4 ms·
Yeah, I remember back before ebooks, we could all just Xerox the books we owned, bind them together, and sell or give away the copies to anyone we wanted to, an
by mwfunk 12y ago
Yeah, I remember back before ebooks, we could all just Xerox the books we owned, bind them together, and sell or give away the copies to anyone we wanted to, and they could do the same. It was a lot more work than just copying a file, but everyone was perfectly fine with people doing it.
Oh wait a minute, that's not at all what it was like. It's very easy to latch onto people like RMS who make everything seem so black and white, especially when they're older than you and can remember the "good old days" when everything was more civilized. These are all critical, important, vital issues that people should not let go of for one second and never stop thinking about. It's just unfortunate when people like RMS want to turn it into some grand good vs. evil narrative (frequently in which they see themselves in the hero/prophet role). It frames everyone with a differing or more nuanced opinion as someone who is not operating in good faith, which is just never good for anyone.
I don't think there's a person alive today who has all the answers about this stuff. There may not even be a correct or true or proper answer given the ways in which we've framed the debate, only a pseudoinverse solution that makes everyone the least unhappy on the whole. But we're long past letting any one person with their very, very, very specific ideology define that debate. I worry like hell about all this stuff, but the people going around saying "See?!? RMS was right!!!" might be counterproductive. It twists the debate back into "you're either with RMS or you're against him", and whatever his other good qualities may be, that's a tough pill to swallow for just about everyone. He approaches everything in the most fundamentalist way possible, which I've come to see as a sign of intellectual conceit rather than conviction.
- mwfunk 12y agoI just realized that I'm basically saying that RMS himself does not function in good faith, and I think that's the root of my distrust of him. He's the kind of person who likes to assemble elaborate ideologies over time. He doesn't seem like the kind of person who is instinctively skeptical about his own perceptions. I really don't get the sense that he ever plays devil's advocate with himself or actively tries to come up with the best arguments against his own beliefs in order to strengthen them. If he had ever written anything in which he talked about how his views have evolved or changed over the course of his life, that would be one thing. But I don't think he's changed his mind about anything over the past 30 years, outside of becoming even more fundamentalist. I don't trust people who never change their minds about anything, especially those who think changing their mind is a sign of weakness. If they are widely known for declaring those who disagree with them as being evil or otherwise morally and ethically questionable, I not only don't trust them but start to think of them as toxic distractions to the real debates that we all should be having.
- anonbanker 12y agoRMS strikes me as the kind of guy who is constantly arguing against himself, and playing the devil's advocate. In many speeches[1], he is not just setting up strawmen to fight his position, but is actively adopting other mindsets he does not agree with in order to explain concepts to an audience. But he's very good at stating his own (biased) opinion. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNBMdDaYhZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNBMdDaYhZA
- specialist 12y agopeople like RMS who make everything seem so black and white aka: Ultimatist. Just like the EFF, ACLU, NRA, NARAL, etc. The job of the ultimatist is to expand the Overton Window, challenge assumptions, highlight hypocrisy, ask uncomfortable questions. Agree or disagree, our public discourse would be less healthy without ultimatists like RMS.