[HN Gopher] Moral lessons from free software and GNU Emacs
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Moral lessons from free software and GNU Emacs
Author : rbanffy
Score : 86 points
Date : 2021-12-21 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (protesilaos.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (protesilaos.com)
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's a good talk. The only quibble I have with it is the older I
| get, the less patience I have with this:
|
| > Never mistake conformism or obedience with virtue
|
| I would tweak it to say "Don't rely on conformism if you will
| gain more with autonomy." But that's the kicker; most users _won
| 't._ Microsoft and Apple are trillion-dollar companies not
| because they've tricked people into using their ecosystems, but
| because those ecosystems solve most people's problems most of the
| time without a lot of thought.
|
| The kind of person that slings emacs around for fun probably
| won't flourish lashed to Apple's mast. But most people care more
| about the destination than the journey for their computing, and
| for them, I'd recommend one of the two big OS vendors over trying
| to self-maintain a GNU/Linux desktop ecosystem 99 out of 100
| times. What the author calls "fake comforts" they just call
| "comforts."
| User23 wrote:
| > Don't rely on conformism if you will gain more with autonomy.
|
| The author and myself, among others, believe that we should be
| free to use our computing machines as we see fit. That is, the
| value of autonomy far exceeds that of any benefits of
| heteronomy. We believe that we always gain more with autonomy.
| That this is a minority view is of no ethical importance.
|
| However history, both in computation and in general, has shown
| us there is never a shortage of those willing to sacrifice
| their autonomy for the initially lower cognitive burden of
| letting someone else make decisions for them. The costs of
| doing so are often only apparent after some time.
|
| On using a system from heteronomous vendors such as Apple,
| Google, or Microsoft long enough, it will inevitably be changed
| in capricious and annoying ways. Those who abandon the virtue
| of freedom are forced to rationalize why accepting this abuse
| is actually a good thing. Meanwhile those who hold to freedom
| as a virtue do not. They either switch to a system that
| respects their autonomy, or they grit their teeth and bear the
| abuse without any need for calling evil good.
|
| For what it's worth I agree one of the things autonomy grants
| is the ability to give it up. I'm willing to grudgingly use
| closed firmwares and graphics drivers for example, but I view
| it as an ethical compromise and not anything good.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > That is, the value of autonomy far exceeds that of any
| benefits of heteronomy We believe that we always gain more
| with autonomy.
|
| Unfortunately, it's simply not true for everyone. I'd hazard
| it's not true for most... That the set of people who can
| really make a computer dance if the architecture is open is a
| tiny, tiny set. The net harm were that to be the only option
| (i.e. if Apples and Microsofts were removed from the
| equation) would be significant.
|
| I have older family members that I must continuously run tech
| support for. Most of my time is spent pruning their choices
| to the set of only things they want the machine to do because
| a wider space leads to confusion and inability to complete
| tasks (when it isn't being used as an exploit vector by
| malicious actors taking advantage of the flexible nature of a
| general-computing architecture to phish them).
|
| None of this is to say _nobody 's_ architecture should be
| open and mutable, and I fight hard against any attempts to
| make closed the only option on the table. But most users
| aren't power users any more than most drivers want to replace
| their own spark plugs.
|
| Autonomy and heteronomy should, ideally, both be options on
| the table, and I see no value passing moral judgment on those
| who adopt either. For some, a self-run architecture is the
| freedom of the frontier; for others, it's the freedom to get
| eaten by wolves in the jungle.
| User23 wrote:
| First, I acknowledge that your given observations are
| accurate. We just evidently view them in light of different
| set of principles.
|
| I've also been family tech support and as often as not the
| problem is that some app or other stopped working properly
| or altogether after a system update. I often get complaints
| along the lines of "I used to do X this way and now I
| can't, can you put it back?" And I pretty much just have to
| say "no, I can't. You need to now do X in this new way,"
| supposing it's still possible at all.
|
| More generally, I believe that the West, and perhaps the
| world, has been sliding toward ever greater heteronomy for
| several generations now. Not so long ago most drivers did
| replace their own spark plugs. Not so long ago virtually
| all computer software did respect the user's autonomy. And
| it's not like we're talking about the dark ages, this is
| all comfortably within living memory. On a similar note,
| the right to repair tractors is another big autonomy issue
| for farmers, especially smaller ones that are operating on
| razor thin margins.
