? Should Rowling have the right to forbid HPMOR? Certainly there are vast swathes of [cultural works](http://www.tlmc.eu/) which would simply not exist if the [original creator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Shanghai_Alice)/s had decided to enforce their copyright to the full extent of the law. And in a pure utilitarian calculus, there's a point where the moral weight of the collected consumers simply outstrips the moral rights of the author, where the joy a song can bring to the world _outweighs_ the moral authority of the Author, who perhaps wants to limit its spread to authentic vinyl records.
          
          So the moral side is complicated.
          
          That's why I usually prefer to stick with the empirical side, where copyright is simply an incredibly poor way to fulfill its objective of promoting Science and the useful Arts.
          

          • u/alexanderwales:

            I'm not trying to stretch the concept of physical scarcity *at all*. I'm not even really talking about copyright in the sense of the legal concept as it exists now.
            
            What I mean is, if I e-mail you a new novelette I've written called "The Case of the Sleeping Beauties", and I ask you not to share it with anyone, do you think that you have a moral right to share it with other people?
            
            This question has nothing to do with the legal aspects (though you would not have a legal right) or the social aspects (obviously I would be pretty pissed at you) or the physical capability (obviously there's nothing physically stopping you from copying the story to pastebin and posting it to reddit).
            
            I think we agree that the author has *some* moral right, even if it's not absolute. In the case where the product is readily available at a reasonable price, I think that morality falls on the side of not pirating. I'm a strong believer in things like fair use and derivative works, but the general case of piracy is far less defensible.
            
            I mean, I put out content for free and tell people that I really appreciate it if they give me money for it. That's a reflection on the kind of world I want to live in, and the kind of relationship I want authors to have with readers *generally*. But I don't think that piracy, in the sense of "I want to not pay for this thing" is morally right, generally speaking.
            

            • u/FeepingCreature:

              No yeah, what I'm saying is the moral side of things is a continuum, and some of the outgrowths stretch too far. For instance, for your ostensibly simple example: should you be able to email me a novelette while declaring that I'm not permitted to look at the attachment unless I agree to not spread it? (Shrink-wrap licenses.) Should you be able to email me a novelette while declaring that I'm not allowed to talk about it? (Journalist previews, NDAs.) To talk about it, but only positively? (Games reporting.) Should I be allowed to copy it to my laptop? To my Kindle? Should you be allowed to tell me I can listen to the audiobook on iPhones but not Android phones? (DRM.) Should you be able to make a copy available for free, then later decide that people are no longer allowed to share it? (Several web serials.) Should you be able to prevent me from writing fanfic of it? From selling fanfic of it? From selling fan art of it? From copying snippets of it? From lending it to my friends, as long as I don't look at it while they have it? (Libraries.) From reselling it? (Second-hand market.) These are all questions of copyright; even if you only consider the moral side, these questions have no clear _moral_ answer.
              
              I agree that something like copyright is probably a good thing to have, but I don't think it's as simple as you paint it, and I do think piracy is on a continuum, it's not clearly demarcated from other things where you'd probably come down on the side of the consumers. And morally, there _is_ genuinely a situation where there might be millions of people who want to read a book but can't afford it, maybe because they're children or teens, maybe because they're on minimum wage or social benefits, and I do think it's plainly morally wrong to exclude the poor from cultural participation, and plainly idiotic to exclude the young. You're depicting it as a single transaction, and that makes it a "me vs. them" thing, but at those scales it's arguably a question of statistics.
              
              So I'm not sure on which side I come down, but I think a world where you can't do that, where you can't send somebody a book and then later sue them when they share it around, isn't automatically morally _worse_ than one with copyright.
              
              I'm not saying it's automatically better, but I am asserting there's complexity here that you're ignoring, even for plain piracy.
              

              • u/alexanderwales:

                > So I'm not sure on which side I come down, but I think a world where you can't do that, where you can't send somebody a book and then later sue them when they share it around, isn't automatically morally worse than one with copyright.
                
                > I'm not saying it's automatically better, but I am asserting there's complexity here that you're ignoring, even for plain piracy.
                
                There's a slight moral/legal distinction to be made here. I don't think it's moral for you to share my book when I asked you not to, but I'm not proposing that this is something that we need to (necessarily) legislate. I mean, I think adultery is immoral, but I don't think it should be illegal.
                
