Yeah, I sort of hinted at what I mean by responsibility but it would probably be good to make explicit. I’m less confident about what responsibility-in-my-culture is than what it involves, but to take a stab at it anyway...
I mostly think of it as a social attempt to solve a coordination game. Broadly speaking, it’s good for people to be able to do the things they want; and in some situations, it’s good for people to be able to predict what other people will do. One way to solve this is to say “people can just do what they want as long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone’s rights” but I think that doesn’t give very good results. (“Rights” is another rabbit hole here. Not going there.) I think better is to say “people can just do what they want as long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone’s rights, but also people are able to make commitments about future behaviour”, and if they violate those commitments they get punished in some way. My conception of responsibility goes slightly further and says… “here is a set of default expectations we have about people’s behaviour. We think they’re not too constraining. In some cases, if you don’t like them, you can opt out and do what you want. But if you’re going to do that, you need to opt out explicitly, and people are at liberty to take that into account in their interactions with you”. And then if someone violates one of those expectations, they get punished in some way.
you haven’t laid out the rewards that are contingent on discharging one’s responsibility well.
Yeah, this didn’t occur to me at all. Thinking about why… I think to me, the rewards beyond “not getting punished” are mostly much more individual than the responsibilities are. If you maintain an open source project, you presumably get some form of reward for it—maybe prestige, maybe the warm glow of helping people, maybe you’re getting paid. It’ll be different for different people. But it doesn’t really matter what they are. If you can get the rewards without taking on responsibility, good for you. If you can’t, then you either take the rewards with the responsibility, or neither. If you try to take the rewards but avoid the responsibility, that’s a problem for society-at-large: you’re giving people incorrect assumptions about your future actions, in a way that transfers value from them to yourself, and in a way that (mildly) undermines the whole social edifice we’ve got built up. And so we discourage that, and try to make you choose, and try to give people more correct expectations.
the rewards beyond “not getting punished” are mostly much more individual than the responsibilities are
I think this is key to any theory of responsibility. Especially when the “punishment” section is also pretty anemic.
In my culture, we mostly respond by acting as though this will happen in future.
If you act irresponsibly, we will expect you to … act irresponsibly.
I suspect there _IS_ a huge value in trust of one’s peers and users, and receiving respect on mailing lists and conferences. There’s no formal tracking or clear “you get it if you take responsibilty, you lose it if you fail in a responsibility”, but it’s still a primary reward/punishment channel about responsibility.
Yeah, I sort of hinted at what I mean by responsibility but it would probably be good to make explicit. I’m less confident about what responsibility-in-my-culture is than what it involves, but to take a stab at it anyway...
I mostly think of it as a social attempt to solve a coordination game. Broadly speaking, it’s good for people to be able to do the things they want; and in some situations, it’s good for people to be able to predict what other people will do. One way to solve this is to say “people can just do what they want as long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone’s rights” but I think that doesn’t give very good results. (“Rights” is another rabbit hole here. Not going there.) I think better is to say “people can just do what they want as long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone’s rights, but also people are able to make commitments about future behaviour”, and if they violate those commitments they get punished in some way. My conception of responsibility goes slightly further and says… “here is a set of default expectations we have about people’s behaviour. We think they’re not too constraining. In some cases, if you don’t like them, you can opt out and do what you want. But if you’re going to do that, you need to opt out explicitly, and people are at liberty to take that into account in their interactions with you”. And then if someone violates one of those expectations, they get punished in some way.
Yeah, this didn’t occur to me at all. Thinking about why… I think to me, the rewards beyond “not getting punished” are mostly much more individual than the responsibilities are. If you maintain an open source project, you presumably get some form of reward for it—maybe prestige, maybe the warm glow of helping people, maybe you’re getting paid. It’ll be different for different people. But it doesn’t really matter what they are. If you can get the rewards without taking on responsibility, good for you. If you can’t, then you either take the rewards with the responsibility, or neither. If you try to take the rewards but avoid the responsibility, that’s a problem for society-at-large: you’re giving people incorrect assumptions about your future actions, in a way that transfers value from them to yourself, and in a way that (mildly) undermines the whole social edifice we’ve got built up. And so we discourage that, and try to make you choose, and try to give people more correct expectations.
I think this is key to any theory of responsibility. Especially when the “punishment” section is also pretty anemic.
If you act irresponsibly, we will expect you to … act irresponsibly.
I suspect there _IS_ a huge value in trust of one’s peers and users, and receiving respect on mailing lists and conferences. There’s no formal tracking or clear “you get it if you take responsibilty, you lose it if you fail in a responsibility”, but it’s still a primary reward/punishment channel about responsibility.