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

[Garreau\, Alexandre]

Le 13/10/2014 à 09h34, Riley Baird a écrit :
> On 26/09/14 05:17, Garreau, Alexandre wrote:
>> 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 a
>> “<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.
>
> Ah, okay, I misunderstood your definition. If someone is autoimproving
> and powerful, they are likely to be able to increase my freedom. This is
> not true in all cases, and if we are being realistic, some people could
> take away my freedom, for example if they overthrew the government to
> replace it with a dictatorship.

Yeah, some people can exerce power. But that doesn’t stop that (a) it’s
still human being who are potentially useful/source of freedom *on some
other side* in parallel, (b) they exerce a power into the context of a
hierarchy, so the problem is not them but the hierarchy. If you delete
them, hierarchy stays, and someone else will take their place, and
nothing would have change, except maybe some nasty details on you,
because you killed someone, especially someone powerful, and that people
could consider you could keep doing that.

> But even if we consider that all humans are better alive than dead to me
> (and hence there is no such thing as freedom to use their flesh in
> cooking), then surely they would be better able to directly serve my
> freedom if I put them into slavery? Again, I'm not advocating this, but
> this is an example of how one person can have freedom at the expense of
> another person's freedom.

They would serve your power, not freedom, thus “you” as an element of a
hierarchy, not as an unique and particular individual with a will, a
personality, a mind, emotions, etc. That also mean that you are forced
to follow historic rules that until now allowed hierarchy to stay up
(rules of gender, sexuality, religion/moral/well-thought/wathever,
“races”, “nation”, capital, property, classes, etc.), otherwise you
could fall down in a very fatal way. It means that you are never
completely master of your masterness. And even when you —you between
some billions of others trying the best they can— try to go up, you’re
just following the general, widespread and essential (for people not to
revolt against hierarchy in itself) illusion of having a possibility to
go up in hierarchy, while the higher and stronger the hierarchy, the
unlikely someone is going to move from one place to another.

While when others are free, it means everyone is making the others more
free, so it can increase exponentially. Thus, everyone becoming more
free as everyone else is working that way, people are going to get more
free more rapidly, and thus to be useful to your freedom much
quicker. Imagine two situations: a centralized and hierarchized
distribution system… and a P2P one. In the former you could maybe,
potentially, in 1 chances over a billion, control what happens, and get
the comfortable illusion that’s the best situation for you, in the
latter, people would be going to exchange not only with you but also
between each other… Which one is the more likely to serve you the
better?

>>>>>>> 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.
>
> Do you objectively know that you are conscious of yourself?

I think, therefore I am.

>>>> 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.
>
> Basic maths might not be correct - it relies on premises. For example,
> Peano arithmetic defines natural number arithmetic through several
> axioms. We can say, that basic maths is true *given* these premises,
> provided that these premises do not contradict each other.

It’s innate premises that are built in our brain from our birth, the
most likely because of evolution and adaptation to environment (which is
therefore likely to follow similar rules).

> The knowledge that consciousness exists is more than just an
> observation, it is an observation that you cannot rationally argue
> against. If you try to do so, then you must have a capacity for
> rationality, for which a consciousness is required. If you can show that
> an observation is irrefutably true, then you have proven it.

Precisely. Ok, I misunderstood or misexpressed, but at the end I agree.

>>> 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”?
>
> Because, if the statement "everything is subjective" is subjective
> itself, then one subject is able to find that statement to be false, and
> thus cause something to become objective.

Subject is defined as “the youth”, not others. Thus there isn’t “another
subject”. And even if it were, what it would say and see would be
subjective too, and everything would be for her. So the statement would
stay true. Because when you say “subjective” you take into account “the”
subject, so only one subject, not several at the same time. Subjective =
“defined after subject, not object”, not “true for some and false for
other”.

>>>>>> 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/).
>
> But still, you are making the arbitrary choice to value "individuals of
> society". What about rocks?

Freedom, Equality and Solidarity with rocks doesn’t bring you and other
more freedom, equality and solidarity. All humans (maybe more, who
knows) are influencing you when you influence others because you’re part
of a same society, because society is what build your culture, thus your
personality, everything in your youth (in your brain) that doesn’t come
at birth from genes: 99% of your neural connexions. That includes even
trivial notions as basic language, basic notion of space, habits,
gender, etc.

> Also, just because something happens in nature, it doesn't make it right.

Of course. It is “right” when it’s in your interest as a moral subject
(when it serves you materially, socially and psychologically).

