Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society

[Paul Sutton via libreplanet-discuss <libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org>]

[-- Attachment #1.1.1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 11797 bytes --]

On 10/01/2022 17:02, Andrew Yu via libreplanet-discuss wrote:
> Hi, friends at Libreplanet.
> 
> During a discussion in #fsf, we were quite critical of modern society,
> especially on copyright, patents, "intellectual property", healthcare
> and Capitalism.  A (possibly sarcastic of modern society) suggestion
> was raised to build islands in the middle of oceans from plastic waste
> and run a free society there.  This is obviously infeasible, but it
> reinforced my thoughts that free software isn't enough.  With people
> constantly in poverty, healthcare being so expensive in countries such
> as the United States, companies and individuals focusing on profit
> rather than genuine good for society, etc., free software is a step to
> bring us closer to good-old freedom, but with a society that hasn't
> woken up from the endless advertising (brainwashing) of cooprporations
> and governments, we'll almost inevitably be forced to use nonfree
> software, and have our right to freedom violated in countless other
> ways.
> 
> I thought: Why aren't we doing a great job convincing users to switch to
> free software as a replacement to the proprietary software they use?
> Some classmates that I tried convincing into using Trisquel GNU/Linux
> noted that most modern programs that they use day-to-day only run on
> Android, Apple iOS, Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows, and these
> themselves are nonfree software that they can't escape using (For
> example, school here in China requires the use of WeChat and Tencent
> Meetings to have online classes, and does not have a way to let me
> dial-in by phone, despite my efforts explaining the Constitution and my
> rights to deny a contract I disagree with. [1]  They even went as far as
> saying "We don't care what the Constitution says, you play by our
> rules", which was a surprise to me.).  I reconsidered the situation,
> explained to them what freedom is in this context, and linked them to a
> comprimise, Deepin Linux, a (GNU/)Linux distribution targeted at new
> Chinese users who need WeChat, Tencent Meetings and all that in the
> application center.  This was a comprimise, but this is the best I could
> do given their situation.  Personally I use virtual machines that
> reset to snapshots every boot to run these programs, sometimes even run
> a GNU/Linux distribution inside the virtual machine and use Wine from
> there.  They aren't technically skilled and couldn't handle this.
> Some sources state that US courts require the use of Zoom, which is
> frustrating to think about.
> 
> I asked myself:  Why do people choose convenience over freedom?  This is
> still a mystery to me, as this one of the problems in the to-solve list
> of the upcoming project.   I have a theory that it's a combination of
> social pressure and coorporate brainwashing, as companies are taking
> advantage of human psycology, creating an information cocoon of
> "convenience is the most important thing in your life", pushing products
> to users with social engineering in order to profit from sales or the
> information of their users.  They do everything for profit; they even
> sign contracts with schools to push their products to students, often
> with the students unable to reject.  In this case, how the school and
> government handles this situation is a good example of short-term
> thinking (Or, it might be not caring about their students, I hope it's
> the first, but my conversation with school makes me afraid it's the
> latter.)
> 
> My family has been to the US in 2013.  One of my biggest negative
> impressions was that health care was terrifyingly expensive.  A simple
> X-ray, a two dollar checkup in most hospitals in Shanghai, China costs
> hundreds of dollars in the US (I do not remember which state or region
> it was, I was just 5 years old then.  What I do remember is that we had
> some kind of medicaid; even then, the prices are in hundreds).  A
> standard CT scan, around 20--35 dollars in Shanghai, costs hundreds or
> even thousands of dollars.  A ride in the ambulance costs 10 dollars on
> average in Shanghai, but thousands in ths US.  (Note that by "the US", I
> am referring to the state I was in, I do hope that there are saner ones.)
> Apparantly this is caused by the US not having a good system of
> medicaid, which I hope gets better implemented with Obamacare, but that
> seems to be just a wish.  This leads me to the point that governments
> are responsible for their citizens in exchange for the citizens giving
> up certain liberties (note that liberty isn't freedom exactly),
> including keeping citizens healthy---it is impossible to have a
> prosperous planet with bad healthcare.  (Don't get me wrong, I have more
> positive impressions in the US :P)
> 
> For a government to be able to handle social needs, it must not be
> corruputed.  Theories such as the separation of powers exist, but in
> contemperory times, implementations such as the US have
> sometimes-corrupt but almost always ineffective governments.  The Senate
> fillibuster is a important reason, but not the culprit.  The culprit is
> the inherent eager to compete with other political parties and to gain a
> political advantage, rather than coorporating, working together, and
> actually managing the country with decent manners.
> 
> Humanity's system of managing society progressed from the rule of
> monarchs to the rule of law.  But laws can be unclear and
> misinterpreted.  The recent development of mathematics and computer
> science may as well be utilized to create a system of society and
> government, which algorithmicly distributes power in an explicit manner
> (Maybe with something like monads, I haven't got into the mathematical
> part yet.)
> 
> Godel Incompleteness tells us that we can never make a system of
> mathematics that gets understood the same way everywhere; math is also
> an evolving field (albeit very slowly).  If this (currently nil) system
> is to be ever used anywhere (may be the island), we'll definitely find a
> lot of fissues.  In such a system we also have the burden of educating
> people in abstract algebra, which is relatively easy compared to
> developing the system itself.  My intuition tells me that Group Theory
> will come in handy, but that's just intuition.
> 
> Currently, I host this project at [2].  I've only recently gotten into
> Group Theory and abstract algebra, it may take time for us all to come
> up with ideas.  But it's worth trying.
> 
> References
> ==========
> 
> [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2021-10/msg00011.html
>      My previous memo on the use of software in education, COVID-19 and
>      the courts.
> 
>      Ironically, I was still using GitHub at the time.  I recently
>      deprecated all of my GitHub in a notice, and moved all of my current
>      projects to git.andrewyu.org and project.andrewyu.org.  The avenir
>      repository is moving there some time, after I re-write the website
>      with plain HTML---I don't see a reason to use a static site
>      generator anymore.  This GitHub link is not provided here.
> 
> [2] https://project.andrewyu.org/libresociety
>      A "checked out" version of the repository.  The PDFs are of primary
>      interest.
> 
>      git://git.andrewyu.org/libresociety
>      The repository itself.  SSH protocol version also exist, described
>      in the PDF itself.
> 
>      https://notabug.org/andrewyu/libresociety
>      A mirror of the above repository.  Links Out
> =========
> 
> [a] https://stallman.org/there-ought-to-be-a-law.html
>      A collection of bills/laws "proposed" or agreed upon by Richard
>      Stallman, mostly in support for a freer society, a less
>      corrupt/corruptable government, public benefit, etc.  I don't agree
>      with all of them, but many of these will be taken into account in
>      this project.
> 
> Some of the thoughts I had during writing this memo will appear in the
> next commit of the project.
> 
> This memo probably contains spelling errors and odd context-hopping.
> When sitting down in front of my computer on the actual book, I'll be
> more careful, and have a notebook and a pencil in front of me to plot
> relation maps.  Please forgive me, a 13-year-old with an undeveloped
> brain from a non English-native country.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Andrew Yu <andrew@andrewyu.org>
> 
> :P
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> libreplanet-discuss mailing list
> libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
> https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
> 