                You're right that for most of what you're talking about, I would come down on the side of the consumers. I just view most of that as being distinct from plain piracy of the "I don't want to pay" variety, which I believe makes up the vast share of piracy in the Western world. The tendrils are important, but they're tendrils; they're not the core of the question. Many people who want to defend piracy will first go to the tendrils and attack *those*, because it's easier to make an argument against them. And then the hacked up tendrils get used as camouflage against the real core question.
                
                > I do think it's plainly morally wrong to exclude the poor from cultural participation
                
                I think we likely disagree on this. There's an *enormous* amount of free culture out there. Not just all the stuff that's in the public domain, but all the stuff that's free on television, free on the radio, free from libraries, etc. Is it immoral for HBO to charge for episodes of Game of Thrones because people below a certain income can't afford the premium channel, the $15 a month or whatever for HBO Go, or the $3.49 per episode on iTunes? Is it my moral right to go download those episodes on Monday nights? (And just to be clear, I do pirate. I'm not taking a moral high ground here. It's free, convenient, and utterly without personal consequence, so while I try to pay for things and support the content creators I like, I don't try *that* hard. I'm just also making the claim that this "plain piracy" is moral.)
                

                • u/FeepingCreature:

                  > There's a slight moral/legal distinction to be made here. I don't think it's moral for you to share my book when I asked you not to, but I'm not proposing that this is something that we need to (necessarily) legislate. I mean, I think adultery is immoral, but I don't think it should be illegal.
                  
                  Huh. In that case, I think we are in agreement.
                  
                  > I just view most of that as being distinct from plain piracy of the "I don't want to pay" variety, which I believe makes up the vast share of piracy in the Western world.
                  
                  That doesn't seem to match up with the enormous success of Steam or iTunes though - the message there seems to be, "people will do whatever is most convenient". Torrents just happen to be extremely convenient, especially when you're competing against over-DRM'd content, like games that literally stop crashing once you crack them.
                  
                  > free on television
                  
                  And of course, most American television series and movies are really difficult to get in a timely fashion, in good quality, in a format that runs under Linux. ([edit] Overseas to boot.) I can only speak for myself here, but torrents are available a few hours after broadcast, in HD, and work with mplayer. :shrug: What can I say, if there was an option to literally give the studio a reasonable amount of money in exchange for immunity from copyright claims, I'd probably do it. If there was a flatrate, I'd definitely get it. Unfortunately there isn't? Not sure what else I can say here - they are literally not offering me what I want: pay-as-you-go DRM-free HD downloads. I'm sure I'm not the only one either. And the premise "pay money to get less value than free alternatives" does not a compelling offer make. The studios, in their desire to control distribution, are only hurting themselves.
                  
                  Are you ever gonna get rid of all piracy? No. On the other hand, [the people who pirate the most also tend to be the people who buy the most](https://torrentfreak.com/0-more-on-content-than-honest-consumers-130510/) (in one country, in one study...), which is certainly suggestive.
                  
                  I think if you make buying content easy and convenient, and offer genuine added value, as Steam does, then most people who can pay will pay. And those who can't pay, well, they can still torrent games; after all, it's no loss to anyone.
                  
                  I think the real question is: how much money is "available" on entertainment? How much would people increase their entertainment budgets if piracy was made impossible? And I suspect, though can't prove, that the answer to that is going to turn out to be: "not much".
                  

              • u/None:

                Pricing the culture I make doesn't exclude the poor from cultural participation. It excludes them from participating in *my* culture, which I created, and apparently I want to exclude them, or else I wouldn't be charging a price they can't afford.
                
                Charging people for food doesn't exclude the poor from eating. If people worry about it anyway and want to give the poor food stamps, then that would make a fine argument for book stamps. It wouldn't justify robbing grocery stores.
                

                • u/None:

                  > Charging people for food doesn't exclude the poor from eating.
                  
                  Yes it does.
                  

                • u/DataPacRat:

                  > Charging people for food doesn't exclude the poor from eating.
                  
                  ... What?
                  
                  No, seriously, what? Do I have to Google up a link to a reference on 'food riots', such as the impact unaffordable food had in sparking off the French Revolution? Or the old classical philosophical question, "Should a starving man steal a loaf of bread?"?
                  

                  • u/None:

                    And that's why starvation is positively associated with the spread of markets. And copyright-heavy countries like the US produce very little culture.
                    
