The code of conduct at the Maintainers Summit

Posted Oct 24, 2018 13:03 UTC (Wed) by linusw (subscriber, #40300)
In reply to: The code of conduct at the Maintainers Summit by marcH
Parent article: The code of conduct at the Maintainers Summit

According to most schools of sociology, humans are socially responsive, which means that they will be urged to provide social feedback from social stimuli (more or less) no matter the effects.

This instinct, which is not entirely rational, will override the rational choice to just ignore a stimuli in many cases.

So if someone pose you a question, even if there is a good reason to ignore that question altogether, you will be inclined to answer the question, take part in the social interaction, because humans are socially responsive and very much driven by this impulse.

This school of sociology will be in conflict with rational choice theories.

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The code of conduct at the Maintainers Summit

Posted Oct 24, 2018 16:17 UTC (Wed) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (1 responses)

> This school of sociology will be in conflict with rational choice theories.

It's not a conflict because the rational choice theories are about what people actually choose to do, not what their instincts are urging them to do. I can't recall any occasion where it was claimed that instincts or urges are expected to be rational; rather the opposite. Moreover, even if people do act on those urges, what evidence is there to say that they do *not* expect this course of action to best satisfy their own preferences in that moment?

The code of conduct at the Maintainers Summit

Posted Oct 24, 2018 19:35 UTC (Wed) by linusw (subscriber, #40300) [Link]

I don't think this is a proper place to debate details about certain social-psychological ideas, people have too many opinions about this and I take it you agree with the first three paragraphs so, we are mostly agreeing anyway.