Coincidentally I recently published the perhaps final version of my work, and then had a conversation with a good friend (who hosts this blog on his own dime) about purpose. The original post and comment stream is interesting I think but secondary to the point here. https://plus.google.com/u/0/103840576618549598514/posts/BEijF8JGgkW?cfem=1
Without going to much into it, when I was younger (lol, now I sound like an old man) I debated a lot and sharing my thoughts and making sure they were understood was almost a neccessity for me. I can’t say what exactly happened, but I don’t feel that way anymore. It’s not that I have given up, I’m far from that, it’s more like I developed some kind of trust that people will find knowledge (call it the “truth”) if they honestly search for it. Also I guess I realized that the main problem isn’t that we don’t have access to that knowledge (people far more intelligent than me have contributed incredible knowledge/insights and still got ignored), but that we just have trouble accepting it.
This allows me to be a lot more tolerant and relaxed when it comes to opinions that differ from mine, but it also takes away most of the motivation I would need to put enough effort into such a blog to actually make it reflect my opinions and thoughts in a meaningful way.
If this sounds like an excuse, that’s because it partially is; I know that. It doesn’t change the way I feel though.
Anyway, I’m glad people like you shoulder this task (which can be a very unrewarding one, I know that) and I try to support those people if I can and have the energy and time, but I don’t think I’ll start writing again in the near future. 🙂
We have quite a bit in common. Indeed I could speak to almost every sentence of this post.
Our difference it would seem is that on top of my intellectual drive I have some kind of instinctive one. Like the nerd equivalent of an anger management problem. If called to the fray, I respond, with or without my consent to a large degree.
However, I’ve recently finished my book. (Lower right of my blog.) And found thorium. This lets me “off the hook” intellectually having now written on every major issue and still aiming myself at the most important one, I am “free” to climb into a partial filter bubble.
I did not know going in that logic was worthless as a persuasive tool for the vast majority of issues. The only thing I don’t doubt is the majority accuracy of the final product. No one has recently stood against me in debate on any subject. Either no one can because I’m right, or no one will because I’m crazy. This is where the experiment comes in because I have to gamble.
If I’m just crazy I’m by definition incapable of knowing. But if I’m right… Well, that gave me obligations. Those obligations are now satisfied. All I have to do now is live up to my own standard, stay sane, and wait.
My next project is getting into the habit of finally writing fiction.
“I did not know going in that logic was worthless as a persuasive tool for the vast majority of issues.”
Yeah, that’s a harsh lesson to learn…
“Either no one can because I’m right, or no one will because I’m crazy. ”
There’s a third possibility: Sometimes the person you debate with is just not willing to invest as much energy into the debate as you are, which leads to you “winning” the debate without actually succeeding to convince them. This happened to me quite often, but I didn’t realize it until my mother(!) pointed it out.
I’m glad you feel free to relax a bit and I’m thrilled you decided writing fiction. You certainly have the skills to be good at it, let’s hope you will also be successful!
“There’s a third possibility…”
I lump that under undecided between the primary two outcomes. I believe viewpoints can be reduced to atomic elements and with respect to each of those elements people are either wrong, or I am wrong. If I am wrong they should be able to prove it.
Ultimately either I’m right, or something is so badly amiss I’ll never be able to accept evidence of being wrong.
The third category is implied, sorry for not being explicit about it. People who are dead, people who I’ll never encounter, people not born yet, etc.
The ones who walk away for reasons X or Y, are no different in effect from that third group because they didn’t stick around long enough to get properly sorted. From inside it changes nothing because either I’m wrong and they shirked their duty in the whole peer review model, or they tried and I rejected their input because I’m crazy/irredeemably flawed until they gave up. (This truly is binary with regard to specific elements, but on the macro scale it can be a blend.)
Also a lot of it depends on methodology, I realize that. People like +Hugh Mann for instance are more than capable of this exhaustive fact checking but don’t because they reject the methodology itself. I have no way of knowing if that’s the proper course of action, which it may well be, so again I’m back to the crazy/Cassandra model.