|
| Another example is cooking. Also in living memory,
| virtually all food was cooked from scratch in the home.
| People had autonomy over what they put in their bodies. The
| submission to the heteronomy of a mostly processed food
| diet may well be responsible for a number of serious public
| health issues from endocrine disruption to obesity.
|
| I agree that many would be uncomfortable with having more
| autonomy. Nevertheless, we as a culture should value
| freedom and autonomy and hold them up as values to aspire
| to. As you say, some will benefit from autonomy more than
| others, but I just don't believe anyone truly benefits from
| having their autonomy taken away.
|
| By the way, I appreciate your spirit of pragmatism. I also
| try to be pragmatic. I recognize that in some matters
| heteronomy is socially beneficial. I simply believe we're
| striking a considerably suboptimal balance skewed ever
| further toward heteronomy. I think our social structures
| will become considerably less fragile if we work to
| encourage a culture of autonomy.
|
| Thank you for this exchange. I think you've laid out your
| position clearly and distinctly and I appreciate it.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >And, despite its extensibility, Emacs can neither read your
| mind, nor reprogram it.
|
| Not so fast there!
|
| m-x doctor
|
| http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-d...
|
| >RMS -vs- Doctor, on the evils of Natalism
|
| [...]
|
| RMS> Perhaps the people who have decided to have no children
| should start making proud announcements, so as to set a better
| example.
|
| Doctor> Is it because of your sex life that you are going through
| all this?
|
| RMS> I could start.
|
| Doctor> Is it because of hangups you have that you say you could
| start?
|
| RMS> I'm sure everyone on this list will be glad to know I don't
| plan to reproduce myself.
|
| Doctor> How do you reconcile your inhibitions?
|
| [...]
| [deleted]
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| The freedom argument immediately falls apart when asked to define
| "computer." Stallman appeared to be fine with his TI-30, but not
| the Xerox printer driver at CSAIL. What would he think of the
| flight control system of the plane he boarded for his all-
| expenses paid talk in Redmond?
| User23 wrote:
| Freedom isn't an argument, it's a principle. It doesn't have
| anything to do with computers per se. Look at the right to
| repair issues with tractors and other equipment that vendors
| actively stop their owners from repairing. We should be free to
| do as we wish with the machines we buy. If that's a PCB
| calculator we should be free to take it apart, desolder, and
| make whatever modifications we like. If it's a programmable
| computer, which includes PostScript printers, then we should be
| free to modify its programming.
|
| I'm going to hazard a guess that he'd say the owner of the
| plane should at the very least be able to inspect the source
| code and compile it. I won't speculate as to whether he would
| say the owner of the plane should be free to modify the
| software in a way that made the plane less safe, but I would
| hope not.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| Freedom is a principle. Using it to legislate consumer law is
| an argument, a bad one.
| tremon wrote:
| But speculation is half the fun!
|
| I'd hazard a guess that he would say that the owner of the
| plane should in fact be "free" to modify the control software
| of the plane, but that the owner (airline) would then be
| required to re-certify the plane as well. And that might mean
| that the Free argument extends to the airworthiness test
| suite used by the manufacturer as well.
| brabel wrote:
| This guy is a legend... his emacs videos on Youtube are great!
| jrm4 wrote:
| Oh man, this resonates quite a bit, as a perpetual "how can I
| find the perfect system that melds with my mind" sort of person.
|
| For me, one of the biggest lessons is really teasing out the
| _differences_ between what the computer can do and is good at,
| and what _I_ can do. It 's VERY easy to confuse the two. In fact,
| I think this is why I think most AI is _completely_ overhyped.
|
| Computers keep perfect records and can remind you of things. This
| is basically the _only_ thing the computers can definitely
| _outdo_ you, the human, on. They really can 't think as good as
| you. I think a great example of this is the Mindmap/graph stuff
| prevalent in many note taking deals. I used to love these things
| (and they're fun) until I realized that my own brain is SO MUCH
| BETTER than this thing at this particular task. I make these
| connections far better than this thing ever can.
| burrows wrote:
| > This is basically the only thing the computers can definitely
| outdo you, the human, on. They really can't think as good as
| you.
|
| Can you give some intuition about "thinking"?
|
| Is "thinking" what I do when playing chess? In my case probably
| not, but let's say a grandmaster. Because if so, in that
| domain, whatever a computer is doing seems superior to
| "thinking".