>>>> 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— to
>> 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.
>
> Sometimes, when we realise that we are wrong about something, it is
> right that we should change our beliefs, and in many cases, our will.
> However, humans are not computers, we can often simultaneously believe
> two contradictory statements without realising that we are doing it.
> When we realise that a contradiction exists, we can fix it. It is better
> to be slightly wrong with a contradiction than very wrong without a
> contradiction, because at least one is getting closer to the truth. So,
> we are freer when we are permitted to have contradictory beliefs.
>
> All communication is a form of manipulation (including this debate). I
> think that we need to consider the means of manipulation. In this
> debate, I am manipulating you through rationality; in my example, a
> person was being manipulated through guilt. Perhaps we can say that
> people need a capacity for rationality to be free. That way, when they
> are exposed to the marketplace of ideas, most people will choose
> something that is rational, or at least makes them happy.
>
> However, there will still be those that make a choice that makes them
> unhappy due to emotional manipulation. In *most* cases, they will be
> able to get out of this, so long as they have access to the marketplace
> of ideas.
>
> It isn't a perfect system. But I think that allowing people to freely
> make decisions, and to freely attempt to use words to attempt to
> manipulate each other is much better for freedom than using force to
> protect people from verbal manipulation. So, at least under this model
> of freedom, you can be free and unhappy.

I never said we should force people “not to manipulate people”. First
when saying “manipulation” I was meaning something going ahead
rationality and against the direct or indirect interest of the
individual “manipuled”. And then when I assimiled manipulation to power
and non-manipulation/“free-thought” to freedom, I was precisely meaning
that everything going against self-interest is more a “bug” in
willingness and thus a deficit in freedom than a contradiction in my
definition of freedom.

And this being freedom, of course it can be improved only by freedom,
“hav[ing] access to the marketplace of ideas” (though I don’t like the
analogy with market, ideas are not private property), never by authority
or force (that would just block the thing).

>>>> 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.
>
> I feel that it is too idealistic to say that if we give everyone
> freedom, they will suddenly lose their will to power.

“Give everyone freedom” is an hypothetical situation where everybody is
“perfectly free”. That situation doesn’t exist, but we can tend to it,
and quickly stick really close. Not all societies were governated by
individualism, hierarchy and will of power (only some, including our and
a lot of other which all mysteriously felt down after their
hierarchization overgrowth and its structure implosed). Besides that
everyday we get examples of people in alternatives working only for the
result of their work, not authority, just like in Free Software.

> Some people would be convinced, but all you need is a determined
> minority to continue to want power,

A determined minority suppose already the existance of a hierarchy and
of all a enourmous psychological and social system to enforce its
existence. You can’t get only a “determined minority” to want power, if
you have a hierarchy and people not willing to stop it, you’ll get
people willing to go up in hierarchy.

> and you are faced with two choices: use power to stop them,

I never spoken about any authoritarian way to use power to stop
them. You can just seek true freedom, not power, and thus stop obbeying
to authority rules (that’s the quicker, the best way and actually the
only to do, though not the simpler or easier).

> or let them gain power.

And then let them work everyday to gain more and more power as they gain
power, until we loose all right…

> The best equality-preserving solution that I can think of for this is
> to establish a rotational police force, in which everyone is given the
> opportunity to be a police officer. What do you think of this?

“Hard power” is not the most essential, strong and important side of
authority imposition, the called “soft power” is. Quite everything is
psychological and built in mind by society.

> In any case, I don't think that upon giving people freedom they would
> stop imposing hierarchical oppressive behavioral schemes on others.
> Sexism and racism aren't things that you can fix with laws (or the lack
> of them), cultural change seems to be the most effective method of
> combating them.

You misunderstood what I said. I didn’t said “if you give people freedom
they will stop imposing hierarchical oppressive behavioral schemes on
others”, I *defined* “giving freedom” to “stop imposing hierarchical
oppressive behavioral schemes on others”. Because that’s not freedom but
power, so it’s opposed to freedom. When I say “seek freedom”, “take/give
freedom”, “be/become free”, I’m not saying “do revolution against state
and/or capital, abolish the laws, and then everything is perfect in the
pink/rainbow /bisounours/ world”, that’s actually false, I’m saying you
have above all to fight everyday against yourself (actually: what has
been built into you) to deconstruct these authoritarian schemes.

>>> 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.
>
> I'll agree that a lot of work that people do is unnecessary. However, I
> don't think that it is possible to remove all human labour yet.
> Otherwise, businesses would simply automate the process of production,
> thus reducing the number of wages they have to pay and giving themselves
> a competitive advantage.