This unknowability, this recognized permanent uncertainty, is why I am incapable of stepping away much of the time. That nagging doubt, that this debate will be the one that changes everything. Driven by a kind of instinctive conditioned faith that accuracy will lead to a positive place, either for me or them, and I take that responsibility I mentioned seriously.
I should also add that I am assuming equal axiomatic baseline. Volitionism is based on the axioms of pleasure and life being good. It’s perfectly possible to start from different axioms, look at the same reality, and come to different conclusions.
I ask this question to illustrate the point that there is a point when the unthinkable must become thinkable. I ask this question because it’s a good idea to anticipate this sort of thing.
We are at the worst point for civil liberties the history of the west has ever seen. To get qualitatively worse from here we’d have to break out (more of) the East German or North Korean tool box.
I mean Jesus, look around. At what point (before it’s too late of course) if not now will it be justified to openly speak about, if not overtly plan for, our last resort?
Democracy is clearly dying, if not long dead.
That isn’t hyperbole. Look at the facts. (Feel free to suggest others.)
Indeed, even this post, despite (this sentence and) my overt and well known opposition to violence and vengeance could be construed as incitement of some quasi illegal type.
None of that is secret, or even uncommon knowledge. The facts have literally ceased to matter.
How bad does it have to get (for everyone, not just you) before talking about revolt stops being crazy/criminal talk?
Your silence is killing people, and the next death might well be yours.
“…the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” ~John Steinbeck
“There’s a point far out there, when the structures fail you and when the rules aren’t weapons anymore, they’re shackles, letting the bad guy get ahead… One day you may face such a moment of crisis.” ~Jim Gordon, DKR
I’ve come up finally with a name for my philosophy.
Volitionism is the term I’ve coined for a system of thought which extends from the axiomatic bedrock of pleasure and health being good to the overt conclusion that volition has sanctity and should be ultimately respected.
This manifests in a world view that rejects trickery, deception, authority, vengeance, and force. (Among other things.)
http://underlore.com/Food%20for%20Rage.html The word does not occur in this book yet but now that I’ve nailed it down, I’ll insert it. Yet this book is absolutely in line with it. I’ve known this and thought like this for decades but I didn’t have a name until today.
This began as a debate started by the content of this essay/event. http://underlore.com/mozilla-autocracy/
“You forget one key thing, this is open source, this is people taking their own personal time to make this, and simply choosing to allow you, the non-developing user, gain the benifits of their work.
The only incentive for them to cater to their nondeveloper users needs is ego. The difference between saying I develop on a browser that 5 people use, and I develop on a browser that millions use.
If you were to give me a cookie (for free) that wasn’t my favorite, but I ate anyways, how would you react if I started ranting about what utter crap it was that you couldn’t cater to my needs and given me a peanut butter cookie?”
Incorrect. That makes several false assumptions. Firstly, that ego is the only possible motivator. Many people are compelled to perform their art regardless of profit, indeed many pay for it in supplies and equipment and opportunity cost. Secondly it assumes that the responsibility to cater to their emotions is mine simply because I use something to which they contributed. Why should I?
Your metaphor is insufficient, firstly because a cookie is expended upon consumption, secondly you can’t improve a cookie after it’s been eaten, and thirdly no claims of value are made by the cookie in your scenario as they are implied by OS software, regardless of EULA/TOS butt covering.
It would be better to say something like being given a cookie for free and cracking my tooth on a gravel I found inside it. And the chef saying “yeah we’ve known there were gravels in the mixer forever, but hey its free, so shut up.” The very fact of it being a cookie implies it is functional as a cookie.
Human motivation simply doesn’t work like that.
www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
I’ve made several guest edits to wiki just because I could. There is no ego in it, it’s something I feel like doing. Just because some coders choose to try and make something like that a career or a life consuming hobby doesn’t impart any special responsibility to me.
The drive for profit, egotistical or fiscal, as the only motivator, is a myth cooked up by RIAA/Ayn Rand/Horatio Alger types to justify an aristocratic pay scheme that would have been unconstitutional had software existed during our formation.
If it became impossible to make a living from writing code the quality of code would expand exponentially in the same way that graffiti art has done. All monopolies corrode quality, and each software patent is a tiny monopoly. On not just a revenue stream but a particular way of solving a problem.
