Oversimplifications in HtN -- Philosophy and biology

[Eric S. Raymond]

Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org>:
> 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.

How the heck do you get that out of a presentation that includes
John Locke, microeconomic analysis, and several million years of
human evolutionary history? 

>
>                                       You even went so far as to
> say that Ian's statements of his own motivations count for nothing.

*What*?  Either I've suddenly forgotten how to write or you're having
serious problems with English comprehension today.  Of *course* Ian's
statements count for something; I don't think I ever claimed otherwise.
A theory of behavior that retrodicts correctly about most peoples'
accounts of their internal experience is clearly superior to one that
doesn't.

>              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.

It is especially ironic that you chose this quote from me, since it
was attached approvingly to one of the alternate explanations you
claim I'm denying...
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>

[The disarming of citizens] has a double effect, it palsies the hand
and brutalizes the mind: a habitual disuse of physical forces totally
destroys the moral [force]; and men lose at once the power of
protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their
oppression.
        -- Joel Barlow, "Advice to the Privileged Orders", 1792-93