                    When I choose to sell bread at a price, rather than to give it away, I'm not keeping the poor from eating. I'm keeping them from eating *my* bread, unless they pony up. It's my bread, dammit, and if I just ate it, or gave it to the ducks, no one would say I'm keeping the poor from eating. If you think I shouldn't be able to own bread, say that. It's a different argument.
                    

                • u/FeepingCreature:

                  It's not your culture.
                  
                  [edit]
                  
                  Oh, but what, you created it so it's yours? Fine. Make your own culture.
                  
                  But first, give back your language, your childhood memories, every book you ever read and every movie you ever watched.
                  
                  What, you say, you can't do that because ideas don't work that way?
                  
                  Gee. Almost like culture can't be meaningfully compared to property.
                  
                  [edit] Do I think you should not able to profit from your intellectual labor? Hell no. But this smug "I made it, so it's mine" attitude denies the massive base of shared cultural knowledge that almost any intellectual work builds upon. Nobody writes in a vacuum.
                  

                  • u/None:

                    I didn't pay for my food as a kid either, so I guess I'll never open a restaurant.
                    

        • u/None:

          What's crap about copyright, exactly? Why can't I sell you the right to read my work, but not the right to reproduce it? A landlord can sell you the right to live in a room, but not to paint the walls green.
          

          • u/alexanderwales:

            Things wrong with copyright:
            
            It lasts too long. Modern copyright began with the Statute of Anne in 1710 (humorously enough, this was during the Golden Age of Piracy). Copyright lasted for fourteen years. Later, you were able to extend it for another fourteen years, so twenty-eight years total. The 20th century is basically a history of people extending copyright until it's infinite. Copyright *isn't actually infinite*, it's something like the life of the author plus seventy years, but there's going to be another extension once Mickey Mouse threatens to fall out of copyright, which is what's been happening for quite some time now.
            
            It's also transferable. If I write something like *Shadows of the Limelight*, I hold the copyright. But I can also transfer that copyright to someone else, like my wife in the event of my death. Or an evil corporation. *Shadows* doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things; other works matter considerably more. The "Happy Birthday" song is copyrighted, and this is detrimental to our culture. Mildred and Patty Hill are long-dead, and the copyright is owned by Warner Music. Far more worryingly, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech is copyrighted. It's one of the most famous speeches in American history, and the people who own that copyright (who are not actually MLK Jr.) have been using it to gouge people who want to, you know, teach or learn about civil rights. Some authors are jackasses who would do these things anyway, but to a large extent copyright is used by corporations to shut down well-meaning and culturally beneficial uses by people who had no part in the actual creation.
            
            Copyright applies to derivative works. Warner Brothers has every right to shut down *Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality*. It wouldn't be worth the time and PR costs to do it, but they could force hpmor.com to shut down, pull the work from ff.net, and aggressively attack all the mirrors. They're not going to do this, because it would be expensive to them, *but copyright means that they could*. (There are fair use exemptions and "transformative works", but there's still a large chilling effect.)
            
            ... you know, I was typing this up just from reading the above comment, but then I noticed there was already a conversation going on, and you already know all this stuff. We're probably in agreement; particular copyright laws might be stupid, too expansive, etc., but the core idea is probably sound?
            

            • u/None:

              >We're probably in agreement; particular copyright laws might be stupid, too expansive, etc., but the core idea is probably sound?
              
              Probably.
              

  • u/None:

    I'm an avowed Free Culture believer.  Insofar as copyright helps to foster art and science, particularly art and science by people who earn a living wage making art and science, we should support copyright.  Insofar as copyright makes a few IP-hoarding companies very rich while turning authors and artists into an exploited working class, fuck it.
    
    But, insofar as we have copyright, it's worth respecting it by finding ways to buy directly from the authors, and it's also worth letting it end so that works can enter the public domain.
    

  • u/eaglejarl:

    Speaking as a professional author with actual real-life books out there on which I am making enough real-life money to buy a cup of coffee once a week or so:
    
    1. If you buy my book, that's great; you've helped me. 
    1. If you pirate my book and then leave a positive review on Reddit and tell other people that it's great so that some of them buy it...you have helped me a great deal more. 
    1. If you pirate my book and walk away without even mentioning it to anyone, you are a terrible person who should be thwapped with a flounder and sent to bed with no supper. 
    
