gemini://rawtext.club/~mieum/relog/2021-11-03_internet

This is a tangential response to recent posts about licensing and the futility of internet arguments---mostly the later, I suppose. I have been absent from gemini for a while working on my dissertation. My preliminary defense is in two days, and instead of trudging through some menial tasks I need to complete before then, I think I'll indulge myself with a little procastination here.

I am not a developer, just a hobbyist, but I have given lots of thought to licensing---mostly relating to open access publications (like I said, this response is tangential). In the world of open access, the more permissive the license the better, it is held, for the reason that it makes the work more "accessible." And in some sense that is true. But given the abusive relationship among academics, universities, and publishers, and the absurd amount of excess and tedium that results from that rather exploitative system, it is reasonable for researchers and journals to consider the value of non-commercial licensing. There is no reason to assume anyone publishing under such a license considers it a "fix" for the more enduring problems to which it is more accurately a response.

I could go on and on about this, because there are so many facets to this problem of open publishing, and licensing in general, but, for me, it boils down to the fact that licensing itself is a somewhat absurd obligation. I realize that it serves a practical purpose, but it is a purpose in services to a concept I tend to reject: intellectual property. The problem is, there is no way to escape having to license your work in some way. Whether or not you agree with the economic system, or its laws and policies, you are practically obligated to license your work, because in spite of whatever intrinsic value or cultural meaning it might have to you or anyone else, it exists in *that system* primarily as something to be distributed and consumed. What I mean is, the logic of the system takes precedence---it is the literal de facto standard. I reject this system, yet, even choosing to unlicense my works would not exempt them from this legality. If the work belongs to no one, it's fair game, and if it does belong to someone then its use is subject to the terms of its license. A "free cultural work" sounds great, but discovering your work used in advertising, for example, does not---and not just because you didn't get a cut, but because advertising, especially as it exists in the 21st century, is the bane of humanity.

In my experience, discussing non-commercial licenses with those who use them, stipulating non-commercial use often has to do with *this* more fundamental problem. It is not a problem that will be solved by a license, of course, but I think it's instructive to consider this context. It's absurdist and maybe even ironic. Is it wrong, bad, backwards? I don't think so.

Before moving on, I will just say that, being the plebeian philosopher-playing-programmer that I am, I really haven't had much experience with the toxicity in the FOSS world. I am not *involved* in the FOSS community apart from being a fan of quality, open software. I have witnessed that toxicity somewhat indirectly from time to time, but I have tended to attribute it to particular individuals, threads, platforms exaggerating their virtues like we tend to do online. That is one reason I don't really hang around on those parts of the internet that stimulate compulsive reactions and incubate hive mind mobbing. That's all just no bueno. I appreciate the well thought out and even emotionally charged posts by people on this topic recently here around gemini. It doesn't matter if everyone is in agreement or not. I think if you expect to fully agree with your allies all the time you will only find despots in the world.

In response to the topic of licensing, marginalia.nu (who has quite a nice capsule btw) has written a thought-provoking post about the worth of arguing ideals and ethics, online and in general. I want to quickly jot down some of these thoughts this post provoked before my coffee buzz wears off. (As it turns out my buzz did wear off, and this response wanders a bit, but I'll post it anyway. I also want to clarify that I don't intend to criticize the original author specifically, because I am not sure I can say I really grasp their position as a whole.)

>Ideology, or in a wider sense, ethics, is all about what should be done. How we should live. These aren't statements about the world, but opinions about what the world should look like. They aren't true or false, and any argument against them always boils down to "I disagree!". Arguing about ethical systems is some of the least constructive things a human can do. It is more pointless than masturbation, which at least feels good for a moment.

If it is assumed that the purpose of argument should be to reach agreement, then argumentation can be dismissed altogether like this for the simple reason that full agreement is an impossibility. It is ultimately futile to argue anything, let alone subjective "opinions," because full consensus cannot be achieved. I believe it is true that full agreement is a practical impossibility, but I also believe that this impossibility is irrelevant to the *purpose* of argumentation for this very reason! There is no reason to stipulate that argumentation must terminate in agreement to be "constructive."

This is not to condone senseless arguing online, of course, but I think this is certainly no basis for hastily rejecting the general worth of arguments---and of those about ideals and ethics in particular---simply because they cannot always terminate in agreement, or even that they often amount to stalemates. The perceived truth or falsity of someone's opinion, or, their view of the way the world is or should be, is not the most relevant point of a discussion about ideals or ethics to begin with. What someone's perspective *means* is not something so simple that it can be abstracted into propositions (whose meaning would then become explicitly concerned with truth!). This plurality of perspective is a fact of life. You can just as easily attribute to it something of supreme or intrinsic value, such as works of art or civilization itself, as you can the perceived worthlessness of impasse. The vast majority of communication, moreover, has nothing to do with "truths." Matters of what ought to be done may be informed by truths, but what that position ultimately means requires more than objective proof to grasp.

Indeed, the kind of arguing marginalia.nu is primarily taking issue with is probably this senseless attempt to *prove* something which, by its very nature, may not be proven! We have all at least witnessed this kind of thing online. It is tiring! But the more crucial point I take issue with here is the assumption that arguing about ideology or ethics is basically unconstructive because these are matters that cannot be settled objectively. Such is life! It's naive to expect that we can establish settled truths about something that is fundamentally unstable and problematic. But to avoid engaging (or even perceiving) these problems because a stalemate would be futile is to default to ambivalence; which is much more serious a problem than petty disagreement. Should we avoid all matters that cannot be settled as matters of fact or reduced to formal proofs?

I think this is a misattribution of the problem, at least as I have understood it in the recent posts here. No doubt arguments about philosophical purity occur, and that kind of self-referential argument could really only be a "fruitless stalemate." But to dismiss these kinds of debates altogether is itself a fruitless stalemate! If there is any worth in debating licensing, it is obviously not in some expected outcome of "winning" and eliminating the positions of the competitors. The values embodied in people's perspectives, choices, actions---regarding licenses or otherwise---do not require reconciliation in some more encompassing ideal we can all agree upon. But appreciating the conditions and perceived consequences of the values implied in someone's position *is* worthwhile if you want to understand them. And when we are talking about ethics and ideologies which have concrete, real world consequences, then making an effort to understand and express different views becomes especially important---not avoiding them.

>Take the time spent infuriated at Covid policy, and spend it on living your life instead. Regardless of your position, if you are concerned about loss of life, it's a deep irony how frivolously you and everyone debating this over the last two years have been letting your own precious life time run out in the sand.

This statement demonstrates the kind of ambivalence that results from "adaptation avoidance" or the disengagement of problematic situations as a matter of principle. The point is not that everyone's opinion is justified or equivalent, of course. But to submit to "keeping an even keel" because there is no absolute ground by which to arbitrate among differences of opinion, or because it is tiresome to engage with differing and even shitty opinions is, like I said, a "fruitless stalemate" in itself. If we were to take this seriously and move on and do "more constructive" things with our time and energy, what would that be? What is the basis for determining whether those activities are more constructive or not? To me, this just reads as a dismissal of "noisemaking." And sure, there is a lot of noise out there. But expecting some comfortable equilibrium as the norm has much more severe consequences than practically conceding the status quo. This is especially evident if for you the status quo is really no home at all.

Licenses, Internet Arguments, and Adaptation Avoidance

Licensing is not not absurd

Ethics, Ideals, and Internet Arguments