By your logic complaint about political figures is hypocritical on the grounds that I am not in politics. We apply such standards no where in our culture except in the software world. That will change once we have a truly user friendly coding language.
Put simply, nothing deprives me of my right to demand improvement of those capable of making it.
They are just as capable of not making the improvements. Their choices do not dictate my responsibilities. If they didn’t want complaint, they shouldn’t make their work public. That’s why I don’t publish my fiction, I don’t want complaint. But I know that as a writer, the instant my work is made public, it becomes open to criticism. Regardless of the price I charge or don’t charge for reading it.
In fact I can’t think of a single form of complaint I couldn’t shut down with the logic you’ve applied.
“Complaint is one thing, verbally assaulting is another… especially when they are doing you no harm.
It would be somewhat similar to the difference between me stating that I found your posts boring and uninteresting, and saying that you were being a fascist, forcing your opinions on me by posting only what you’re interested in.
You’re are essentially doing the second. And I imagine you’ll point out the difference between information and a product or service, it’s all a service of some form, regardless of what is being offered. “
Setting aside the fact that you didn’t answer my core point at all…
“Complaint is one thing, verbally assaulting is another”
And those in power always define complaint as assault when the complaint is valid, systemic, and devastating, case in point: Recent arrests on the bridge. (www.justiceonline.org) The one thing a group must respond to most strongly if it wishes to survive are questions put to its core reason for being. This is the inherent conflict of interest presented to any problem solving group. Left to their own devices any such group will perpetuate the conditions which demand their existence regardless of the social cost. This is why we regulate business and the concepts of property.
Society simply hasn’t caught on and adapted to the scam perpetrated by various groups. Media producers, coders, and pharmaceutical companies are the chief examples. No pharmaceutical company wants to cure the conditions which they profit from treating. The only reason cures are even attempted is because other corporations seek to undermine the profit margin of a competitor, but if they have the choice of simply creating a slightly better treatment instead of a cure, they would be fiscal fools not to do so in the current intellectual property climate. Since said climate is entirely our arbitrary invention, this means that it’s possible and therefor morally urgent to change said climate.
“…especially when they are doing you no harm.”
Harm is also subjectively defined, and the definition of those in power is often the more accepted because most people when given the choice between standing up, or rationalizing sitting down, will end up warming the nearest chair. History is written by winners. The culture of obsequious silence as honor, and the ownership of ideas as objects, and rewarding people who have a vested interest in making sure their esoteric secrets stay secret, a vested interest in making sure technology stays mystical, expensive, and inaccessible, without a tithe to the local nerd guild, makes my skin crawl. (This is part of why I stopped repairing computers. I was exploiting people by definition no matter what I charged.) I do not have the right to withhold solutions for profit. That is a violation of the social contract, and of my ethics.
How many coders are working on ways to innovate themselves out of a job? Shall I be generous and say a tenth of a percent? How much of that 10th is indirect, i.e. working to innovate other coders out of a job to make themselves more valuable?
“It would be somewhat similar…”
Not remotely. You’ll notice you keep having to struggle to create exaggerations and wild scenarios to try and justify your point. You’re not making examples you’re setting up straw men. Your example presupposes that I am attacking specialization, I am not, I am attacking extorting the whole of humanity for a paycheck because of your chosen specialization. Your logic is exactly the kind used by wallstreet ceos to justify their ludicrous pay. Coders hate freedom of information and ease of use for the same reason math instructors fear calculators. Ultimately a device will replace coders. They are the hand washers, lace makers, and butter churners of our era. But unlike those professions, the ability to produce the device which will replace them lies within their occupation’s skill set almost exclusively. This is why innovation in code itself, or effort to foster lay adoption of programming to any degree has been slow to say the least.
Though, there is reason for hope. (Ironically from the same people who are automating every facet of mathematics.)
www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_math_with_computers.html
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Computable_Document_Format
“And I imagine you’ll point out the difference between information and a product or service…”
Yes I will. They are different, that is why we designate them separately. The terms may be interchangeable thanks to fiscally motivated semantic sleight of hand, but they are not objectively or logically equivalent. A classic example is the ubiquitous practice of noting cost as a sum of labor plus materials. But even that is more work than coders do because they exist in a corrupt system of extortion that allows them to perform a job once and be paid for it repeatedly forever. Mechanics for example don’t get to license the result of their labor and charge a fee for its use. They are only allowed by culture to charge for their labor directly.
