Leaving a trace is something I've been grappling with which seemed incredibly straight forward initially as an open source developer.

These days, I find myself questioning for whom am I leaving a trace for? What kinds of humans or entities? Do I care about the kinds of entities who will inhabit the future? Or will their value system be so different to my own that I'd prefer not to have anything to do with them.

Beyond human nature itself, I take issue with the trend of how human nature seems to be changing over time; for the worse.

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DevDesmond 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I actually use this line of reasoning to motivate and inspire some of my own art and cultural artifacts. When a far future galactic civilization pauses to ask, “who are we and where did we come from“, they might just look back at the ledger of humanity’s written outputs. In this sense, the entire trace we manage to save to disk could be viewed as a body of work were any of it to survive. Even pieces of work that nobody reads today could have a long line of future audiences and help shape the galaxy’s understanding of its cultural heritage. (These future entities might have far more processing power and bandwidth to spend on the analysis of our work).

	▲	jongjong an hour ago \| parent [-]
		This is how I used to see it. It made my work feel special just knowing that other people would use it and appreciate it. I think because I felt a stronger sense that other people were my kin. Now I feel like I don't belong, I feel that I am different and I don't know how to interpret other people's appreciation because they probably don't feel it the way I do when I appreciate something. I feel more exploited than appreciated. Part of me is wondering if some people who used my open source projects thought to themselves "What a sucker... Working for free so I can monetize his work." And getting some kick out of that. There's a fundamental difference of values there. It didn't occur to me that this is the lens through which a lot of people view the world.

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swiftcoder 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In the context the article intends, the trace isn't really for you, it's for the people you interact with

	▲	jongjong 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't believe in that definition of altruism. To me, true altruism is selfish. If helping people makes you feel good, then you're an altruist. If helping others doesn't make you feel good innately but you do it all for others then I think there is some self-deception at play. Maybe it's a status or self-image thing? Because being an altruist is higher status and you want to see yourself as high status? I think you can always trace it back to a selfish motive at some level. Denying the selfish root of altruism can lead to hypocrisy because there is a dissonance between who the individual really is in their natural state and who they want to believe themselves to be. They have to constantly work to be who they aspire to be; it's not second nature to them and they will frequently fall short whenever it slips their mind or when they occasionally give in to natural impulses. Good on them for trying I guess. Better than not trying at all. But they're not an altruist. I believe Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" backs me up on this point. Altruism is a either a kin-selection process or a reciprocal (transactional) process.

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knorker 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I find myself questioning for whom am I leaving a trace for? What kinds of humans or entities?

How's your reasoning there? You only want to be nice to people who have earned it? This sounds a bit too close to the "you have to EARN my respect", which is a hallmark of somebody nobody wants to be around.

You can only control your own actions. If your "good deeds" are conditional or transactional, then that very much diminishes their goodness.

	▲	jongjong 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You're right. I have certain values and I'm OK if others expect certain values from me. To me this is ideal. Friendships should not be based on superficial things like money or social status to the point that you have to constantly change yourself over time to maintain alignment. If you pay attention, you will notice that this is how the vast majority of people operate. To me, that's transactional. Having fixed core values and expecting other people to share certain core values is not transactional, it's genuine. These are the kinds of relationships which don't require constant maintenance; you can not talk with the person for years and then resume the friendship like no time has passed, no matter how your situations have changed. If you can change your values based on the latest social trends, then you have no values. The friendship is held together by mutual material benefits; that's transactional. I have no genuine interest in being friends with people who don't have core values. Because then I'd know I'm only in it for the money, and that's a lot of work and stress for me. Maybe second nature to some people. But I'm no good actor. To me it's work. My view of humanity is most people are actors and most people lie to themselves constantly.