The act of giving knowledge comes at a cost to the [sender of knowledge
There are two types of systems when the recipient of knowledge is considered a system.
- A: A system where you pay 1 cost and put in knowledge and get more than 1 social utility out of it.
- B: A system that pays 1 cost to put knowledge into the system but produces less than 1 utility.
From the perspective of knowledge sender X, putting knowledge into A is a method of altruism to [efficient
- Related: effective altruism.
B’s system needs to pay X for knowledge
- For example, suppose X writes a book and mechanically reproduces about 30,000 copies of it, the recipient pays 3,000 yen, and 300 yen of that is distributed to X.
- In this case, X weighs the effort of “writing a book” against the self-interest of “getting 9 million yen” and makes a decision
The knowledge that B obtains at this time is commodity knowledge shared by 30,000 people - commodity
- Related: Uncopyable value.
X is not interested in whether that knowledge helps B.
- The onus is on B to determine that.
- There are too many of them in the first place for me to keep an eye on them. X is interested in whether that knowledge will help A.
- Because usefulness is a requirement for “X to be efficiently altruistic”
It is up to the other party whether or not to pay the cost of the information transfer. from Diary 2023-07-14
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