[LAU] Some disturbing news

[Victor A. Stoichita]

Hi Louigi!

I look forward to reading your whole argument in depth! I’m sorry 
that I can’t do it right now, but I’d still venture a remark in 
this discussion (feel free to reply with a link if already covered 
in your work). 

> You bring up an interesting point: if I understood correctly you 
> say that
> we should start with the 4 freedoms and then show that not 
> having them is
> bad.

I think the problem raised by Thorsten is this indeed: we’d better 
start with the idea that human beings are free. Then, they give 
some freedoms away, for instance by social contract or because 
others force them to. This could have good or bad consequences for 
them, or no consequence at all.

> So, we definitely cannot start by postulating the 4 freedoms, 
> and consider
> them to be right until the point someone proves otherwise. 
> This is just
> invalid reasoning.

The postulate is not about 4 freedoms. It’s about absolute freedom 
as a starting point. I can’t see why it’s "invalid reasoning" to 
think that human beings are free to the extent permitted by laws, 
norms and social conventions. 

(Of course, we’re talking about moral freedom: what we have the 
"right" to do, not the actual capacity to do it or not. I may be 
free to fly… but I can’t for lack of wings. The same applies to 
writing or modifying software — I for one don’t have wings for 
that either).

In fact, you make the general claim that people should "proove" 
what they hold to be true:

> However, to answer you question more generally, the reason why 
> anything we
> postulate must be proven somehow is that if we do not do that, 
> we are then
> open to postulating whatever and then acting on it, waiting for 
> people to
> disprove the idea. This is a form of an argument from ignorance, 
> which
> asserts that a proposition is either true or false because of 
> lack or
> absence of evidence or proof to the contrary.

But what you oppose is a bit more that an "argument from 
ignorance". Falsification might well be the only "reasonable" 
position when it comes to proofs and evidence. At least that was 
Karl Popper’s idea in the 1950s. He held that you can’t really 
demonstrate a scientific theory by adding up "positive" 
observations. You could observe 101 swans and note that they are 
all white, there’s still no guarantee that the 102nd swan you come 
accross won’t be black. Therefore, the theory that "all swans are 
white" can never be fully demonstrated. It can however be fully 
falsified: find a black swan, and you have proven that the theory 
is wrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability).  

I think that this is an aspect to keep in mind if one wants to 
discuss ethics as a matter of "reason". You can’t "proove" that 
people should have 4 freedoms (or 5 or 18). You could only proove 
that they shouldn’t. For that, you’d need to specify why it’s good 
to restrict freedom (as a general condition) in those 4, 5 or 
18 respects. 

It seems to me that Stallman and other defensors of FLOSS are 
pretty clear about the kind of world they want to live in. I’m not 
sure that there’s an "opposite" view. Shareholders of companies 
like Microsoft probably value "freedom" too and wouldn’t reject 
the ideal of free flowing knowledge and cooperation in a society 
of universal love. It may be just that they care less about this 
than about something else (like personal enrichment). 
Nothing "evil" here indeed. Maybe one "morally conscious" position 
versus one which simply doesn’t care?

Cheers,
Victor