Re: [GNU-linux-libre] choosealicense.com fork with better wording, perhaps ?

[Garreau\, Alexandre]

Le 25/09/2014 à 00h06, Riley Baird a écrit :
>> To take again your example: someone can probably (it’s an euphemism)
>> increase your freedom in *so more many ways you can’t even wonder*
>> alive than dead. Dead it’s just a pile of flesh, as you could obtain
>> killing a simple animal, or even (bio)hacking with pluripotent
>> inducted cells. Alive it’s quite surely an instance of the most
>> fantastic and powerful autoimproving system produced by the universe.
>
> What about people that are not autoimproving or powerful? Is it ethical
> to kill them?

Well, when I was saying “powerful”, it’s in the same meaning of “<x>
language/concept/software is powerful”, so “with a lot of potential”,
and I was speaking at the scale of the universe, so that even a monkey
in something damn powerful in relation with an infinity of void with
some rocks.

Added to that, there’s only one kind of human which is not
autoimproving: a corpse. Almost everything is socially constructed and
acquired trough experience in human (and that’s why it’s so powerful:
because all the power is in hot/live-adaptable software) so a human
which is not able to acquire anything wouldn’t acquire the minimum to
keep its brain working, and would die.

I could mention the experiment, tried several times in story, always of
a king or some important figure, to find the “natural language” of
mankind (generally thinking to something like greek or latin), and
asking to grow human babies in perfect conditions, with all heat, love,
food, comfort, etc. they need, but *never* speaking with them, nor
communicating using any form of language.

Generally, the babies died without any explanation. The brain just
stopped working.

Therefore, since all the value of human freedom is in the fact it can
live-adapt, and that without being able of that it dies, any human has
already an intrinsic giant power.

Then you could argue the minimum found in a human in potential is
sometimes lower than what is found in some non-human animals, like
monkeys or elephants…

But first such humans are probably really rare, maybe even not existing:
*lower* means that it would have *everything* lower, but human intellect
(and even larger: animals intellect) is so much complex and has so much
features even our greatest science abilities didn’t completely
determined what it does and how it does it… It’s really unlikely we know
enough about any human being to say it has less abilities: we thought
that of autism/asperger, and it was damn wrong, we thought it of many
“diseases” which finally wasn’t. Every human is different, we just have
some who are so much that we aren’t able to understand them, or worst,
to make them understand us and our society. How can we judge something
we aren’t even able to include in our society? Since individuals are
socially built, we can’t know if they can’t do something because they
really can’t in any way or because we just ignore the way we should
teach them.

Btw we use not to kill such intellectually animals for these same
reasons.

Second even if it’s really dumb, so much I would be able to build a
superior AI (“superior” meaning “completely able to simulate it /plus/
even more”), I wouldn’t kill even your dog, firstly because it would
really badly affect all members of society emotionally attached to it
(and even this not being rational, it’s sane, natural and indivisible
From the way human work), comprised myself (because of this fantastic
feature called empathy, making social enough animals feel the suffer
they see, very useful to automatically, instantly and enormously
increase the probability of survival of all individual in any group of
animals (even of separate species)).

And what is true for a dog is certainly a lot more for any human,
whatever its intellectual abilities.

>> Even if I don’t share the opinion of many on copyright legitimacy, I
>> would notice go against it is not free speech: free speech is the
>> authority-unregulated expression of *opinions*. Just transmitting
>> others’ work is not an opinion, at least not your, thus it’s not free
>> speech. Yet it’s still legal to express the same opinion of someone
>> else who expressed it in a copyrighted work.
>
> I think that free speech is much more than the right to express your
> opinions. Wouldn't you agree that Phil Zimmermann's exporting of the PGP
> source code was free speech?

If he expressed opinion it would be free speech, if it expressed
scientific ideas (much closer) it would be free science (like when
Galileo said Earth was rotating around Sun), now it’s not a scientific
idea but an *implementation*. He didn’t published a paper on RSA, he
implemented it, it’s different. Though why people initially tried to
censor him was for the diffusion of the scientific idea more than
implementation. But yet this isn’t free speech, it’s not like saying
“government is doing this and you don’t know!”, it’s more like saying
“hey, look how everything in astronomy look simpler if you take Sun as
center!”.

Yet I agree the right to do something like that is something legitimate
to defend. But I don’t call it free speech, it’s not speech.

