Re: [Audio-video] http://audio-video.gnu.org/video/ghm2013/Samuel_Thibault_Jean-Philippe_Mengual-Freedom_0_for_everybody_really_.text

[Garreau\, Alexandre]

On 2014-07-19 at 01:07, Richard Stallman wrote:
>     Well, I take  freedom  in its the widest meaning: the ability to do what
>     one want without hurting others freedom. So then it *includes* technical
>     freedom (the capacity), social freedom (the liberty) and psychological
>     freedom (the will)
>
> That definition of freedom is misguided because it stretches the word
> to include everything that is good or bad for a person.  That destroys
> the distinction between freedom and practical opportunity.

No. I just say “social freedom” or “right” for what you just call
“freedom” and “technical freedom” or “ability” for what you call
“practical opportunity”.

> Using your definition of freedom, everyone in 1900 had much less
> freedom that we do.

Yes. Less technical freedom (ability), because they could do less thing
they would than we can today, and now they’re (at least technically)
free to do them.

> And we have less freedom than a billionaire has.

First anyway a billionaire can not only have more abilities because of
its condition but also more rights in the unequal society —based on
money— we live in, even without my wider definition of freedom a
billionaire has more freedom.

And then no. Because you can compare complex things like freedom or
people only in time (because they can evolve partially evolve), not in
space. A billionaire today has surely the ability to do some things I
can’t even dream to do, but there are things a billionaire couldn’t do,
even with all the money of the world. Survive in the desert is probably
something a billionaire isn’t used to, see the beauty of prohibited
zones of Paris /catacombes/ is another thing a billionaire will be very
unlikely to be aware in their life, etc. But we can also come back on
accessibility: even with today’s technology (hoping that’ll change), a
blind billionaire will just stay blind and disable to do a lot of things
that any poor man could enjoy… that recall me that French movie…
“Intouchables”, a good movie.

Subsequently, if a billionaire can’t do *everything* we can do, and we
can’t do *everything* a billionaire can do, none freedom is superior to
the other, just because freedom can’t be reduced to a number or any
linear measure. That’s the case for social freedom (right), technical
freedom (ability) and hence for general freedom.

> With your definition, a poor man cannot be free.

With this definition nobody is really ever completely “free”, neither
completely non “free”, but anyone can try to become *more* “free” (in
time, not in space: *become* more free than having be before, not more
free than someone else).

And even without my definition a poor man has not the same rights of a
rich, since our society is mostly based on money, and suffer from a lot
of class inequalities.

> But there are poor men who disagree with you.

So we can both be free to agree to disagree :) It’s just a “purely
linguistic” issue, we use different words to mean different things. And
the human society just continue to work anyway, just because we can
switch meaning according people we speak with, or just specifying which
meaning we use.

> This is not just an interesting philosophical question.  You are
> discarding the basis of the political idea of human rights.

No, because it is still present in my idea of “social freedom” or
“right”. I just used a word for a wider meaning, and then split it into
different others things (technical freedom, social freedom,
etc.). Because they’re all linked, and I just define “freedom” as
“ability to do what you want without hurting others freedom”. That’s one
definition. In other contexts, for instance in physics, “freedom” can
mean “without constraint” (“free” market supporters love making
confusion using this definition instead of the other in the
misappropriated context too), or “absence of oppression” (your current
meaning).

When we speak about society, social problems, including free software,
the later is the more appropriated, the “without constraint” is more
appropriated in the context of physics, maths, biology or other
pure/formal/natural science, the former is useful when we link both,
that’s exactly the case of accessibility within free software.

> It is not possible to give everyone the same abilities, and giving
> everyone the same wealth is more radical than Chairman Mao.  It is
> possible to give everyone the same freedom, because wealth and
> abilities are something totally distinct from freedom.

Well, I think exactly the same think, just substitute the word
“freedom” with “social freedom” or “right”.

> If we were to accept your concept, we would lose any possibility of
> insisting on legal equality for people.

You can use the word “right”, “social freedom” or just “freedom” if the
context you’re speaking in is enough to make its meaning unambiguous (we
can’t just give exactly one meaning to each word without considering
context in languages such as English, look at languages such as lojban
if you want that).

The problem is that you think I change the meaning of a word but I just
change the word on a meaning. All your ideas about freedom are still
true for me, I just use a different term for it, then “general freedom”
doesn’t have the same links with others concept you give to “social
freedom” just because I use the same word for it.

> You may not intend to oppose the principle of equal rights, but that
> is where your philosophy leads.

No, just because we can use the word “right” or “social freedom” for
that, and “freedom” in the appropriated contexts.

> Since we stand by that principle, we will have to defend it from your
> threat.  We will have to argue against your philosophy.

You don’t have to disagree with each person using different words than
you. Anybody knows language enough to be able to understand a word has
different meanings, according speaker, context, etc.

“Freedom” used in its large meaning won’t weak free-software discourse,
just as you don’t ask people to stop using “free” to mean “gratis”
because it could weak free-software discourse, because people need that
meaning… The same reasons apply to the large meaning (even more, because
for “free” people could just use the word “gratis”, and there isn’t any
reason of having the same word for both).

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