SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
An Indian site, YourStory, has an unusually broad ranging interview with Richard Stallman. While much of the background and goals will already be familiar to SN readers, the interview is interesting not only for its scope but also that India is starting to take an interest in these matters.
To know Richard Stallman is to know the true meaning of freedom. He's the man behind the GNU project and the free software movement, and the subject of our Techie Tuesdays this week.
This is not a usual story. After multiple attempts to get in touch for an interaction with Richard Stallman, I got a response which prepared me well for what's coming next. I'm sharing the same with you to prepare you for what's coming next.
I'm willing to do the interview — if you can put yourself into philosophical and political mindset that is totally different from the one that the other articles are rooted in.
The general mindset of your articles is to admire success. Both business success, and engineering success. My values disagree fundamentally with that. In my view, proprietary software is an injustice; it is wrongdoing. People should be _ashamed_ of making proprietary software, _especially_ if it is successful. (If nobody uses the proprietary program, at least it has not really wronged anyone.) Thus, most of the projects you consider good, I consider bad.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday September 01 2017, @03:29AM (4 children)
Ah, I think I see where we're disagreeing. When I say "it's a science", I think you're hearing "we should approach this scientifically" Which I am categorically *not* saying. There is a difference between understanding the mechanics of something, and choosing to let that (inevitably imperfect) understanding be the governing factor in your actions. As an example - understanding fluid dynamics can in fact be quite useful in crossing a murky flooding river - it will give you valuable insight into what exactly the water may be doing that will be invisible to your senses until much later (maybe too late). But that understanding alone won't be of much value - you also have to know how to keep (and recover) your footing and equilibrium. And how to interpret the look and feel of the water so that you can figure out what you're not seeing. And recognize that even if you had 100% perfect information and understanding, that there's still just too much information for you to reason through fast enough to do any good - it's when you use your understanding to inform your intuition that it becomes truly valuable
And so when I say "time is a resource and allocating it is always an economic activity", I am not saying it's something that should be approached with charts and rulebooks, but rather that this is an activity that obeys certain well-defined (and moderately well understood) rules. And as with any game, you're going to play a lot better if you understand those rules and keep them in mind while you play. But your moment-to-moment decisions, as well as exactly what it means to "win", need to come from your heart and intuition.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 01 2017, @03:41AM (3 children)
Semantics, as I said, highly context dependent [xkcd.com]
In this case, the context asserted [soylentnews.org]:
and then the discussion flowed towards establishing the (limited) context in which the assertion is valid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday September 01 2017, @01:00PM (2 children)
What can you do with time other than spend it?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 01 2017, @10:53PM (1 child)
Having it (as a good/bad one)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday September 03 2017, @03:36PM
Having a good time is one of my favorite ways to spend time - but those are two rather different definitions of "time". The former refers to an internal state of mind and/or a conceptual grouping of events, the latter a finite quasi-physical resource which I'm always using it at a constant rate of 1 second per second. The former is what really matters on an individual level, and the latter is the substrate/resource from which they are made.
Honestly, if I'm missing something fundamental I'd love to see it.