Can you imagine? “By starting this car and driving away you agree to be bound by our terms of service, turn ignition key to continue.”
How many medical devices are exorbitantly expensive on the justification that development costs were high? (which is on its face a fallacious argument. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy) Now, how many of those costs were software derived? Following the chain of materials from dirt to chip how may steps got stuck with a license fee or had to pay extra to offset a license fee a provider was forced to pay?
Patenting code is essentially patenting answers and then charging a fee for their use. That’s loathsome by any cogent ethical standard. The classic exaggeration of patenting a vowel or addition itself, and charging for their use actually does apply in spirit, the only difference is degree. What’s worse this trend is feeding back into the physical world as anything representable as numbers, which is everything, becomes patentable. Seeds, and genes for example. Soon not starving to death in some instances will be a crime thanks to this very logic. (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Suicide_seeds and https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Monsanto#Farmer_suicides)
No one who understands the ramifications of that or the origins of patent law can agree with such uses.
Over time, if this (your) philosophy persists in being a precursor to public policy our children will be born owing a license fee for infringement of their DNA, like some twisted techno version of original sin. Fortunately this was addressed by the court.
Indeed, the distance between a corrupt early clergyman and a modern professional coder is far smaller than anyone wants to admit.
Both speak esoteric languages which they work to hide from others, both seek pay in either donations or extortion, both use guilt and other emotional manipulation tools to secure their social position (like with your spurious declaration that complaint is equivalent to assault), both fight amongst themselves over trivial and arcane differences that no outsider can understand or care about (Java, pro or con), and both have insinuated themselves into the very fabric of society rendering their own demographic the only one capable of removing the need for the demographic, only priests could tell the flock that god doesn’t need the church any more much like only coders could code an intuitive language, or the tools to translate human speech into code. I could go on and on.
Most importantly is that both groups are based on a single core article of faith. In the case of coders that it’s legitimate to charge for something that once created can be distributed infinitely. There is no reason outside profit (arguments on that front boil down to Ayn Rand capitalist fantasy) to suppose this, and every reason to oppose it. No material example exists to properly capture the essence of this claim, and until its invention every payment system for either goods or services applied to things of a finite nature. My labor has limits, my materials have limits, my software does not.
The closest thing would be viewing a painting, or reading a book. Even before software, people realized there was a clear difference between charging for a finite commodity and charging for an infinite one. This is why for much of history painters were hired and paid for their time painting, not for a license to view their paintings. That is what a patron of the arts was. This is why there was a clear difference between patents and copyrights once finally they existed.
License fees are a bit like property taxes, they are extracted by fiat. No one would tolerate software fees without homelessness, a rifle, and prison rape at the end of the “hell no I’m not paying” chain of consequences. Virtually every business owner knows that they have to pay coders to operate in the modern world, their only choices are how they pay and who they pay, or not to operate, or to become criminals.
Of course no one makes these connections because simply understanding them takes too much mental ram and time expenditure (neither of which in my opinion give me or anyone else a right to exploit them, no matter how capable I am), further, it’s simple to employ a strategy of divide and conquer, focus on tiny little points, when the actual cost and problems occur at a completely different scale in seemingly unrelated domains. Heh, it seems this actually does have something to do with the price of tea in China 🙂 Classic common good problem. Each coder behaving rationally based on old mercantile logic adds up to systemic disaster (see sunk cost link).
But coders, a selfish lot ultimately when pressed, like CEOs, will dismiss the prices paid by others, some indeed even brag about their clever methods of “externalizing cost.” Or they wax judgmental on what they are owed and who deserves to be exploited.
Many software firms have cleverly found ways to eliminate even that tiny amount of work coders do (yes tiny, when viewed from the whole as each coder replaces scores of traditional workers, this is what makes them so profitable), via outsourcing, making themselves in effect police backed middle men, selling Indian labor for a hefty mark up, circumventing the spirit of minimum wage laws and copyright/patent laws simultaneously.
