Re: is free, open source software ethical?

In article <yOqdnWCX2uUPd1PanZ2dnUVZ8surnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 Richard Heathfield <rjh@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> Ron Garret said:
> 
> > In article <n7idnVtH674MfFPanZ2dnUVZ8gydnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> >  Richard Heathfield <rjh@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > 
> >> Ah, so an *irrational* person is someone who holds a view different
to
> >> yours?
> > 
> > No.  An irrational person is one who persists in a view in the face of
> > overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
> 
> Well, according to Chambers a /rational/ person is someone who is sane, 
> intelligent, endowed with (or agreeable to) reason. Chambers further 
> defines "reason" as "the mind's power of drawing conclusions and 
> determining right and truth" - which aptly describes the process through

> which I went with "The Selfish Gene".

Well, according to Garret, a rational person is one who bases his or her 
beliefs on experimental evidence.  So there.

> > All creationists are irrational.
> 
> That's a well-known fact, of course, and thus unarguable.

I didn't say it was unarguable.  You can argue it all you want.  But you 
will be wrong nonetheless.

> Here is another well-known fact, which is equally inarguable:
> All Californians are irrational. Gee.

There is a significant difference between being a Californian and being 
a creationist, to wit, that one is defined by geography while the other 
is defined by beliefs.  A better analogy would be to say that all 
Californians live on the West Coast (which is in fact correct).  Since 
rationality is a circumstance of belief and not geography, if you want 
to claim that all Californians are irrational then you have a burden of 
proof analogous to one who wishes to claim that all Creationists live on 
the West Coast.  But that claim that all Creationists are irrational is 
in fact a tautology, just like the claim that all Californians live on 
the West Coast.

> > (I don't know that you are a creationist, but you are strongly hinting
> > that you are.)
> 
> I'm not really an "-ist" of any description. My view used to be 
> such-and-such. Now, as a result of reading Dawkins, it's more 
> this-and-that. Perhaps there is an argument that I have not heard as
yet, 
> that can persuade me to revert to such-and-such. I don't know.

Why so coy about your beliefs?

> When scientists make claims that are not verifiable, their credibility 
> becomes important. When they say stupid things (e.g. "all creationists
are 
> irrational" or "there is no such thing as altruism" or "Olly's fish has 
> chickenpox" or "random data cannot be compressed"), I am likely to 
> reassess their credibility.

Random data in fact cannot be compressed.  That is actually part of the 
definition of random data.

> >> Of course the Sun revolves around the Earth - to someone who is
actually
> >> standing on the earth. And to someone who is standing (or vaporising)
on
> >> the Sun, the Earth goes round the Sun. And to someone hanging around
> >> somewhere off to stage left, the Earth and Sun are both revolving
about
> >> their centre of mass. And the thing is that all three of them are
right.
> > 
> > But some of them are more right than others.
> 
> No, absolutely not. Each is perfectly correct within his own frame of 
> reference, and there is no plausible and reasonable way to order those 
> frames in terms of "rightness". (Astrophysics is very postmodernist in 
> some ways.)

No, it isn't.  To say that the sun revolves around the earth is very 
badly wrong in fundamental ways.  To give just one example, if the sun 
revolves around the earth, what is it that keeps it moving in a 
non-straight-line path?

> > Of course people write programs (and do all manner of things) in the
> > interests of other people.  But for it to be altruism they must get
> > nothing in return.  But you *are* getting something in return:
> > friendship.
>  
> Nonsense. The friendship already exists and would have continued whether
I 
> wrote the program or not.

Friendship is an analog relationship, not a binary one.  It is likely 
that your good deed strengthened your friendship in ways that will 
provide you some direct benefit down the road.  Maybe she'll now do you 
a favor that she might otherwise not have done.  Maybe she'll go out 
with you now.  Maybe your good deed moved her closer to the point where 
she wants to bear your children.  Like it or not, if you're human 
chances are good that your brain is hardwired to want that, and 
improving your chances of getting laid is a benefit to you that is not 
fundamentally different from improving the quality of the food you eat 
or the shelter you live in or the clothes you wear or the car you drive.

rg