“All human labour” maybe, maybe not, I don’t really know. But I know
we’re really close to it (quite everything is already automatized in
industry and agriculture (that means only a few are actually producing
to feed the rest of mankind, with a rapport approaching a million, maybe
more), most of mankind is already working in services third sector), and
that we’re doing *a lot* less that what we can technically
achieve. Today McDonald has the technical plans to automatize completely
all its fast food production, suppress all the annoying/degrading work
they need… and fire all the students who work for McDonald. It’s
possible, easy and quite simple. But they’re not doing it. Worst,
they’re using it as a menace not to get these students ask more labour
rights. And with things like that we get absurd things as “neoluddism”.

Mankind is largely enough powerful to get quickly all its industry
completely automated, it would be actually really quick but would
require some transition were people pass more time to study than to
produce, and giving them more freedom. If it were in the interest of the
market and capitalism it would already have happened. Today only what’s
interesting for profit to automate is automated, not what’s interesting
for *people* to automate.

> However, I still believe that it would be possible to have a society
> where nobody is forced into working - if nobody collects garbage, then
> the streets will become messy, and eventually someone will be so upset
> by the situation that they will do it for free.

That’s true, and then by habits different people could start get into
doing that work too, more regularly, and then reflect on how to make it
easier, quicker, cleaner, develop machines for that (actually we already
have), etc.

> Similar arguments would apply to agriculture, because if food is not
> produced, society will starve.

Yes. Also most of our agricultural system is already almost completely
automated. And only a few people have to work to feed one or several
millions.

> That being said, under basic income capitalism, people also wouldn't
> have to work, and that seems like a much more practical idea.

You’re not “forcing” them as strongly as menacing them of starve and
lost of home, but you’re still pushing them to. And as I said work is
better done when done for its result, for society and/or by passion, not
for money or retribution in any way. This way you got perverse effects
of research of profit, creation of illusions like consumerism, hierarchy
of individual being able to work more and/or better than others who
couldn’t. And you can base everything that on the widespread and
fallacious logic of “merit”, of giving more to those who achieved the
most (which has scientifically not so much sense: incitation works until
a certain point, just as human will is not perfect, perfectly powerful
and perfectly rational, it doesn’t work and then it just lend to growing
inequality, crystallization of structures and authority), while those
who merit the least often are those who need the most, before being able
to do more.

> (btw, about creative work requiring human effort - computers are
> starting to do that too. :D The GPL-licensed "Soundhelix" generates
> algorithmic random music that sounds good within a few milliseconds.)

Just as GPL-licensed “XaoS” already generates for me within a few
milliseconds beautiful fractals to serve as background and lockscreen :p
It’s just another kind of factorization.

>>>> 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.
>
> Many people think that they want freedom, but they just have a bad
> conception of what freedom is. But some people actively dislike freedom.
>
> From http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20803 :
>
> "I'm not sure if it is good to have freedom or not," he said. "I'm
> really confused now. If you are too free, you are like the way Hong Kong
> is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic."

He’s talking against chaos, and if you ask him “why?”, like why he don’t
want chaos, at the end you’ll get something like “because I/we don’t want
to”/“because otherwise I/we can’t <something>”. At the end it’s just
saying again that to have some freedom you need some power.

Another thing you misunderstood is I was not talking about what people
want (even if it’s really close) but what people think to be Good (for
them, for others, and/or generally). World is today full of nihilists
everywhere.

> He added: "I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be
> controlled. If we are not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."

Oh, how surprising to hear that from someone trapped into one of the
most authoritarian and dictatorial state, with of course one of the
greatest propaganda system…

>>> 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).
>
> You're right; they most likely wouldn't be concerned about freedom.
> Maybe, if the international community put trade sanctions on both
> Palestine and Israel, only to be revoked on the condition that the two
> countries make peace, then they would have a self-interested reason to
> do so?

Well, most of Palestinian resistance is not the fact of Palestinian
state, Israeli’s is. Then I doubt international sanctions could be
applied, appliable or even useful: powerful and so antisocial entities
are trained to resist and ignore the concept of “sanction”. It’s one
(maybe even *the*) characteristic of antisocial behaviors. See how
sanctions on Microsoft decreased its monopoly. The same with ISP going
against net neutrality were it’s forbidden. The same for Monsanto. The
same with any big company going against law for profit.

And, of course, as always, the rulers are on the side of the oppressors
(when they aren’t the same). Actually for UN they’re US who have the
power to oppose any decision against Israel (not Palestine of course)
and it’s in their interest since that build them a powerful economic
ally and the powerful fear of musulman/arabic/“islamist”/whatever world
they need to pass laws causing threat to freedom (not only US actually,
even here in France I saw deputes in Assemblée nationale vote some
absurd and dangerous “antiterrorists” law, canceling innocence
presumption and three-power separation for instance).

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