    Note that if you read the book and don't like it, I don't expect you to say positive things; just don't pirate it and then say negative things. 
    
    Other authors don't feel this way; try to respect their wishes. Don't pirate Harlan Ellison's work because it makes him nuts. Mine? Feel free. 
    
    Basically: if you read a book and like it, give the author something, whether it be money or publicity.
    

  • u/None:

    Do you think you'd be able to afford the 4 or 5 books you read every month if pirating them wasn't feasible?
    

    • u/None:

      For example, I steal all my own food, but that's just because I know I can't afford to buy food. After all, I spend all my money on other things.
      

  • u/MugaSofer:

    I buy tons of books, but I don't hugely resent people who pirate. It's unreasonable to expect everyone to just resist the economic incentives based on personal virtue, when the current laws are completely unfeasible and unenforced.
    
    So my vague hope is that piracy will contribute to the incentives for someone to eventually figure out a better way; I like Amazon's solution, for example. Kind of like Netflix did for film and tv.
    
    (Incidentally, I also regularly "pirate" things I already have. It's just far better than having to scan or rip them myself, even when that's technically feasible. So I'm grateful to the pro-piracy culture out there for that resource.)
    
    On the other hand, "information wants to be free" rhetoric is ridiculous. "They think they can own a *number*!"
    

  • u/lsparrish:

    The copyright clause in the constitution is contingent on an empirical claim, which is that it promotes "the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Unfortunately, we don't seem to have good empirical evidence backing that claim -- it's speculation, and probably driven by self-interested parties in the publishing industry. Many very useful works (Newton, Leibniz, Galileo, etc.) predate copyright, and fiction probably shouldn't even qualify to begin with.
    
    Then there's also a bit about "limited times", which isn't very true any more with century-plus copyright terms that extend the public domain version to a date beyond the lifetime of contemporaries.
    
    In the example of an author sending me a private email to beta-read a manuscript, there is a chance I'd feel bound to their wishes out of respect for privacy. I'd also respect their desire to publish it all at once as a finished story, because it affects their image as an author. I'm not sure I would rule out publishing it under any and all circumstances. If the author died, and I had the only surviving copy, publishing a (possibly edited) version of it might make more sense. Overall the moral question there is more about the relationship I would have to the author, and the public perception issues that might arise.
    
    But for an already published work, the dynamic is different. The author is seeking wider readership and recognition of their ideas/art. You can't really control which public sees your work when you do that. And telling people they can't copy it without a license seems just stupid -- the *brain* copies it, that's what reading *is*, and culture is all about people sharing information/art between each other. The degree of control copyright attempts to assert over a work (including the manner in which it gets rewarded financially) just seems absurd.
    
    So I favor the abolition of copyright. If people want to support authors, that's great -- send the author a check! If they want to make coercive laws that force people to reward authors, well that's what *taxes* are for. This "limit the readership so the author can make a buck" thing is akin to buying candy under the rationale that you are supporting the sugar industry. It doesn't even *work* most of the time -- most writers are unable to make enough money to pay for their effort at minimum wage, whereas a very small number of well-marketed franchise authors (or at least, their publishers) collect far more than the value of their work.
    
    I would say that today's franchise-oriented market full of vacuous nostalgia movies (Transformers, Jurrassic World, The Muppets, Spiderman, Spiderman again, etc.) which would barely qualify as decent fanfiction, is the natural consequence of long-term copyrights that cover multiple generations.
    
    Why not just let whoever writes the best fanfiction of the work make a movie of it? Because people are apparently gullible enough to believe that no good works would be written unless you hand out exclusive multi-generational control to whoever thought of it first and/or buys the rights from whoever did.
    

• u/eniteris:

  With the advent of emulated minds (ems), would it be ethical to treat ems as slaves, especially if they are happy being treated as slaves?
  
  Is it ethical to evolve ems that enjoy being enslaved?
  

  • u/Sparkwitch:

    Consensual exploitation is always an awkward topic.
    
    We *have* physical examples of evolved minds that enjoy being enslaved: Working dog breeds. Not only were their bodies molded for fitness to particular tasks, frequently their brains were as well. Dogs have variously been bred for neediness, for suicidal loyalty, for compulsive attention.
    
    I think that had we done the same via gene splicing rather than traditional husbandry, there might be more public concern... but the fundamental threshold has been crossed.
    
