5 ms·

The human concepts of ownership implies a very important right that people tend to overlook: the right to DESTROY it, to undo it, to "take back what you said".

by nnq 8y ago

The human concepts of ownership implies a very important right that people tend to overlook: the right to DESTROY it, to undo it, to "take back what you said". This is important, because for physical artifacts having the right to destroy/demolish means having the right to create new things in its place (if I inherit a historical monument castle and I can't f demolish it to a pile of sand by my liking, than that's a scam, I don't really own it; also I might want to demolish it for aesthetic/informational reasons too, to "wipe" a part of its history from the human collective knowledge base). And for informational artifacts, the right to "undo" or "take back" is also important, because the fact that what you say/publish is there to haunt you forever will have a chilling effect... lots of interesting things will go unsaid unwritten. You have to burn books/libraries/things from time to time, otherwise everyone becomes afraid to write new books or build new things! And on a physical level death has the same liberating effect. You know you're gonna die sometime anyway, so you can enjoy that cigarette, it increasing your risk of an incurable cancer by 1e-3 percent will not have consequences that will haunt you forever... Death and destruction are necessary for true freedom, at least for the kind of freedom I want to have. Things like block-chain/graphs combined with content adressability bring significant limitations to FREEDOM. Endless responsibility and accountability for everything you've done and said would make life of all creative and disruptive people a living hell. Heck, if you're not free from at least some of the consequences of your actions, then why do anything at all, why even carry on living. And on: > You can't unring a bell, and you can't delete data from the world. Yes you can, if you kill someone, a part of the information that is in their head and haven't been shared with anyone yet will be lost forever. That's a good thing imo. If everyone who's heard the bell is dead and hasn't told about it to anyone... has the bell truly rung? The information that it has is irrecoverable now. And you can thank your friend entropy for that impossibility to recover this data and for the liberating effect that this can sometimes have ;)

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
> DESTROY ... and I can't f demolish it to a pile of sand by my liking, than that's a scam, I don't really own it There are other definitions of ownership more akin to stewardship. Some circumstances recognise others interests and therefore limit rights and elevate responsibilities. This, arguably, sensible.
danShumway 8y ago
> than that's a scam, I don't really own it Legally speaking then, you don't own information about yourself like your address or past actions. The government won't let you erase that information. The only way to make your friends and family forget it is to kill them, which is obviously highly illegal. Even with efforts like Right to Be Forgotten, Europe isn't positing that you actually own information about yourself in the same way that you're doing here. Right to Be Forgotten is a) balanced against public interest, and b) only applies to information access and indexing. Right to Be Forgotten doesn't mean that you can demand a newspaper burn all copies of an article it wrote about you. The reality is that "ownership" means different things in different contexts. There's not a single definition. When we talk about "owning" data or Intellectual Property, we don't mean it in the same way that you "own" a wrench. How can you own something that is inside my head?
- nnq 8y ago
  > How can you own something that is inside my head? If I put it there, I own it, and I should be able to destroy all proof that it's not purely a fabrication of your imagination. (Sure, you can still know it and use it to guide your decision, but it shouldn't be legally valid any more, and there should be no way for you to convince others it's true.) Yeah, obviously if it's in the heads of other people too, it would be more accounts in favor of that information being authentic, increasing the probability that I am lying about that in a legal situation. But key thing would be that it's a probability. I can destroy the certainty. That could swing depending on context, maybe I'm more trustworthy than the group of people arguing for the authenticity of that piece of information. Obviously there's great deal of criminal activities that can be protected by going too far with this, so it's a question of "tweaking the dial" until we get the right amount of informational "light" and "darkness". As Jung said, there are some who need light, and some who thrive in the shadows...
  - myWindoonn 8y ago
    There's two problems. First, there's a basic argument from the outside that you're fucking with historicity for no good reason other than that you think that you're more important than humanity. Second, from the inside, this simply isn't how memes work. Memes are designed to propagate and survive on their own. If your ideas are at all good or interesting to society, and they manage to become memetic, then you have zero recourse, just as if you were Patient Zero for some new plague. You shared it, and unsharing is impossible, regardless of how moral you might believe unsharing to be. Seriously, take some time and think about it: How many of your ideas and concepts are actually original to you? Almost none of them, right? And if you're honest with yourself, pretty much every concept seem inextricably linked to others. Really, what matters is the structure between ideas, and that can't be shared, since it's private to each person's mind. Anyway, if this doesn't sway you, I'm okay with it; you're purely a fabrication of my imagination.
hobofan 8y ago
> And for informational artifacts, the right to "undo" or "take back" is also important, because the fact that what you say/publish is there to haunt you forever will have a chilling effect... lots of interesting things will go unsaid unwritten. Yes, that's the root for a lot of information censorship. Society as a whole is still very immature and tends to pretend that not every human is flawed and has a past with mistakes. I hope that we can collectively move past that at some point.

