RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/117579594140229264
If free software is not about ethics, then what the fuck is its point.
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@Gargron this is the point, i think, at which i finally admit that the free software movement is dead to me.
anyone got anything else? i mean, i'm still going to want to write code based on tools that are zero cost, and give them away to anyone crazy enough to want them. but … not in association with these bozos…
@Gargron
AI- abuse make easy to recognise the addicted. Just like fentanyl.
@Gargron Yes, FOSS should include ethics.
But. For individuals, there's a problem. We are all embedded in societies. We don't live without them. If the societies have unethical structural components, individuals can do what they can but on a day-to-day level it's never much. It's like telling people to boycott the transit system because it uses fossil fuels and make their own. You can't. So do you never go anywhere? That doesn't change the system either.
The question about slavery is not hypothetical. It's embedded all over the place. There was a web site maybe 15 years ago that would estimate for you how many enslaved people globally were supporting your life.
So we've all answered the GNU maintainer's question and answered it the same way. Yes, we go on making contributions and accepting them. Mainly by being unaware of the slavery.
But the fact remains that we can either do nothing because our societies have grossly criminal components, or we can do what's possible for us in the moment and maybe all the invisible molecules of change eventually make a less criminal system.
Obviously, it would be better if we did that without lying to ourselves.
@Gargron Click bait coming to FOSS. The same tactics as in politics. I am seeing too much of this lately. For sure, it is the same ol' crowd benefitting. Beware!
@Gargron Is it money? Somehow it has to be amount money.
Many free softwares are collecting a lot of donations that I assume "reimburse" the managers of the project.
It must be more.
Without debating philosophy and solely focusing on practicality and ease of use — the two things that actually will make the majority of people choose most things — explain to everyone why they should choose a project?
Just because something is free or open source, does not mean the people will choose it.
@Gargron Well, assuming it's logically correct, what can you do? Reject it and wait for the next guy to come up with the same solution?
Maybe blacklist the user from future contributions but you can't blacklist ideas/ solutions?
@Gargron @Mabande @ariadne is anyone actually surprised? Tech people, especially in the FOSS arena, have been relentlessly ethics-free forever.
Look at the pressure it took to make Torvalds realize “HOLY SHIT, those non-white males are *people*!!”
Their attitude towards even basic accessibility shows how much they still fuck ayn rand’s corpse.
@Gargron ethics and humanity do not go together
@Gargron There are a Range of solves - not just single-solve mindset "points". Equally, it's extremely rare for a solve to be too large of a Range, to be justly applied.
Therefore, it's more productive to scale ethics as part of a 'higher/better' solve, than its predecessor.
Call it 'evolution', but teach it as Behavioral Science, which should be Core Education instead of too many deRanged.
@Gargron This is bad, but the shitheads here legitimately trying to excuse this make it even worse.
The people who call themselves Libertarian these days don’t have ethics.
It’s a left-wing word and it’s origin expropriated like so many other words and concepts by power hungry evil people.
Libertarianism requires the discipline that one abstain from harming other people. This aspect is completely ignored by the right wing.
Freedom for me to hell with thee
@badrihippo looks like somoene discovered the same metaphor I like to use....., and then answered wrong!
@Gargron for me free software has been, can we make a world where everyone has free, same access to software? and an ecosystem where if you don’t like what you see, you can change it.
but if the software you use is built off of trash morals why use it?
@mrkeen @Gargron @jpeisach IF I were to assume this is not slavery normalizing (and an on the nose example of why so many boosters are supremacist mindset adjacent) AND take it as a good faith argument... the analogy would be: if my neighbor forces their slave to bake bread and insists I serve that bread at a gathering for friends and family, why don't I have the right to refuse that bread and bar my neighbor from attending?
@mrkeen the response was directed at your comments
you gonna stop relying on trigonometry if you find out Pythagoras was way into slavery?
if your neighbour has slaves, do you go over to his house and kill him?
Full context chain is visible publicly without logging in: https://mastodon.social/@mrkeen/117581759652300770
@shom @Gargron @jpeisach Right, thanks. I think I see what I was going for, and probably fucked up tbh.
Gargron posted a screenshot of a rant about LLMs which used slavery as a rhetorical device. Not only must we not use LLM ourselves, but we have to turn down labour from those who do.
I wanted to know if we turn down basic mathematics too, but he dodged the question.
If this thing is really as bad as slavery, well, what are supposedly moral folks doing about it?
Not only must we not use LLM ourselves, but we have to turn down labour from those who do.
You don't have to do anything. You also don't have to question choices that others make, using extreme hypotheticals like "if your neighbour has slaves, do you go over to his house and kill him?" Just like I don't have to respond, but I chose to by providing an analogy that was, in my assessment, closer to the issue being discussed:
if my neighbor forces their slave to bake bread and insists I serve that bread at a gathering for friends and family, why don't I have the right to refuse that bread and bar my neighbor from attending?
The point is, we both exercised our choice.
I wanted to know if we turn down basic mathematics too, but he dodged the question.
Again assuming this was asked in good faith, we can't "turn down basic mathematics" because it's a property of reality, baked into the physics of the universe. However, we could choose to not name those principles after individuals.
If this thing is really as bad as slavery, well, what are supposedly moral folks doing about it?
People are choosing a whole range of reactions from actively pushing back against LLMs, not using LLMs, not voluntarily using LLMs, not boosting LLMs, not accepting LLMs as an inevitability that has to permeate every aspect of life.
The point is choice and agency; not submitting to the talking points of big tech, engaging in whataboutism, submitting to a false sense of inevitability, and not outsourcing all critical thinking to the machines run by broligarchs. It is a choice.
@Gargron @onepict given it comes from free as in freedom, and slavery was rife in "the land of the free", at least they're consistent.
Absolutely morally wrong, but consistent.