3 ms·

The main difference is that Stallman is absolutely terrible at promoting that philosophy. Doctorow (not too familiar with Stephenson) has IMO done far more to

The main difference is that Stallman is absolutely terrible at promoting that philosophy. Doctorow (not too familiar with Stephenson) has IMO done far more to sell people on the goals of freely accessible technology by actually showing off examples of this stuff going awry and ways humans have managed to work around it and what the solutions could be (while leaving the actual solution up to the reader as to what best fits them). Stallman/the FSF on the other hand has spend the past 2 decades complaining about shit nobody cares about (GNU/Linux is and will always be the dumbest hill to die on), rethoric that mostly exists to promote the GNU projects nonsense (anyone remember their "ethical git servers", which conspicuously only approved Savannah as a "GNU seal of approval", and only because they couldn't get gitlab to load with librejs) or writing stuff that just... doesn't reach the masses because it relies on a lot of charged language. Doctorow presents the same broad stroke points that led to GNU Free Software, but actually knows how to explain them in a way that reaches out to people. Stallman preaches to the choir.

still_grokking 4y ago
> The main difference is that Stallman is absolutely terrible at promoting that philosophy. Depends on the audience, I guess… It's indeed almost impossible to reach most people with logical arguments. The only way to reach the masses is though emotions. GNU fails in this point, sure, as their argumentation is pure logic, and not a marketing psy-op. > […] shit nobody cares about […] dumbest hill to die on […] GNU projects nonsense […] charged language […] As always one can see from statements like those that the ideas and the logic behind are indeed too subtle for some people. Even that are, of course, the exact same ideas people like Doctorow refer to and promote.
- komali2 4y ago
  I don't agree with the tone of your OP, I think we need "weirdos" like Stallman to be the vanguard of these ideologies, whereas people like Doctorow can be, idk, maybe "translators" for the rest of the world to understand the ideology better. Some would say that's the whole job of a writer, which is a big part of Doctorow's schtick, being a good writer (not just all his activism). > The only way to reach the masses is though emotions. Here's where my however comes in: this is a dangerous mistake I think people like us often make. Maybe because we grew up watching Spock, but I think we tend to be judgemental towards Pathos, and judge Logos to be the only "valid" form of rhetoric. But, it's all rhetoric. Logos, Pathos, Ethos, they're all equally "valid" in that they're all at least equal in their ability to do what rhetoric does, convince people of your point of view. In fact, I think Logos is a really ineffective rhetorical strategy, because humans are extremely irrational. Far better to combine your Logos with a Pathos strategy, that is to say leverage your knowledge of human cognitive fallacies and tendencies to construct a good Pathos argument (or combination of all three) to win people to your position. Stallman is a pure Logos guy, through and through. Doctorow, on the other hands, writes up emotional stories, creating characters you can relate to, generates their worlds and fills it with some of the same problems we have (or will have) and shows how they can overcome those problems with the strategies Stallman preaches about. It's very effective, just look at Doctorow's career and the changes the EFF has wrought. Somewhere buried in the LessWrong beginner's wiki or whatever they call it is a really good article on how people like us (and people drawn to LessWrong) make this mistake about emotion all the time, we think being rational is to be like Mr Spock, but even in the show he was wrong all the time, his rigid rationality got him into trouble, and a more emotional and instinctual understanding was necessary. In the article that I can't find, it's argued that it's actual irrational to reject emotions, because emotions are a core part of being human and a completely valid driver of determining why you should do certain things, what you like doing, what your values are, etc. I mean, what else could be the driver, other than some kind of sterile utilitarianism? And even that would eventually require making decisions about what you value the utility of, which I'm not sure how you do without emotion. (whatever preserves the most human life - ok, why preserve human life? who cares? etc. I don't see how you escape it) I don't really even need to make that point though to argue in favor of not worshiping the almighty god of logic and reason, at the end of the day, being purely rational and logical and making these arguments just doesn't work, and Pathos does. If you want "your side" to win, you gotta just use Pathos as well.

still_grokking 4y ago

> The main difference is that Stallman is absolutely terrible at promoting that philosophy. Depends on the audience, I guess… It's indeed almost impossible to reach most people with logical arguments. The only way to reach the masses is though emotions. GNU fails in this point, sure, as their argumentation is pure logic, and not a marketing psy-op. > […] shit nobody cares about […] dumbest hill to die on […] GNU projects nonsense […] charged language […] As always one can see from statements like those that the ideas and the logic behind are indeed too subtle for some people. Even that are, of course, the exact same ideas people like Doctorow refer to and promote.

komali2 4y ago
I don't agree with the tone of your OP, I think we need "weirdos" like Stallman to be the vanguard of these ideologies, whereas people like Doctorow can be, idk, maybe "translators" for the rest of the world to understand the ideology better. Some would say that's the whole job of a writer, which is a big part of Doctorow's schtick, being a good writer (not just all his activism). > The only way to reach the masses is though emotions. Here's where my however comes in: this is a dangerous mistake I think people like us often make. Maybe because we grew up watching Spock, but I think we tend to be judgemental towards Pathos, and judge Logos to be the only "valid" form of rhetoric. But, it's all rhetoric. Logos, Pathos, Ethos, they're all equally "valid" in that they're all at least equal in their ability to do what rhetoric does, convince people of your point of view. In fact, I think Logos is a really ineffective rhetorical strategy, because humans are extremely irrational. Far better to combine your Logos with a Pathos strategy, that is to say leverage your knowledge of human cognitive fallacies and tendencies to construct a good Pathos argument (or combination of all three) to win people to your position. Stallman is a pure Logos guy, through and through. Doctorow, on the other hands, writes up emotional stories, creating characters you can relate to, generates their worlds and fills it with some of the same problems we have (or will have) and shows how they can overcome those problems with the strategies Stallman preaches about. It's very effective, just look at Doctorow's career and the changes the EFF has wrought. Somewhere buried in the LessWrong beginner's wiki or whatever they call it is a really good article on how people like us (and people drawn to LessWrong) make this mistake about emotion all the time, we think being rational is to be like Mr Spock, but even in the show he was wrong all the time, his rigid rationality got him into trouble, and a more emotional and instinctual understanding was necessary. In the article that I can't find, it's argued that it's actual irrational to reject emotions, because emotions are a core part of being human and a completely valid driver of determining why you should do certain things, what you like doing, what your values are, etc. I mean, what else could be the driver, other than some kind of sterile utilitarianism? And even that would eventually require making decisions about what you value the utility of, which I'm not sure how you do without emotion. (whatever preserves the most human life - ok, why preserve human life? who cares? etc. I don't see how you escape it) I don't really even need to make that point though to argue in favor of not worshiping the almighty god of logic and reason, at the end of the day, being purely rational and logical and making these arguments just doesn't work, and Pathos does. If you want "your side" to win, you gotta just use Pathos as well.