37 ms·

This "just math" argument is so reductionist and unhelpful.

by DeIlliad 3y ago

matheusmoreira 3y ago
And yet it's true. Literally cannot be refuted. It's a fact that all information is a number.
- catapart 3y ago
  Bruh. I'm with you on IP being useless, but insisting on something being a "fact" is meaningless. It's a fact that everything can be represented in binary. You can identify every knowable concept as either "cat" or "not cat". That's a fact. Now... who cares? What does that being a fact mean? It means nothing. It's not useful. It doesn't prove a point any more than what you're saying does. All information is a number, that's a fact. Okay. Now... so WHAT? The charge here is that some public information deserves protection. You disagree with that but, again, who cares? Prove why your opinion on that is relevant to any other human being, or engage with your irrelevance all by yourself. On the "protect public info" side, we can say that things like your social security number needs to be necessarily public, but we need to be able to stop people from using it however they want. There are indexing reasons for that. There are medical reasons for that. There are (yes, far too many) financial reasons for that. And if you don't like that example, let's try one more directly applicable with a creative example: trade marks are public info. But if we let every person do whatever they wanted with a trade mark, they lose the real, tangible value that they provide (iconography is foundational to how human brains efficiently interpret information). So pick you poison, but then engage with the actual poison; don't just wink behind smug tautologies. Tell us how, in your view, we can have a framework that provides the values that we get from IP, when we don't protect IP, as a concept. Because, buddy, I've been longing for, and working towards, that kind of framework since I figured out how pathetically inept IP is at actually doing what it does.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    > Now... who cares? I care. So should you, and so should everyone here on Hacker News. > What does that being a fact mean? It means nothing. It means everything. It means what they really want is to more or less control what arguments you can pass to memcpy. The only way they can possibly do that is to destroy computing as you and I know it. Think about it, about what they're really doing. All information is bits and copying bits is a fundamental computer operation. In order to restrict that, computers need to be made so that they will run all the programs, except the ones that invalidate intellectual property. Most likely they'll be made so they can run only the programs they approve. Government signed binaries, programming licenses. Surely everyone here agrees that such a future is dystopian.
    - catapart 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - matheusmoreira 3y ago
        [flagged]
        catapart 3y ago
        Right. Because the only answer this ideology proposes is to "burn it all down and..." Which you might note is not an "answer" so much as it is succumbing to the chaos that you don't feel is important enough to control. I do appreciate you making that explicit though! It's often hard to get people to admit to such naked dismissal of functional societal mechanisms that actual people get practical, tangible value from. Definitely contextualizes the framing more vividly.
        matheusmoreira 3y ago
        > Because the only answer this ideology proposes is to "burn it all down and..." Nothing wrong with that. Intellectual property proponents will "burn down" the entire technology field to get their way. Every day it's some new DRM bullshit. They couldn't care less about hacking and values like computing freedom. Then you have governments who want to do things like stop citizens from using strong cryptography. The fact people currently get value from it doesn't justify its continued existence. > succumbing to the chaos that you don't feel is important enough to control. Controlling it requires destroying everything I care about. I'd sacrifice the entire copyright industry to keep it. > I do appreciate you making that explicit though! It's what I strived to do from the beginning. I want to see things clearly, as they are. If the conclusion is the current status quo is a lie and should be abolished, so be it.

This "just math" argument is so reductionist and unhelpful.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

And yet it's true. Literally cannot be refuted. It's a fact that all information is a number.

catapart 3y ago
Bruh. I'm with you on IP being useless, but insisting on something being a "fact" is meaningless. It's a fact that everything can be represented in binary. You can identify every knowable concept as either "cat" or "not cat". That's a fact. Now... who cares? What does that being a fact mean? It means nothing. It's not useful. It doesn't prove a point any more than what you're saying does. All information is a number, that's a fact. Okay. Now... so WHAT? The charge here is that some public information deserves protection. You disagree with that but, again, who cares? Prove why your opinion on that is relevant to any other human being, or engage with your irrelevance all by yourself. On the "protect public info" side, we can say that things like your social security number needs to be necessarily public, but we need to be able to stop people from using it however they want. There are indexing reasons for that. There are medical reasons for that. There are (yes, far too many) financial reasons for that. And if you don't like that example, let's try one more directly applicable with a creative example: trade marks are public info. But if we let every person do whatever they wanted with a trade mark, they lose the real, tangible value that they provide (iconography is foundational to how human brains efficiently interpret information). So pick you poison, but then engage with the actual poison; don't just wink behind smug tautologies. Tell us how, in your view, we can have a framework that provides the values that we get from IP, when we don't protect IP, as a concept. Because, buddy, I've been longing for, and working towards, that kind of framework since I figured out how pathetically inept IP is at actually doing what it does.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  > Now... who cares? I care. So should you, and so should everyone here on Hacker News. > What does that being a fact mean? It means nothing. It means everything. It means what they really want is to more or less control what arguments you can pass to memcpy. The only way they can possibly do that is to destroy computing as you and I know it. Think about it, about what they're really doing. All information is bits and copying bits is a fundamental computer operation. In order to restrict that, computers need to be made so that they will run all the programs, except the ones that invalidate intellectual property. Most likely they'll be made so they can run only the programs they approve. Government signed binaries, programming licenses. Surely everyone here agrees that such a future is dystopian.
  - catapart 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - catapart 3y ago
        Right. Because the only answer this ideology proposes is to "burn it all down and..." Which you might note is not an "answer" so much as it is succumbing to the chaos that you don't feel is important enough to control. I do appreciate you making that explicit though! It's often hard to get people to admit to such naked dismissal of functional societal mechanisms that actual people get practical, tangible value from. Definitely contextualizes the framing more vividly.
        matheusmoreira 3y ago
        > Because the only answer this ideology proposes is to "burn it all down and..." Nothing wrong with that. Intellectual property proponents will "burn down" the entire technology field to get their way. Every day it's some new DRM bullshit. They couldn't care less about hacking and values like computing freedom. Then you have governments who want to do things like stop citizens from using strong cryptography. The fact people currently get value from it doesn't justify its continued existence. > succumbing to the chaos that you don't feel is important enough to control. Controlling it requires destroying everything I care about. I'd sacrifice the entire copyright industry to keep it. > I do appreciate you making that explicit though! It's what I strived to do from the beginning. I want to see things clearly, as they are. If the conclusion is the current status quo is a lie and should be abolished, so be it.