>>>>> Objectivity does not suppose an objective subject - in fact, it does
>>>>> not suppose a subject at all. If there were no conscious beings, an
>>>>> objective reality could still exist.
>>>>
>>>> *** That's debatable, but humans have been doing it since they have the
>>>> capacity to do so, and still didn't reach any conclusion.
>>>
>>> Hopefully we'll take less than 20000 years. :) Can you imagine a
>>> universe with no conscious beings? If you believe in the Big Bang
>>> Theory, then such a time must have existed.
>> 
>> In the hypothesis objective reality wouldn’t exist without Subject
>> (idealism) the Big Bang Theory would be a conception of the Subject, it
>> would still be, but would just be dependent of it.
>
> Would the subject themselves exist objectively, or would they also need
> to be perceived?

In our case we are conscious of ourselves, so this question is useless.

>> Yet you can’t prove what you see is real, because to prove anything you
>> need material, and you can’t have material if you assume it is not
>> real. Thus the fact objective reality exist can’t be a proven truth but
>> only a postulate, an useful (even better: essential) assumption.
>
> I agree that you can't prove that what you see is real. However, I
> disagree that you need material to prove anything. You can prove the
> existence of your consciousness - "I think therefore I am".

It’s not a proof, it’s an observation. That doesn’t need proof since you
observe it. Everything that is innate in your brain is true according
your mind rules (for instance: basic maths), and so you don’t need to
prove that, because it’s not a fact but a conception of things. Then
this doesn’t mean it’s true according “exterior observable ‘reality’”
rules, just as lot of advanced physics theories contradicts our innate
notion of space.

> Even if some things are subjective, we cannot say that *everything* is
> subjective, as it leads to a contradiction:
>
> Assume that everything is subjective. Is everything subjective? If so,
> then we have just made an objective statement, which contradicts our
> original assumption. If not, then something must be objective, which
> again contradicts our original assumption.

“Everything” is subjective, if you say that and don’t say it’s
objective, why would “something must be objective”?

I would rather perceive “objectivity” as an essential conception of
things, not as a fact to be true or not.

>>>> And no, if I'm producing a guide on choosing a free software license,
>>>> I don't want to hear about what proprietary software vendors have to
>>>> say about it.
>>>
>>> Understandable. And, if you're right, really, you shouldn't have to.
>>> However, note that this is a moral issue, and all morality, to some
>>> degree, involves an arbitrary choice of what to value.
>> 
>> No its not up to moral but to ethic. Moral —coming from latin
>> /mores/: habits— is the value of “Good” relative to a specific
>> culture. While ethic —coming from greek “ethike”— “science of what is
>> good” is the value of “Good” in absolute, not relative to any culture
>> but objectively developed after the study of human.
>
> You cannot base an objective morality upon the study of human. Why draw
> the line at human? Why not include certain animals? Why not limit it to
> individual races, as Social Darwinists do?

Well, traditionally we say “human”, but you’re right, it concerns
“individuals of society” generally speaking, thus not only human but
potentially anything else (and lot of zoology studies proven that
darwinist evolution went in the direction of social solidarity, even
beyond specie frontiers, like showed Kropoktine in /Mutual Aid: A Factor
of Evolution/).

>> Freedom being essentially defined after will, it matches
>> happiness.
>
> While I, too, support taking freedom to be the highest objective, I'll
> just point out that this is not always true. Consider people who are
> manipulated through guilt into doing something that they would not want
> to do otherwise. They are still following their will, but it is not
> bringing them happiness.

Thus they’re following their short-term current direct will, not their
freedom. You’re not free if a piece of your will is manipulated to
mismatch the rest of it. Freedom *includes* ability to make will not
following self-contradicting principles (like the will of
self-distruct), because it goes against will.

With “freedom is the ability to —without hurting others’ freedom— do
what you want” I usually separate freedom in three type of freedom:
technical one, the ability, coming from science, the social one, the
right, coming from consciousness of collectivity and its consequences,
and the mental one, the will, the self-control, the ability to make
will, envy and plans match, to not being manipulated and being
motivated, having the will of researching what is better for will (thus
going against self will of going against self will, if I explain myself
well enough).

So your example doesn’t contradict what I said because it doesn’t show
you can be free and unhappy, since in it if you are unhappy it’s because
you aren’t free in the complete conception of freedom.

>> Equality (to distinguish from “similar” or “identical”) being defined
>> as being not superior nor inferior negates hierarchy, thus authority
>> thus matches Freedom.
>
> The problem with equality is that it needs to be enforced, which
> requires someone in a position of authority to enforce it, who by
> definition is now unequal to everyone else.

Nope, it doesn’t. First because as you noticed it it lends to a
contradiction, then because equality and freedom are linked (without
equality you have hierarchy thus power, as I said), and finally you
don’t need authority to enforce them, quite the opposite: freedom and
power/authority are opposed, yet similar in one point: the more you have
of one, the more you want, and the more you are likely to obtain. The
more you are free the more you want to be free and the more you are
likely to be. The more you’re powerful the more you want to be and the
more you will likely be. The only difference is that power tends to
uniformity, self-destruction and death, while freedom tend to diversity,
reproduction and life. So as say anarchists, power can only lends to
power, and the only thing that lends to freedom is freedom itself. That
plenty explain rise and fall of authoritarian communism in URSS (and why
a lot of anarchists predicted it), for instance.