| User23 wrote:
| I would argue that computers cannot autonomously do anything,
| anymore than a hammer can swing itself. It's only when some
| user sets them to purpose that they become operative. And while
| a computer can be set to task by another computer, ultimately
| some person started it going.
| rackjack wrote:
| This is great article with a lot of insights that some of us, who
| have been deep in tech our whole lives, might have never
| encountered or considered fully. I strongly recommend actually
| reading the article instead of just going to the comments.
| User23 wrote:
| Prot's literate emacs config[1] is easily the most informative
| that I've seen. I would follow his advice and not try to copy it
| verbatim, but rather view it as an excellent contribution to the
| Emacs documentation ecosystem.
|
| [1] https://protesilaos.com/emacs/dotemacs
| ossusermivami wrote:
| the most informative is arguably the emacs info manual
| kstrauser wrote:
| The Emacs manual is excellent at documenting _how_. I like
| resources like the above for explaining _why_.
| nxqs wrote:
| Reminded me of Terry [1]. I miss Terry... :(
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBgIBF9Y6PE
| bee_rider wrote:
| You know what they say, Emacs is a fine moral philosophy, all it
| needs is a better text editor.
| unnah wrote:
| Yes, vim emulation is not going to cut it for today's
| generation. We need an emulator for Sublime Text in emacs. And
| another emulator for VS Code.
| teitoklien wrote:
| idk, let alone vim, even native emacs is 1000x better then
| sublime text and vscode,
|
| people who use vscode are just not the kind of people who
| would be interested in using emacs, and that's fine.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I disagree. I used Emacs for a couple of decades until I
| hopped onto VS Code. The Python setup was particularly
| nice, as it did everything I hoped for with no special
| configuration.
|
| That said, Microsoft's gotta Microsoft, and between their
| GitHub shenanigans and their proprietary language server,
| I've switched back to Emacs. BTW, turns out elpy has been
| coming along nicely and offers nearly as nice of an out-of-
| the-box experience as VS Code, and is better in some ways.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Similar experience with doing the vim -> VS Code switch.
| Didn't end up actually wanting the product, but the act
| of temporarily switching to a different editor made me
| double check what was available at home.
|
| For example, modern editors have a neat feature where
| they'll highlight a variable everywhere if you put your
| cursor on it. Nice to have, didn't think to look for it,
| there's a vim plugin that does it.
| throw7 wrote:
| I didn't watch the whole presentation, but I like the style of
| being able to read along. This guy is clearly a High Priest of
| the Church of Emacs. side note: I think he should just call it
| gimp and not worry about the heathens who think otherwise.
| Comevius wrote:
| Meanwhile I use Linux + Emacs as a window manager because I don't
| like distraction. On Windows you are always an update away from
| unwanted software, news, the weather, advertisements popping up
| or Windows not letting you turning on or off your computer
| because it's doing something you did not ask it to. It feels more
| like renting a computer than owning one.
|
| My Linux + Emacs will remain the same until the heat death of the
| Universe. The last change was when I had to write an early-
| init.el file for Emacs 27, the next one will be probably when X
| is no longer maintained.
|
| I don't particularly hate change or learning, I just like my
| setup. It works for me. Don't take it away from me.
| dgellow wrote:
| > On Windows you are always an update away from [...] news, the
| weather, advertisements popping up [...]
|
| Block msn.com at the DNS level. That removes almost all of
| these annoying bugware.
|
| I have a bunch of these rules as part of my pihole blacklist,
| that works surprisingly well. Adding msn to it was really a
| visible change when using windows.
| codethief wrote:
| > My Linux + Emacs will remain the same until the heat death of
| the Universe. The last change was when I had to write an early-
| init.el file for Emacs 27, the next one will be probably when X
| is no longer maintained.
|
| Looks like I must be doing something wrong then. Every single
| time I re-install Ubuntu (and switch to a newer Emacs version),
| yet another thing in my Emacs config breaks (mostly plugins).
| To me it's very far from a configure-once-run-forever piece of
| software.
| [deleted]
| severus_snape wrote:
| I found annoying to restart all the windows that depend on
| Emacs window manager (namely EXWM) every time I used to modify
| its conf. And I modify its conf way more often that I would for
| any other window manager (because I use it for programming).
|
| Also, the fact that when Emacs freezes, everything else freezes
| is a huge problem.
