[ExI] effective altruism

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Mon Jul 15 22:44:32 UTC 2019


I do not have any problem with anyone being upset with someone or even
hating them.  That is none of my business.

But to accuse a person of doing something out of guilt over putting out a
flawed product that we have to work with anyway is to make an unwarranted
assumption that may reflect unfairly on that person..  That simply does not
meet the Ockhams' Razor test.  That's all I wanted to say.  bill w

On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 3:18 PM Ben Zaiboc <ben at zaiboc.net> wrote:

> Well, my remark was supposed to be rather tongue-in-cheek, but if we are
> going to be serious about it, my main objection is that MS seems to have
> been, and still is, the ringleader of the whole attitude that software
> companies have today, an attitude that is not inevitable, and that I
> think is destructive and holds us back massively, and is so pervasive
> that many people have trouble even conceiving that things could be
> different.
>
> It seems to be the natural order that when you buy (or, I should say
> 'pay for', because you can't usually actually /buy/ it) a piece of
> software, you don't own it, you hardly have any rights at all regarding
> it, you're not, in practice, allowed to understand how it works or
> modify it, or even to try to (often that's actually illegal!), and you
> are prevented from even understanding what you're agreeing to when you
> hand your money over, because the license terms are deliberately very
> long and obscure.
>
> It seems inevitable that any software that you use is subject to
> arbitrary changes by the vendor, forced upgrades, often at inconvenient
> times, and sudden disappearance of features regardless of whether you
> find them useful or not. And of course, you can't just do what you wish
> with it. It's a bit like buying a bike that you're not allowed to change
> the gears or brakes on, can't even fit a different bell if you want, and
> the options for adjusting the handlebars and saddle are severely
> restricted to pre-set choices. And don't even think of changing the
> tyres! On top of this, it will stop working unless you take it in for
> regular services when it may be returned a different colour, with
> different lights, etc., etc.
>
> I think it's odd that nobody would tolerate it if, when you take your
> car to be serviced, it was returned with the pedals swapped round, the
> handbrake removed altogether and your radio hidden away somewhere
> inaccessible, with brand new controls installed that don't do what you
> want anymore, but yet people accept this level of interference routinely
> when it comes to software. Not to mention the snooping. Of course,
> people /will/ accept it when their cars start reporting how they are
> used to various unknown parties, because they will have been conditioned
> to accept this kind of invasion of privacy because that's how their
> computers behave, and cars are increasingly turning into computers on
> wheels.
>
> I'm not claiming that this culture is exclusively Microsoft's doing, but
> they certainly were enthusiastic early leaders in establishing it. And
> things don't have to be this way. There are software systems that don't
> treat the user as an enemy, that don't mean "against the user" when they
> use the word "Security", and that allow the user to own the software,
> modify it, control it, and get the use from it that /they/ want, rather
> than the use that the vendor wants to impose on them.
>
> As a transhumanist and extropian, I'm always in favour of individual
> choice, with the only restriction being that you don't harm others by
> your choices. All the big software companies these days are explicitly
> opposed to that principle. They want the only choice on the table to be
> /their/ choice, and to hell with anyone who is harmed or disadvantaged
> in any way by it.
>
> I'm not against change, even random change (which is often what you seem
> to get with many software products), but I am against imposing that
> change on the users without asking them, and without allowing any
> possibility of opting out of it (short of stopping using the software
> altogether, which just isn't an option for many users). Just look at the
> Microsoft support forums and you'll find scores, of not hundreds, of
> user complaints and requests and pleas, about features that have been
> imposed on them that Microsoft refuse to even listen to, let alone do
> anything about.
>
> It didn't have to be this way. There are ways of making money without
> treating your customers with such utter contempt.
>
> OK, that's my rant over. Back to normal programming now (pun intended).
>
>
> Ben Zaiboc
>
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