Some even more clever and loathsome firms don’t even bother with that much productivity, forgoing goods and services altogether, they simply acquire the patents of others and then extort license fees, in effect renting facts. The very existence of patent trolls is prima fascia evidence of the flaw in coder logic. If the system were actually based on charging a legitimate fee for a legitimate good or service, it would be impossible to create a profitable firm that literally produces nothing, and services no one. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll)
Friendly A.I. (which could easily be trained to translate human speech into applications, if it isn’t a universal application in and of itself. Either of which obviating coders) is quickly becoming the economic equivalent of a cure for cancer in the sense that far too many people are motivated to prevent its development simply to preserve their monopolies and profit margin.
The difference between a patent and a copyright presupposes that not all forms of information should be patentable. Current coders and coder logic and the subsequent impact on patent law corrodes that difference by exploiting the inherent philosophical gray area one finds when asking, if an idea is a real thing. (yet another similarity with religion)
All this madness descends from the central notion coders put forth, that non-adherence to their subjective and self serving world view, at least in so far as ponying up the cash or keeping hat firmly in hand and mouth firmly shut when requesting an audience, equates to theft or “assault” as you put it, or some other naughty descriptor.
As some of my readers and all of my friends know I’m a big fan of firearms. Sadly I only own a couple, they are expensive. I generally think of hand weapons as religious artifacts almost, signifying the triumph of human ingenuity over generations of predators. Icons of ability and responsibility. The step away from brawn towards brains. A physical reminder of the first technology. A talisman of our inclination and ability to change the world. From the samurai’s sword, to the gentleman’s rapier, to the minuteman’s musket, to the cowboy’s revolver, to the black panther’s rifle; personal weapons mean a good deal more than simply the ability to kill.
Most of the time all I carry is a knife. (Spyderco Endura 4 Wave, before that it was a Spyderco Spyderfly) I think of it as a human talon. It’s design means I can deploy it nearly as fast as I could deploy a fist. This makes it feel like a part of me, like not so much a device, as a modification to myself.
I feel like most people hate me but in my heart I am flattered that society trusts me literally with the lives of everyone around me. Trust is important to me. People I consider true friends are given keys to my home. I suppose this is a sort of personal ritual as well.
With that de facto authority over the lives of those around me comes the obligation to make good that trust. As such I feel it is my duty to be aware of my surroundings with an eye toward accomplishing goals for the group that an unarmed person may not.
The most obvious hypothetical would be stopping a dangerous person, someone like a terrorist. But any rational measure shows that the likely hood of that happening is effectively nil. The real help I provide is inserting doubt into the minds of muggers and the like. My presence in a crowd increases the chances that any given victim will be armed. This makes the crowd safer from opportunistic parasites.
All this is well understood and the effect on crime is documented, only the irrational dispute the numbers. But, it got me thinking. Perhaps a similar consequence of the transhuman movement is likely to occur. Weapons aren’t always artifacts. I suspect crime is equally affected by the known potential presence of any weapon, any threat to the would be mugger. Martial arts for example.
What’s going to happen to the crime rate when people can download Kung Fu as easily as Neo did or better yet when people can alter their build?
In short order its going to be like living on a planet full of aliens. Starting a fight could be suicidal, for all you know the person you’re about to punch has poisonous spines just under the skin. I think this is going to be a good thing. But of course The Company is going to want to regulate this, make sure everyone stays helpless. Fortunately its not going to be that simple.
For one we’ll have to rethink prison. Suddenly the idea of caging people will be infeasible for the same reason keeping all the animals in the zoo in the same room is infeasible. For two I don’t think people will be willing to allow the government to alter their genome on a whim in the same way we allow them to deprive us of our items. Taking my knife is different than taking my fists. For three trying to police the upgrades will be like trying to police mp3s. All the raw materials are readily available the only exotic component is the information.
I look forward to the day when antler bashing rituals fade into our past. Personal lethality is one way to speed it along.
I ask this question to illustrate the point that there is a point when the unthinkable must become thinkable. I ask this question because it’s a good idea to anticipate this sort of thing.