Stallman’s Law • Hacker News Board

Re: Stallman’s Law

#121

Post by SixSigma » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 1:01 PM UTC

gilopll wrote: post #79

loup-vaillant wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just DuckDuckWent "richard stallman predictions", and found this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3418340 It enumerates a number of predictions Richard Stallman made, that turned out to be true. Do not dismiss him too quickly. By the way, the concept of IP is obviously dysfunctional: ideas and expressions are non rival goods . They are not moved, borrowed, nor stolen; they are only copied from substrate to sub…

Intellectual property is as real as real property. A Native American would make the same argumentyou do, but levy it against the notion of real eatate: owning a plot of the earth is ridiculous. Your argument against "nonrival" would imply that if a manufacturer creates surplus product, its ok to steal the surplus because no one else needa it.. even if they go bankrupt because no one then buys the non surplus. And a M…

> owning a plot of the earth is ridiculous

you'll think differently once you've planted your crops in it

Re: Stallman’s Law

#122

Post by undershirt » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 1:02 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #60

JacksonGariety wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom is not so simple: “This procedure thus implies a certain logic of exception: every ideological Universal–for example freedom, equality–is 'false’ in so far as it necessarily includes a specific case which breaks its unity, lays open its falsity. Freedom, for example: a universal notion comprising a number of species (freedom of speech and press, freedom of consciousness, freedom of commerce, political freedom…

Just because your quasi-mathematical model breaks, that doesn't necessarily mean this has anything to do with reality. We have high confidence that mathematical models in physics and chemistry often do have consequences and say something about reality. Economics has an interesting track record here as well. In the realm of ethics, politics, and ideology? Ehhh...not so much.

It's interesting that contradiction, that is inconsistency, is a hint that a mathematical system does not model something in reality, because we don't want to believe such a thing can exist. But it is about as hard to work out the kinks of inconsistency from of a mathematical model as it is from ideology, law, ethics, and other such systems that we construct to guide our behavior. So I would say that METAmathematics has a lot to say about us and our ability to construct consistent systems-- it's really hard.

Freedom is one such example since it cannot belong to everyone when competing interests are at play. That might be a strange way to slice it though, since the language we use to describe freedom is probably not as well defined as we think.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#123

Post by SixSigma » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 1:05 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #29

roflchoppa wrote: post #6

Interesting that the more "advance" technology gets, the lower our reasonable expectation of privacy becomes. I want to know when the average person gets on a computer, and surfs around, what data do they expect is kept for just themselves vs shared with the service.

I don't think the "average person" even thinks about data privacy at all. I've seen people tell other people to "get off MY feed!" as if it's a thing they own and can control. As long as the platform can maintain this illusion, everyone will be happy.

> get off MY feed!

shitposting on public facebook posts is a lot of fun

Re: Stallman’s Law

#124

Post by tbrownaw » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 1:06 PM UTC

sedachv wrote: post #87

loup-vaillant wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#2 and #3 have one huge practical difference: incentive. See, as far as profit-maximising is concerned, expanding the realm of #2 is very good for whoever owns the stuff. See how DRM is doing exactly that. If #2 itself was either forbidden or visibly abhorrent for everyone involved, we'd get more #1 right away. Note that there is some flaw to #3 to #2 even when public funding is involved . Many patents were born that…

> Destroying #2 doesn't have to choke off the flow from the impossible to the possible, if adjust our society around it. I honestly cannot tell exactly what the parent comment is referring to with #1 #2 #3, but a mutual change of societal incentives for writing software enabled by Free Software is what RMS suggested in the GNU Manifesto: "In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the postscarcity world,…

I honestly cannot tell exactly what the parent comment is referring to with #1 #2 #3

The list at the beginning: things you can do (#1), things you're not allowed to do (#2), things that are still in the great unknown (#3). Hadn't realized that was confusing, thanks.

In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the postscarcity world

This both is putting the cart somewhat before the horse, and works better by increasing category #1 (what you can do) rather than destroying category #2 (what you're not allowed to do).

Re: Stallman’s Law

#125

Post by logicallee » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 1:14 PM UTC

known wrote: post #80

Essential Rules of Tyranny Rule #1: Keep Them Afraid Rule #2: Keep Them Isolated Rule #3: Keep Them Desperate Rule #4: Send Out The Jackboots Rule #5: Blame Everything On The Truth Seekers Rule #6: Encourage Citizen Spies Rule #7: Make Them Accept The Unacceptable http://www.alt-market.com/articles/198-the-essential-rules-o...

Based on the context, I expected your list to remind me of how corporations have been treating users lately (I thought this was the point you're making) - but out of these 7 rules only #7 seems to apply? What I mean is that #1, 2, 3,4, 5, and 6 literally don't seem to be happening? (At least, they don't remind me of anything?)

