Oversimplifications in HtN -- Philosophy and biology

[Richard Stallman]

    The greatest insight of the last two centuries in philosophy, and
    arguably the greatest in its entire history, is that we have *nothing
    else to go on* but predictive power; 

Our understanding of reality can only be judged against observed
events.  But doing this properly means judging the whole network of
explanation against all our experience of events.  This is why we can
draw conclusions from one area of experience and apply them in
another.  For example, we must judge New Age claims about "auras" and
"energy fields" against physical theory, which is substantiated by a
broad range of tests against observations.

Thus, our understanding of the actions and mental states of hackers
can (in fact, must) be based on more than our observations of what
programs hackers write.  Hackers are humans, and we have extensive
understanding of the range of thoughts and motivations humans can
have, and the possible paths thoughts can follow.  We know, for
example, than humans do things for many reasons, including solving
practical problems, having fun, gaining prestige, and fighting for
principles they believe in.

Judging theories against reality often involves testing predictions,
but that is not the whole of it.  Deutschmann, in "The Fabric of
Reality", shows near the beginning that what we want from a theory is
not mere prediction of facts, but explanation of facts.  (I recommend
that book highly, although I am not yet convinced by all of its
controversial conclusions.)

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--in effect, an extreme behavioristic and
phenomenological approach.  If we do this, we may see some patterns of
behavior, but we will not really explain what we see.

By using our knowledge that hackers are people, and of the many kinds
of motivations people can have, we can understand them a lot more.