Knowledge is not being rewarded.

Sure but, just like @HemiMG was driving at, there is always some "selfish" mechanism at some level rewarding (or avoiding "punishment" by choosing) certain behaviour. It's most likely perfectly scientifically correct to say, of everything, "that person only did that thing because they benefited from it". Ergo, at some level, everything is selfish because everyone is pushing some personal agenda all of the time.

The question is, do we choose to adopt that as our everyday outlook on the world and people around us?

 

Or they may simply use drugs. A far stronger effect with little to no real effort aside from acquiring them. That they have the potential to ruin your life won't necessarily matter to them as they likely already wouldn't care about anyone but themselves.

 

That depends on whether or not you want to vilify acting in your own self-interest. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, for example, that Bill Gates was acting in his own self-interest when he helped fight malaria. He helped way more people than I can ever hope to help, it was absolutely a terrific thing for him to do. I don't think it takes anything at all away from him to say that he did it because it gave him satisfaction. I think the world would be a much better place if more people acted in their own self-interest. Too many people claim to want to help this charity or that person or whatever, but want others to be the ones to do it. They want others to act in their interests on their behalf. Self interest, like anything else, can be horrible. But it can also be wonderful. I don't see it as something to vilify in and of itself at all. So I'll gladly adopt that outlook. But I think my outlook on that outlook is different than yours.

 

My outlook is simply that the existence of mechanisms that determine our behaviour doesn't make that behaviour any better or worse. Those mechanisms exist regardless of what we call them or how we think they work (altruism, warm fuzzies, self-interest, personal advancement, hormones, God, whatever), recognizing that doesn't devalue good things people do.

 

This is exactly what I mean.

Oh, I thought I made it pretty clear that I agreed every behaviour was fundamentally self-interested, although we can certainly categorise some behaviours as 'selfless'. Where I think we disagree is that I find no problem in openly accepting self-interest as the default. In fact I think things work better when selflessness is treated as a sort of abnormality carried out between consenting parties. What I think people in general have a hard time with is seeing someone go back to self-interestedness after doing something selfless (in a certain way, I think making a game paid after it has been free works in a bit the same way - after seeing a lot of things free people just expect it.)

So for me it is important to show up front that I want the opportunity to be rewarded in full, because it can be annoying and difficult to dig yourself out of pigeon holes.

 

There is no way this is a serious thread....

 

Likes are very serious business. Nations have gone to war over likes, you know. Do not underestimate the power of likes.

--Eric

 

100 years from now, Facebook (if it's still around) and its likes will be used to determine the outcome of wars.

 

I will give you my like, just change your avatar XD

 

I just like to start debating deep and meaningful issues on random threads on the internet and use tiny ones as excuses to talk about bigger ones ... it's the internet you know

My contention is really about is about how much grunt work done by smart, diligent people in this world is taken for granted and even credited to others - in many ways, especially these days, scientists and engineers etc. are more and more just seen as part of the machination of the industrial world. Sure they all get wages and so on but it seems to be very difficult to get individual recognition for doing any actual development or research in industry.
You might argue that jobs are very specialized and credit is more than ever due to the team rather than the individual, and that's probably true, but I don't think there's ever been a time in modern history when the symbol of individual leadership was as strong in people's minds and so much was attributed to the 'ideas guy' rather than the people who do the work (and usually end up generating the only concrete ideas as well). Its never been a better time to be a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk but how much of the actual development do these guys actually do? How many people even know who the lead rocket engineer at SpaceX is?

So it's easy to say as a game dev "I see a vision of an MMORPG which features this that and the other thing" but how many people really know how to work out how to get there? And so we have people arriving here with 'great ideas' and expecting other people to do all the scripting for nothing, because culture is infected with the idea of being an 'ordinary person with out of the ordinary ideas' and they have the stereotype of the nerdy programmer that likes programming just for the sake of it and is happy to give everything away for free.

So anyway, the 'like' thing is not the point ( and I don't think that was everything that the OP was about) the point is how the really useful work gets relatively little recognition and there is perhaps a bit of a sense of entitlement when people come here and expect people to give them all the codez.

Of course though, likes are essential part of the economics of my cyber-happiness

 

DON'T CHANGE YOUR AVATAR!!

 

I applied at SpaceX lol.

 

Helping people in itself is rewarding. I'm sure the experienced experts know that the information they give out and issues they help people with make a great deal of difference to the people who need it. Because they themselves were once beginners who got a great deal of help from other experts.

 

I don't like this entire thread, where's the button for that?

 

I'm deliberately restraining myself from liking that post.

Feel the pain.

 

Noooooooooo! Must...have...like....

--Eric

 

Sid Meier said somewhere he tried to make a feature of Civilization where players could give eachother 'gold' currency, but no one was willing. Imagine if he'd tried likes instead...

The best way to do this would be to go ahead and like each post and then write a post at the end saying that what you really meant was the opposite. Glad to help!

William

 

Could Unity adopt a tipping mechanism https://www.changetip.com/tip-online/reddit

 

Well said. Humans are social. And being social has rewards of its own. A +1 like is just an added mechanic, a mere bonus.

 

For the sake of trying to add something constructive as a solution for a problem like this, I think the only way to approach it would be to have a clear attribution system for a well organized set of information, such as the wiki page. It is easy on the asset store for example to go to a particular category and find which free assets have been downloaded the most and rated the best. It is good publicity in every way for the person who did that work, and some sort of organized statistic for forum answers as well I think would be helpful.

What goes on on the forums is not possible to steer in any way in terms of what people show appreciation for and what they don't (not that it would be a good idea anyway) and it is too easy to be shot down if you complain about something where you don't have any clear facts (as shown by this thread) - you can only talk in generalities and get responses of the same kind.

William

 

There are not hugging you. They are hugging your post.

Which is actually worse since hugging one's post is far more intimate than hugging the whole person.

 

Now think of how many people wanted to hug the live video stream when it announced Unity 5's new pricing scheme. A hug of over 10,000 people (last I remember the counter to be at).