Re: Stallman’s Law

#126

Post by scalio » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 1:14 PM UTC

spangry wrote: post #107

TeMPOraL wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only when you look deeper into the corporation's motivations you'll be able to figure out a way to defeat this. Otherwise it just reads like a rant. It's actually pretty simple - money, power. Corporations are amoral machines; if there's something that brings profits and they can get away with legally, some corp will eventually do it (same seems to apply to small companies). > Instead of thinking from "corporations…

The thing I sometimes have trouble with is: 1. Corporations behave like sociopaths. 2. Corporations don't really exist. They're a legal fiction that, in reality, is just a group of people working towards a common goal (maximum profit). I wonder if it's counter-productive to think and speak of corporations as some sort of separate entity to the people it is composed of. I think the notion that 'corporations are evil s…

Thinking of corporations in terms of its employees means said employees have to take responsibility for their products. I'm all for it.

The same can be applied to governments (though I believe it's less of a problem than with corporations): it's not "the government" that's fucking things up, it's the people in it.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#127

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 1:14 PM UTC

spangry wrote: post #107

TeMPOraL wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only when you look deeper into the corporation's motivations you'll be able to figure out a way to defeat this. Otherwise it just reads like a rant. It's actually pretty simple - money, power. Corporations are amoral machines; if there's something that brings profits and they can get away with legally, some corp will eventually do it (same seems to apply to small companies). > Instead of thinking from "corporations…

The thing I sometimes have trouble with is: 1. Corporations behave like sociopaths. 2. Corporations don't really exist. They're a legal fiction that, in reality, is just a group of people working towards a common goal (maximum profit). I wonder if it's counter-productive to think and speak of corporations as some sort of separate entity to the people it is composed of. I think the notion that 'corporations are evil s…

I think it is accurate to talk about corporations like separate entities - alien entities, in the same way we sometimes talk about "market" as an entity, or about "$country" when we mean its government's decisions. In a complex organization composed of many individuals pursuing somewhat aligned, but ever so slightly different agendas, there may not be any single person to blame for the aggregate behaviour.

I see your suggestion of overcoming "diffusion of responsibility" as a way to kill the alien being corporation is. When you force things to be set up in such a way a single individual (or a small group) is ultimately responsible for some area of corporate behaviour, you reduce the chance of corporation displaying some emergent behaviour that no human can prevent or vouch for. Seems like an interesting and maybe even good idea to me.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#128

Post by scalio » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 1:21 PM UTC

grzm wrote: post #18

api wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two blur together at the top.

The objectives, roles, and responsibilities are significantly different.

In theory, yes. The problem is that many government officials act to further corporations' objectives for example by enacting laws enabling or making shady activities easier.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#129

Post by imagist » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 1:41 PM UTC

rocqua wrote: post #28

imagist wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Environmentalism is the quintessential example of why compromise doesn't work. Climate change is an existential threat to humanity and has only become more of a threat since the origins of the modern environmental movement. I'm not sure how you can represent a failure of this catastrophic magnitude as "tremendous gains".

Were there any alternatives? Because the fact that our efforts had an undesirable outcome does not mean our methods were bad. Heck, even the very best methods can lead to undesirable outcomes. I feel that sometimes we expect that an acceptable outcomes is reachable. Sadly, it often isn't. A large part of my growing up has been realizing this. More to the point, the only real mistake I see environmentalism might have…

> Were there any alternatives? Because the fact that our efforts had an undesirable outcome does not mean our methods were bad. Heck, even the very best methods can lead to undesirable outcomes.

A more hard line stance on greenhouse gas emissions is an alternative. You can claim that this isn't a viable alternative, but viability is made by a majority trying.

I'm not just looking at outcomes. Ten years ago we knew that immediately halting greenhouse emissions wasn't enough to stop climate change, but there wasn't even a push to do that. We weren't even trying for desirable outcomes, so I don't think it's unreasonable to say our methods were bad.

> I feel that sometimes we expect that an acceptable outcomes is reachable. Sadly, it often isn't. A large part of my growing up has been realizing this.

You claim that taking a hard line stance for an acceptable outcome is unreachable, but the right has been making this work for years. They take an extreme right stance, even more extreme than they want, knowing that the left will compromise and the right will get what they want.

You can't claim that compromise is a winning strategy when over and over the left compromises and loses while the right takes hard line stances and wins.

> More to the point, the only real mistake I see environmentalism might have made is come in too hard in the middle. We needed to stir up the shit to get enough people on board. But after that, you need to calm down and get grinding on affecting change. Shooting down progressive action for 'not being good enough' is a great way of preventing progress.

History does not bear out this assertion.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#130

Post by phn » Mon, Nov 28, 2016, 1:58 PM UTC

scalio wrote: post #115

hvidgaard wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just touched upon one of my idealistic geek wet dreams: Truly decentralized applications. Let's use ondemand music streaming as an example. I dream of a network where I pay whatever vendor I want, to deliver streams of music. I also pay whatever vendor I want to save my data (think playlists and play data). And I pay whatever vendor I want (could be free software as well) to play those streams. Each component doe…

That's some idyllic thinking, but I agree such interoperability would be awesome. However, I don't see how it could be realized with current closed ecosystems. Seems like this would almost require open software...

I wouldn't say open source. But well-defined inter-operation protocols and strong encryption, yep.