If you’re truly free, you’re free from the imposition of hierarchical
oppressive behavioral schemes (like racism, sexism, proprietarian-ism),
and you have the ability to know what’s good for freedom (acklowledging
individual and collective freedom match). If you don’t and reproduce the
errors/misconceptions/constructions that lends to hierarchy and power,
it’s because you’re already not completely free.

> If we are arguing from a communist perspective, "from each according to
> his ability" is incompatible with freedom. If I do not wish to work
> according to my ability, then I am not free to do so. (I might be wrong
> with my understanding of anarcho-communism here - if so, please correct me.)

The complete sentence is “from each accordingly to h[er] ability, to any
according to h[er] needs”. Then you have to consider since you’re free
and rational you don’t produce more than is needed, you know each one
can produce a lot more they consume (yet two century ago Kropoktine
calculated that with their technology, even in Paris, you would just
need 5 hours of work a day while one or two month a year from half of
population to answer the needs and want of the complete population, even
at the time the *medium* factor of production/consumption was a
thousand, today it’s way more), you don’t make more babies than it’s
sane to just to maintain patriarchy, state and capital and you don’t
push people to wanting too much in relation to their health/abilities
(no more need for fast food to meet your low workers right of few
health/time, no more need of packing/wrapping to quantify market
products, no more need for fashion to prove you’re richer/better, no
more need for exportation to submit slave countries, no more need for
centralized inefficient organization…)

Even if (true) communism required all people to work against their
individual ideal wish, it would be to be the most free, and it would
still be more free than when people producing aren’t those in control of
their means of production (and at least you aren’t required to work more
than you’re able to).

But it isn’t: because with science and technique you can automate
everything that would be repetitive in any way (thus more boring, but
also more easily factorizable: to automate, the more boring, the more
easy, and thus fun, because of high result/effort factor) and make it
almost infinitely more efficient than doing it stupidly and
boringly. The only thing that remains is creative work (like Science or
Art), which has value only when done by passion, following will and not
going against it (as story proved it many times, the best today with
free software).

If you consider only social freedom and rights, ignoring technical
freedom/science and mental freedom/psychology, you go trough the same
wall as “anarcho-”primitivist, “anarcho-”capitalists, or rms when he
compares with Mao people saying we need to make semantic and accessible
every free software for the sake of free-software movement. You need the
three to get the whole, neglecting any of them reduce the others. It’s
more a product than an addition: each one is dependent of
others. Without science you’re slave of your random-behaving environment
(including natural catastrophes, butf also invasion of aggressive and
unconscious people strangers to your society like conquistadors in
America), without rights you’re slave of the (anti)social system,
without mental freedom you’re slave of your
misconceptions/errors/envies.

>> Every value of Good, at the end, matches Freedom.
>
> But some don't, like many religious ones. They consider obedience to
> authority to be a virtue.

They match their conception of freedom, which (quite obviously) is wrong
according empirical observation.

And even outside religions (well, we could still debate about if also
Capital and Nation doesn’t consist in religions in themself…), a lot of
people still believe getting more freedom require a bit of power to
enforce it (as you said it before). The finality of this is still
freedom, even if they’re arguing for authority.

>>> Gaza is such a horrible situation. I wish that Israel and Palestine
>>> would just agree to make peace (although, to be fair, they are trying).
>> 
>> It’ts not like if it were a completely asymmetrical conflict :-°
>> Actually it’d better help people that Israelis and Palestinians agree
>> rather than Israel and Palestine would. It depend of your ability
>> to trust an impersonal entity made of hierarchy, papers, power,
>> property and money (after all, everything of that is the same).
>
> Very often, states do not reflect the will of their people. […] as
> long as the Israeli state and the Palestinian state agree to make
> peace, the number of people dying would greatly decrease.

For how long? It’s not the first time, and probably not the last if we
continue this way.

> However, the states are more powerful than the people. For this
> reason,

…that’s a reason *more* not to trust them.

> The people would still need to make peace themselves before it would
> completely stop, but that isn't the most important part of the way to
> peace.

Israel is a giant neocolonialist machine, Palestine a recuperation of
free Palestinian communities ideas and interests: if by (small) chance
they stopped to, it would be certainly for something other than freedom
of their people (and until I see why, that just seems more weird and so
more creepy, toward the future).

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature