[TeMPOraL]

That's assuming one cares about "attribution" and "people following other links on your site". I.e. that's still being a salesman, maybe with extra steps.

In the alternative case, no value is being taken, you're left exactly with what you had before - nothing gained, nothing lost - but some user somewhere gains a little. Apparently even in 2026, the concept of positive-sum exchange, is unfathomable to so many.

[account42]

> That's assuming one cares about "attribution" and "people following other links on your site". I.e. that's still being a salesman, maybe with extra steps.

No, it's called being part of a community.

Soup kitchens provide free food without requiring anything in return. That doesn't make it OK for you to take as much as you can get and resell it.

> In the alternative case, no value is being taken, you're left exactly with what you had before - nothing gained, nothing lost - but some user somewhere gains a little. Apparently even in 2026, the concept of positive-sum exchange, is unfathomable to so many.

It's not a positive sum exchange. The community is what is lost.

[TeMPOraL]

> Soup kitchens provide free food without requiring anything in return. That doesn't make it OK for you to take as much as you can get and resell it.?

It would be if the kitchen soup had infinite soup available.

Whatever volume of soup you take from the soup kitchen, it's gone from the kitchen. This is not the case with information - you consuming or collecting it does not mean there's less of it at the source.

> No, it's called being part of a community.

Soup kitchens are bad example. They're not there to build a community of poor people. They're there to feed them. The only reason they mind people taking in excess is because supply of soup is finite - take too much, and there won't be enough for someone else. Beyond that, they don't really care what people do with it.

> It's not a positive sum exchange. The community is what is lost.

Nobody other than salesmen and marketers want a community around everything. Especially not when they're looking for facts, or providing a helping hand.

Pay-it-forward is not affected by introduction of an intermediary (AI or otherwise), because it's about giving, not trading.

That's another way of putting this concept that so many don't seem to get: not everything has to be an exchange.