|
| A solution would be to use another Emacs within EXWM? That
| seems unrealistic: keybindings conflicts I guess, and also,
| then why use EXWM?
|
| Now I'm happy with Gnome (no conf file) + Emacs with 200 lines
| conf file (which is small). I love that it takes only 1s to
| restart Emacs when I play with its conf.
| danShumway wrote:
| I used EXWM for a pretty long while, and I liked it OK, but
| had similar experiences to you. Eventually moved over to
| i3wm, and will eventually move over to Sway whenever the chip
| shortage lets up and I can get a better graphics card.
|
| What I found out:
|
| - i3's config system is pretty extensible, and I was able to
| port over the majority of the shortcuts I wanted without too
| much trouble.
|
| - I thought it would be annoying to have configs in two
| places, but because my Emacs config changes very rarely, and
| because my i3 config is the same and also changes pretty
| irregularly, it turns out it's actually not that big of a
| problem to duplicate setups when I want to add something.
| Once a setup is stable, optimizing for keeping it in a
| particular form can sometimes be a lot of work for very
| little payoff, because you don't spend a lot of time updating
| it or debugging it in the first place.
|
| - EXWM's keyboard interception (particularly with evil mode)
| turned out to be not _quite_ as good /low-latency as I needed
| it to be? And that meant that a lot of the benefits of "one
| set of bindings/commands everywhere that just works" were a
| little overstated in practice during daily use.
|
| - On that note, you bump into the problem that stuff like
| your "save document" shortcut might not actually be very
| universal, because it's not enough to have your window
| manager recognize that, you also have to have the program
| recognize it. And it ends up getting kind of cumbersome to
| figure out the mappings/scripts you need for each piece of
| software you have installed (or at least it was for me).
| Again with the optimization question above, most of the work
| to keep my keybindings consistent ends up being with
| applications, not with the window manager.
|
| - Some just general bugginess around some stuff like floating
| windows that were probably at least partially the result of
| my config.
|
| - The single-threaded nature of Emacs was a problem, even
| though people told me it wouldn't be. Freezing your window
| manager because you run a terminal command incorrectly feels
| bad.
|
| It was still usable, I was able to get work done on the
| machine, it was fine and I liked it at the time, I wasn't
| unhappy. But I've noticed that I spend a lot less time doing
| maintenance/setup now that I'm using i3, I have far fewer
| freezes/crashes, and I'm finding that this setup is able to
| replicate most of the other stuff I care about. There are a
| few things I miss, but not enough to go back.
| shatteredgate wrote:
| Not sure who you have been talking to but most Linux developers
| who I've communicated with have strongly suggested that you do
| always install updates and don't skip them. It seems it is an
| equally bad idea to disable automatic updates on Linux as it is
| on Windows; unfortunately neither of them are formally verified
| operating systems with any kind of guarantees about correctness
| and security, so you've just got to keep up with patches.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > It feels more like renting a computer than owning one.
|
| These corporations don't really want us to own anything.
| There's always a "license", "terms" or whatever. They're just
| generously allowing us to use the computers we paid for.
| maccard wrote:
| Why is it not OK for companies to ask you to use the software
| on their terms?
| dontcare007 wrote:
| Sounds like a conversation on progressivism versus conservatism,
| where progressivism===heteronomy.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is probably better to not make everything about partisan
| politics.
| electrotux wrote:
| Progressivism and conservatism are perfectly cromulent words
| that have uses outside of politics.
|
| If anyone is making this political, I think that's you.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I mean, in some sense every word is made up, so if we want
| to make up a new definition we can. But I was unable to
| find a reasonable in this context definition of
| progressivism outside of political philosophies:
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/prog
| r...
|
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/progressivism
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/progressivism
|
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/progressivism
|
| This follows the general trend, where -ism is usually used
| to describe a particular school of thought, while words
| ending in -ness are used to describe a more general
| tendency.
| electrotux wrote:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conservatism
| finds "the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional
| situation to change".
|
| That said:
|
| 1. Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. I use
| and recognise "progressivism" and "conservatism" in non-
| political uses.
|
| 2. I fear if we're debating defintions, we've fallen
| victim to Layne's law.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| It's striking to see the first time the author used a computer
| was in 2006. Given that it was in university, they aren't that
| much younger than I am yet my first time using a computer was
| about 20 years earlier, and there were computers in my primary
| school.
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