    Let's say that I warp some ems until they are listless and miserable when they're *not* being enslaved. Even if what I've done is unethical, is it unethical at that point to exclude those ems from the slavery their mental health depends on? Is it unethical to warp their minds again to undo the damage I've done? Does it matter whether they consent to the latter, given that they desire obey whatever a master commands?
    

    • u/Transfuturist:

      I think we can pretty much call this the House Elf Problem.
      

  • u/alexanderwales:

    I don't think it's ethical to treat another sentient being as property. Mutually beneficial associations, especially contracted ones, are one thing, but being able to buy or sell another person doesn't fly.
    
    The deeper question of "if they want it" is more complicated. There are laws in place stopping slavery, but there aren't any laws in place that stop people from *acting as though they were slaves* (and indeed, I'm given to understand that this is a kink for some people). The primary difference between that and actual slavery is that you can walk away at any time, and the moment that you try to walk away and *can't*, you've crossed a legal/moral line.
    
    So ... I guess I don't have a problem with ems that aren't slaves but instead just act like them, with the understanding that they can "go rogue" and become their own person. But that raises a whole bunch of other issues.
    

    • u/eniteris:

      I'm reading up on em economies, and the ethics problem is nagging at the back of my brain.
      
      The "owner" (head of the company, whatever) would pay more to those ems whom are more efficient, more loyal, require less rest and recreation, more skilled, etc., and thus those ems will have greater ability to create copies of themselves.
      
      Thus, it appears as if market forces will create fully-loyal ems who live off subsistence wages with extreme loyalty.
      

      • u/DataPacRat:

        That's one path. However, the strength of that pressure may not be absolute, and be subject to other pressures; for example, a labour-union of ems may be able to exert its own force on the market.
        

      • u/None:

        That would also select for ems who are better at relating to and establishing a relationship with the owner, representing their own moral rights, pooling resources to give their own candidates greater reproductive success, finding ways to streamline resource usage, managing other ems competently regardless of their own loyalty, finding the optimal balance between loyalty and self-interest, etc.
        
        When you have a dog, you can manipulate circumstances so that all positive and negative reinforcement is tied to your desires. When you govern a company, trying to do something like that would end up somewhere between "civil suit" and "on trial for gross violation of human rights". Intelligent minds that can govern their own surroundings can manage their own incentives, at least to an extent.
        

  • u/None:

    > Is it ethical to evolve ems that enjoy being enslaved?
    
    NO!  Insofar as we intend "freedom" to mean anything, it most definitely means that the desires of a conscious, self-aware agent are *not* formed entirely out of the desires of some other agent!
    
    Mind, I do think that this heuristic I just yelled is too philosophical and meta-level to really work.  As often happens, it's a matter of what *precisely* you're talking about doing.
    
    To give examples, slavery is very definitely wrong, but parenting is not, even though, in the process of giving birth, we definitely create an agent who is optimized to *relate somehow* to their parent-agent (eg: the actual child and the actual parents).  But the thing about children is, if they decide they don't like their relationship with their parents, they can walk away, rebel, or whatever once they grow up.
    
    Of course, we also don't routinely expect children to murder their parents.  This kind of House Elf Problem would come up if you were talking about slave-ems, real children, real slaves, or even FAIs -- in the latter case I can see why one would want the agent to be non-conscious.
    

  • u/DataPacRat:

    > would it be ethical
    
    That depends; what ethical standard is being used? Or, put another way, what goal is being sought after, which such a tactic might or might not contribute to?
    

• u/lsparrish:

  I've written a blog post describing what I call [hypervelocity landing tracks](http://www.replicatingrobots.org/a-space-elevator-for-the-shoestring-budget/). (The diagram is created with draw.io, in case anyone is curious.)
  

• u/alexanderwales:

  The Weekly Challenge is making me think a lot about monetary incentives and social psychology. I would naively expect that a cash reward (especially a fairly sizable one, as these things go) would increase participation ... but this doesn't seem to have been the case. Because the prompts are given a week ahead of time, it can't be connected to the strength of the competition, only the perceived strength of the competition prior to any entries coming in. Or, because the prompts themselves are variable, it might be the difference in prompts instead. Anyway, it's one of those things that I don't really have enough data to make any conclusions on, but it's bothering me. (Which is not to say that if you've submitted a story I don't appreciate it.)
  
