Hacker psychology 1 November 2003 Overview Various ideas relating to the psychology of hackers, or programmers who write free software. Background (confidential) In October 2003, Richard Stallman visited UCSB. -- describe Hypothesis A: they show off, but the system is misfiring Hypothesis B: they're making the best of a bad situation In the misfiring hypothesis, there is a self-selection effect of a population that doesn't get laid. Movie idea start with a professor explaining that hackerdom attracts losers that don't get laid anyway his learned colleague argues that hackers become sexually unattractive by hacking the main characters come up with the idea of starting a business whose goal is to train hackers to get laid