[Arm-netbook] Code of conduct?

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

On 09/18/2016 11:05 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 18, 2016 at 8:25 AM, pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)
> <pelzflorian at pelzflorian.de> wrote:
>> There also are duties, yes. I agree that rights are not enough. One can
>> argue though that duties follow from the rights.
> 
>  taking just the bill of ethics section on "certainty", if you define
> things in terms of "certain duties" you've already failed.  if you are
> *certain* that duties will help fulfil a goal, you've moved into
> static bureaucracy without even realising it... and are thus moving
> automatically and subconsciously into being *unable* to react to
> changing circumstances, and thus, by definition, *will* be unable to
> fulfil the goal.
> 
>  entropy has to be fought, basically.  now, that's not to be confused
> with "duty" in the indian / ayurvedic context, which is best phrased
> as "doing your duty" i.e. "act with integrity".  that's *completely*
> different.
> 
>  ... but if you're referring to "dividing a goal up into fixed duties"
> that to me is an *automatic* way to fail.
> 

I’m not talking about precise, high-level duties / implementation
details but more generally about the complement to rights in the
European sense. What you say about the Indian/Vedic context seems like
one low-level, more vague way to frame a duty, I am not familiar at all
with Vedic ethics and Hinduism though.

What I mean is that a rights-based ethic with the added / consequent
duty of working towards the implementation of the rights can work well.
An ethic not based on rights can work equally well, probably with
similar consequences.

>> Well, in a larger organization some simple complaints are easier to
>> support and assess without disputes when there is a high-level policy.
>> But you are not a large organization, so you don’t need one right now
>> anyway.
> 
>  did you know that visa (the credit card company) became highly
> successful world-wide without having a single manager anywhere across
> the entire organisation?  when it was bought out it was transformed
> into the hierarchical top-down bureaucratic nightmare that it now is,
> but prior to that they had absolutely no management structure of any
> kind.
> 
>  they operated entirely and exclusively - thousands of people across
> dozens of offices - in small groups of around 7 people.
> 

I did not know that.

>  the myth that hier-ocracy is the only way to organise is just that: a myth.
> 
>  i need to transform what i am doing into something that is more than
> just me, that can scale with integrity, in a way that is *not*
> susceptible to the untold damage caused by hierocracy, autocracy,
> democracy and meritocracy.  the only thing that i have found so far
> which fits the bill is bob's work, which he's called "organised
> an-archy" i.e. "organisation in the absence of overarching authority".
> 

I consider a flat hierarchy to be a hierarchy as well. Some people
apparently don’t, so sorry if that was not clear. For example, Wikipedia
has a hierarchy. It may not be perfect, but I doubt it would work
without one. Anarchies don’t have a single person or only few people at
the top, but they do, in my terminology, have hierarchies as well. It
may be more clear to call it organization.

>  words like "policy" and "rights" and "duties" and "democracy" and
> "hierarchy" - these are all "sleepwalking" words that have countless
> examples showing us how badly and how drastically they're failing us.
> i do have to hand over control of the EOMA initiative to a responsible
> group at some point in the next ten years, but it will *not* be to a
> group that basically sleepwalks the EOMA initiative into oblivion.
> 

Yes, they often go wrong. Disregarding them often goes wrong too. It
depends on the implementation. I don’t want to throw the baby out with
the bathwater and say that rights *cannot* work as well as ideals. More
relevant here is that an anti-harassment policy / code of conduct is so
uncontroversial that having one helps and does not hurt for organizations.

I don’t think our opinions are far apart. I am quite happy with
WP:NOTDEMOCRACY and consensus decision making. I am already critical of
profit maximization or else I would not be here.

>  sorry if this comes as a bit of a shock, florian.  there's an article
> on slashdot just come out "why aren't techies improving the world"?
> https://ask.slashdot.org/story/16/09/18/0152208/ask-slashdot-why-arent-techies-improving-the-world
>  i didn't respond here (i am still dealing with flu, have been for 3-4
> days now), and the comments got too large for it to be worthwhile
> responding.
> 

Sorry to hear that. I hope you get better soon.

The slashdot discussion is interesting.

> have you seen what elon musk is up to?  have you analysed his
> behaviour at all?  he's advocating that we convert all our cars to
> electric (when there isn't enough lithium, neodymium or copper on the
> planet to support a *fraction* of the conversions), which tells you
> that he has no idea or consideration of the environmental damage of
> what he's advocating.  he's advocating that we "go to mars" and is
> setting up Space-X as a way to kickstart that.  put these two things
> together, and we can logically deduce that he's basically "given up"
> on the people of planet earth.
> 
> all that power - all that money... and he's treating humans like test
> subjects for technology (and killing them on a regular basis with
> these "auto-pilot" systems aka "driver assist").
> 
> one of the goals that i have is to undo some of the damage caused by
> Dell, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Toshiba, Samsung and Apple - as
> pawns of people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others - before it's
> too late.
> 
> do you *really* think that copying their power structures (which
> allowed them to dominate technology and cause people untold harm)
> would be a good idea?  because i certainly don't!
> 
> this isn't something that i can tackle on my own: i can make a start,
> but to have it turn into one of the very organisations whose effects i
> am endeavouring to *undo* would be the absolute worst possible
> nightmare scenario.
> 
> l.
> 

I do agree with you. It is interesting to hear about these issues; one
year ago I still considered electric cars a great idea (which is what
the TV and the politicians tell us here in Germany). Well, we’re also
told that nuclear power is more of a problem than coal…