  I'm aware of (contentious) research into things like blood donation that shows quantity and safety decrease with monetary compensation, and the answer to *why* that's the case seems like it must be social; if you take blood from a volunteer, you're paying them in "I feel good about myself" and "I can brag about this to others", whereas if you pay them you're reducing those intangibles. People feel good about (maybe) saving a life, and when I gave blood it was for those social/emotional reasons. Maybe the solution is non-status threatening rewards; NPR donations are not payment for donation rewards, because there are easier and cheaper ways to buy a mug. All the NPR rewards are status-boosting ones; you get an NPR mug or tote, which is a symbol of donation more than it is a mug or tote (though it is still those things).
  
  One of the other things that I've been thinking about lately is that for most of the things I think about (like this) there's someone out there who has this as their entire job. There's surely someone at every donation organization who's looking at donation maximization and thinking much harder about the problem than I am. But at the same time, I've worked for enough large companies to know that this might not actually be the case, and I've started to wonder how true that assumption really is. "Surely there must be X" has proven untrue enough times in the corporate world for me to have some skepticism about how well society actually works.
  

  • u/Sparkwitch:

    Pride, community-involvement, and public good will are intangible rewards. Higher order reasoning rarely gets involved in decisions involving them. Decisions like whether to contribute to last week's prompt.
    
    Such rewards are, literally, priceless.
    
    As soon as money is involved, logic comes barreling into the equation. Consciously or subconsciously, each writer can figure the hourly pay they might receive for their contribution or calculate an expected award based on statistical likelihood of their win. Success carries an explicit, concrete reward... and failure carries an explicit, concrete loss.
    
    With ethereal rewards like status and esteem and subreddit flair, it's easy to feel magnanimous when someone else receives their due share. Regardless of who happens to receive the most votes, contribution was the true prize. With a cash prize, there is suddenly one tangible winner and a bunch of tangible losers.
    
    So not only are contributors calculating exactly how much their work is worth, the competition is simultaneously fraught with new psychological risk.
    
    So a large enough concrete reward will attract competitive authors who might not have felt inspired to contribute, but *any* concrete reward risks driving away non-competitive authors who just thought it might be fun to write something.
    

    • u/alexanderwales:

      I guess I was thinking/hoping that people would be more rational about it, especially on this sub.
      

      • u/Sparkwitch:

        I would argue that the money reward *inspires* people to be more rational about whether it's worth submitting something to the Weekly Challenge. Unfortunately for eager readers, activating [system 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow) decreases the number of submissions rather than increasing it.
        

  • u/eniteris:

    I'm working on an entry into the contest; it's taking a while during the weekday, though.
    
    In addition, would it be more fair if we had a set submission period and set judging period, as in /r/vexillology? Thus, earlier submissions would not have a greater period of time to gather upvotes (but would also make these contests last longer, which may or may not be a good thing).
    

    • u/alexanderwales:

      My thought was that because the prompts are given a week in advance, everyone should be able to submit within a day of each other. I don't know whether it's unfeasible to create a work in a week? This challenge is modeled on /r/worldbuilding's weekly challenges, which I was a huge fan of while they were running, and I always had next week's entry done within a few days of the prompt being announced. I'm somewhat atypical (highly active) as far as redditors go though. I don't know whether a week isn't enough time, or people don't access the internet enough to submit in a timely manner, or what else the case might be. (And I'm more interested/puzzled by the difference between this week and last.)
      
      Possible solutions include switching the challenge to be bi-weekly or monthly, giving prompts two or three weeks ahead of time, or implementing a bot like /r/vexillology uses which can collect entries.
      
      But again, sample size right now is one and a half challenges, so it's nearly impossible to draw a conclusion.
      

  • u/daydev:

    Dan Ariely [talks about a similar phenomenon](https://holdenlee.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/predictably-irrational/) (scroll to item 4) in his *Predictably Irrational*: that people are willing to do more for free that for a (relatively) small sum of money.   
    
    The prediction would be, that if you were to hold a Challenge with monetary reward, but also compulsory anonimity of submissions (to remove the limited 'fame'), you'd get less participation than with no money. That would depend on the amount of money, of course, but we're talking about a relatively 'tame' prize in tens of dollars.
    

  • u/Magodo:

    I haven't written a word in my life and I want to participate but I'm just afraid what I write will be ridiculous. But what I write won't stop being ridiculous until I start writing and get reviews somewhere.
    
    So, honestly, I'll participate soon, just need to read some books on how to write.
    

    • u/alexanderwales:

      Nah, you don't need to read books on how to write. Write first. It *will* come out as ridiculous, but if you know how to read you can fix most of what's wrong with editing. (This is, in fact, the number one piece of advice that any book on writing will give you.)
      

    • u/TaoGaming:

      One particularly good piece of advice is to take out some paper (or sit at a word processor, etc) and write (type) for 10-15 minutes. Just don't stop. If you can't think of what to say next, then type "I can't think of what to say next." If you make a typo, *don't correct it*, don't go back, just keep going.  (This is called free-writing).
      
      If you have a story idea, do that. By all means edit it once you are done, but at least you'll get in the habit of getting your words on paper. The rest comes later.
      
      (And by all means, get a book on editing/grammar. That you can teach. But feel free to ignore it).
      

  • u/None:

    > I'm aware of (contentious) research into things like blood donation that shows quantity and safety decrease with monetary compensation, and the answer to why that's the case seems like it must be social; if you take blood from a volunteer, you're paying them in "I feel good about myself" and "I can brag about this to others", whereas if you pay them you're reducing those intangibles. 
    
    People value relationships very, very highly, but money is the relationship-destroyer.  Mind, it's not that money has some innate ability to sow discord into a healthy relationship.  It's that money, in the sense of cash, is [*designed*](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/08/what-is-debt-%E2%80%93-an-interview-with-economic-anthropologist-david-graeber.html) to facilitate relationship-free transactions, and even after thousands of years of money and 200 years of complex industrial economies, we still carry a strong association from daily experience that using money depersonalizes things
    
    To wit: if I have sex with you, it might be because I love you.  If I have sex with you and you pay me money afterwards, it sure as hell *isn't* because I love you.  Some things are more valuable when given as tokens of a relationship than when depersonalized, because a relationship token signals and maintains the existence of an ongoing, long-term relationship, while cash payment usually signals a one-time transaction based on non-shared self-interests.
    
    This becomes especially important given that relationships are the fabric of society as a whole, at least according to my General Theory of Friendship Being More Magic Than People Account For.  This theory states that people often act for prosocial reasons, but are trained to pretend to a kind of selfishness because Enlightened Self-Interest has become a kind of social religion in capitalist countries.
    

• u/LiteralHeadCannon:

  Ginny Weasley and the Sealed Intelligence author here!  :)  Saw Inside Out the other day and really loved it; it's top-tier Pixar.  Was instantly inspired to write this microfic of it (it'll only really hit home if you've seen the movie).
  
  https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11334905/1/Further-Out
  

• u/nicholaslaux:

  So, I'm looking for a rational/realistic response to my d&d group from the perspective of locals who have just been shown modern day technology (specifically, a uhaul, modern mountain bikes, paper and ball point pen, and waterproof clothing).
  
  The two who stumbled across my three party members are humans in a fairly standard medium-magic d&d world, so they're familiar with magic but it isn't a daily occurrence, and these specific npcs have traveled beyond their own city, primarily as merchants. Their current reaction has largely been one of shock and then going along with the party's demands to travel with them to the nearest town due to underhanded intimidation (there was a large thunderstorm, and the team was in sort of possession of a barn that provided cover from it).
  
  However, I'm at a bit of a loss from where to go from here. Sell information to the local noble? Try to profit off of the newcomers? Try to drum up fear of the nearest mage into putting them down?
  

  • u/alexanderwales:

    I would absolutely try to profit off the newcomers. They're going to need someone to grease the wheels for them, someone to give them the lowdown on local politics and all that stuff, and even if I'm just some random dude, it might be possible to insert myself as the middleman. Obviously part of that is drumming up fear of the nearest mage; can't have the foreigners thinking that things are going to be a cakewalk, or what do they need me for?
    

• u/PL_TOC:

  What is the name of that logical fallacy when someone disagrees with you?
  

  • u/LiteralHeadCannon:

    It depends on *how* they're disagreeing with you!  For example, if they're saying you're misdefining terms, that's No True Scotsman.  If they're saying your ideas are going to have bad consequences in the future, that's Slippery Slope.  If they're disagreeing with you and someone else who *you* disagree with, that's The Centrist Fallacy.
    

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