by nnq 8y ago

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago

> DESTROY ... and I can't f demolish it to a pile of sand by my liking, than that's a scam, I don't really own it There are other definitions of ownership more akin to stewardship. Some circumstances recognise others interests and therefore limit rights and elevate responsibilities. This, arguably, sensible.

danShumway 8y ago

> than that's a scam, I don't really own it Legally speaking then, you don't own information about yourself like your address or past actions. The government won't let you erase that information. The only way to make your friends and family forget it is to kill them, which is obviously highly illegal. Even with efforts like Right to Be Forgotten, Europe isn't positing that you actually own information about yourself in the same way that you're doing here. Right to Be Forgotten is a) balanced against public interest, and b) only applies to information access and indexing. Right to Be Forgotten doesn't mean that you can demand a newspaper burn all copies of an article it wrote about you. The reality is that "ownership" means different things in different contexts. There's not a single definition. When we talk about "owning" data or Intellectual Property, we don't mean it in the same way that you "own" a wrench. How can you own something that is inside my head?

nnq 8y ago
> How can you own something that is inside my head? If I put it there, I own it, and I should be able to destroy all proof that it's not purely a fabrication of your imagination. (Sure, you can still know it and use it to guide your decision, but it shouldn't be legally valid any more, and there should be no way for you to convince others it's true.) Yeah, obviously if it's in the heads of other people too, it would be more accounts in favor of that information being authentic, increasing the probability that I am lying about that in a legal situation. But key thing would be that it's a probability. I can destroy the certainty. That could swing depending on context, maybe I'm more trustworthy than the group of people arguing for the authenticity of that piece of information. Obviously there's great deal of criminal activities that can be protected by going too far with this, so it's a question of "tweaking the dial" until we get the right amount of informational "light" and "darkness". As Jung said, there are some who need light, and some who thrive in the shadows...
- myWindoonn 8y ago
  There's two problems. First, there's a basic argument from the outside that you're fucking with historicity for no good reason other than that you think that you're more important than humanity. Second, from the inside, this simply isn't how memes work. Memes are designed to propagate and survive on their own. If your ideas are at all good or interesting to society, and they manage to become memetic, then you have zero recourse, just as if you were Patient Zero for some new plague. You shared it, and unsharing is impossible, regardless of how moral you might believe unsharing to be. Seriously, take some time and think about it: How many of your ideas and concepts are actually original to you? Almost none of them, right? And if you're honest with yourself, pretty much every concept seem inextricably linked to others. Really, what matters is the structure between ideas, and that can't be shared, since it's private to each person's mind. Anyway, if this doesn't sway you, I'm okay with it; you're purely a fabrication of my imagination.

hobofan 8y ago

> And for informational artifacts, the right to "undo" or "take back" is also important, because the fact that what you say/publish is there to haunt you forever will have a chilling effect... lots of interesting things will go unsaid unwritten. Yes, that's the root for a lot of information censorship. Society as a whole is still very immature and tends to pretend that not every human is flawed and has a past with mistakes. I hope that we can collectively move past that at some point.