Hi Andrew

Firstly, thank you for your well researched and referenced e-mail.  I 
can't answer all these, I can try and answer some points.

"Why aren't we doing a great job convincing users to switch to
 > free software as a replacement to the proprietary software they use?"

In terms of using for example MS office over Libreoffice,  I am running 
a STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) event at my local 
library, the person who I am running this with likes MS office because 
she says it is better, has better features, looks more professional etc, 
this is because it has millions of dollars invested in it.

I use libreoffice because as it runs on Debian and I am not prepared to 
pay £100's for a office package when I can get one, that while not a 
programmer i can at least contact developers and report problems. 
LibreOffice would be perfectly usable for a small business.

Another issue is that many businesses use MS office, therefore training 
is provided by colleges etc in MS office,  the result is you haver a 
trained workforce that can use what a business uses and therefore 
demands. If a business wanted to switch to libreoffice the software may 
be free but the cost of actually moving over may not be.

People also rely now the fact office 365 is more web / cloud integrated. 
  LibreOffice can be linked to Nextcloud, but it is not natively 
integrated.  I think there is https://www.collaboraoffice.com/ this has 
integrations, but LibreOffice is not listed by the looks of it.

So you need to factor this in, people can login to their MS account from 
anywhere and just keep working, like you can do with Cryptpad or 
overleaf etc.

The modern world is more mobile, we are not sitting at the same desk 
every day using the same computer,   we may use laptop, tablets, phones 
etc to do our work,  we can leave our desk,  grab a coffee in the work 
canteen and keep working,  we can attend meetings in person / remotely 
and everything is just designed to work.

Offerings for devices such as the various open source phones appears to 
be, for me, confusing,

https://joinmastodon.org/apps

So from that, can I buy a pinephone and run a mastodon client on it, ? 
Add to this, there is fairphone and a host of other free software 
operating systems, some are based on Android others not.  Only 1 app for 
something called sailfishOS.

I think your classmates make a good point,  they need certain 
applications, and therefore are tied in to the non free software / 
devices they have.

We need to break that cycle,  perhaps one way is to take people who are 
already using free software and use their examples of how it is used in 
the real world how a business or school can run on free software.

Paul

BTW are you in China or the US?



-- 
Paul Sutton, Cert Cont Sci (Open)
https://personaljournal.ca/paulsutton/
OpenPGP : 4350 91C4 C8FB 681B 23A6 7944 8EA9 1B51 E27E 3D99
Pronoun : him/his/he
Fedi: @zleap@qoto.org
https://joinmastodon.org/

[-- Attachment #1.1.1.2: OpenPGP public key --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-keys, Size: 2481 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #1.2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 665 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 184 bytes --]

_______________________________________________
libreplanet-discuss mailing list
libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss