The definition of "free and open source software" doesn't/shouldn't include any limits on what that software DOES. Wouldn't saying, "You can use this code, but not if you write programs that do something I don't like with it!" violate the fundamental principles of open software? How about, "Here's my code for a really great FTP implementation, but you can't use it, or any program including it, to download copyrighted movies." Wouldn't fly, would it?

I understand that the open source coding community also includes a lot of shared cultural values, but the more it becomes just another means of distributing code, the less those shared cultural values are, erm, shared. RMS certainly has the right to speak out against things he find abhorrent, and to encourage people to not support them, as everyone does. As is so often the case, "The right to do something" is not the same as "The right thing to do." I think by trying to link his personal views on what's good, right, proper, etc, to the concept of open source itself, which is utterly apolitical, damages open source and would make people worry that, by using it, they are implicitly accepting or supporting ethical/political ideas they disagree with. (I have seen tons of open source code, esp. Apache, used by people and companies whose goals and values are at extreme odds with the generic "open source" culture.)

Actually, I would say that a society ruled by "empathy" would quickly collapse, as the people in charge would be unable to make decisions based on an objective cost/benefit analysis, but instead would be paralyzed by emotional concerns. It's a common cliche that "you can't put a price on human life", but every modern society does, constantly, and if a society's leaders can't do this, the society will fail.

To use a highly oversimplified example: Let's assume that we can prevent 50% of automobile related deaths by imposing a regulation that increases the cost of a car by $1.00. Most people would say that would be worthwhile. To prevent 50% of the remaining deaths, we can increase the cost of a car by $100.00. To prevent 50% of the remaining deaths (this report was commissioned by Zeno, by the way), the cost increases by $1000.00. And so on. There is a point where someone must say, "Yeah, the harm done by increasing costs that much outweighs the value of the lives saved." An "empathic" person would be unable to draw that line, as he'd be unable to say "Some known percentage of people will die in accidents, people who COULD have been saved if we'd spent more money." This carries across many different fields and areas of human activity, from drug trials to engineering. There's a point where some level of risk must be deemed "acceptable". The more empathic someone is, the more difficult it will be for them to consciously allow a certain number of probable deaths or injuries.

Emotions are easy to manipulate. I show you (generic you, not you personally) a bunch of pictures, along with heart-wrenching stories, of Palestinean children killed by Israeli bombs. "How can we support such murderers?", you ask. Then I show you heart-wrenching stories of Israeli children killed by Palestinean bombs. "We have to protect these people!", you cry. If your decision is based on how much you CARE, you can't make a decision. You have to step back and evaluate which side, if either, is more useful to support for reasons totally irrelevant to how many children are getting killed. You have to reduce people to numbers and statistics -- or you can't decide, and meanwhile, even more people die while you waffle.

More abstractly, there will always be more problems than there are resources to solve them. Someone has to decide whose suffering to alleviate, and whose to ignore. People who are too empathic can't; at best, they'll make decisions based on whichever crisis is most heart-touching to them (usually determined by which one has the best propaganda), not on other considerations.

Most of our society, at all levels, can only function if we set aside our feelings and focus on facts. An umpire shouldn't make calls based on which team he wants to win, even if his motivation is sympathy for the feelings of the team that keeps losing all the time. A boss shouldn't fire or hire people based on who he likes more, but on job performance. We disdain those who show favoritism to friends and relatives, but it is psychologically normal to be more sympathetic to those closest to you. It is psychologically *abnormal* to make decisions without regard to your emotional connections to people -- but people in power are expected, even required by law, to do precisely that, to decide things without consulting their feelings.

Thus, it is inevitable that those with the least empathy will rise to positions of power, because those with the most can't do the job.

(I've run into a depressing number of people who are convinced this is not the way the world is; that if only we all CARED enough, there'd never be a need for hard decisions, because everyone would just do the right thing, all the time.)

Isn't it generally illegal, under the ADA, to discriminate on the basis of mental illness, unless it can be shown said illness directly hinders job performance? It seems to me that being a psychopath not only doesn't hinder job performance if you're a banker, it might make you better at it, in the same way being somewhat Asperger's tends to make you better at jobs in the technical field?

re: Google/Bing Well, there's a shock. :)

..and I am thinking of the requests she got when she worked information, and how this device might respond to similar. "Hey, I want this show where there's this guy, and this girl, and there's this other guy, who's funny, and there's always something wacky happening..." The real killer app for this is, of course, porn. Google can surely do it, but probably is wondering how to market it properly. You need a program that can "watch" a clip and correctly identify any relevant traits -- number of participants, actions performed, hair color, ethnicity, physical traits, clothing styles, location, etc. Most porn search engines barely work because the site owners throw in every possible keyword, relevant or not. Or, uhm, so I've heard. From friends. Distant friends. Acquaintances, really.

Nuclear Wind! Atomic Tide! Nukestorm! Windpocalypse! Radioactivecane! Frozen Meltdown! Atomic Hailstorm! Nukenami! Any other ideas for the inevitable SyFy movie?

Yes, there's never been an example of Army funded research leading to anything important. Good point.

"When are ordinary, yet intelligent people going to refuse to live in and contribute to such a state ?"

When the leading food-related health problem becomes starvation, not obesity. Fat, warm (cool in summer), entertained, people do not rebel.

If the British had Big Macs and X-Boxes back in 1776, we'd still be talking English now.

PS: For those who are going to think you're oh-so-very-clever and point out "Duh, we are talking English now, dummy!", the sentence above was an attempt at "humor". A common form of humor is making self-evidently incorrect comments. This is "funny" because most humor derives from some form of contradiction between the expected and the actual, especially if it involves weasels. A common indication of low intelligence is being unable to identify that an incorrect statement is being made deliberately, and attempting to appear smart by correcting it, thus indicating extremely poor understanding of basic human communication tactics, such as irony and sarcasm.

What's that saying?
"If the mind were simple enough to understand, we wouldn't be smart enough to understand it."?

In an era when access to facts is a click or a tap away, it becomes much more important to be able to know how to use those facts, than to have a mental storehouse of them. Because the scope of human knowledge is orders of magnitude more than any person can grasp, we are forced to rely on the opinions of others in all but our own narrow areas. If I read an article on, say, a potential cure for cancer, I know I lack the scientific knowledge to replicate the research or even build a good mental model of what's supposed to be happening, biologically, except on a very crude level. So to make judgment, I have to engage in pattern-matching, not fact-checking. Does this article contain the kinds of keywords, phrases, and tone that I've come to associate with woo-woo fringe theories, or does it seem in line with things I already know to be factual? Is it presented in a forum which has a reputation for rigor, or is it in a site featuring articles on aromatherapy and aura reading? Does it discuss limited results, provide caveats, and discuss risks, or does it promise instant and universal cures with no drawbacks and talk about how "they" are "terrified" of this discovery?

This applies in virtually every field of knowledge. We can't judge most things on the facts, because we can't know all the facts. We have to rely more and more on pattern matching and abstraction to reach conclusions. Most of us devote our "locally hosted fact storage" to that data pertinent to our daily lives, our jobs, and our favorite hobbies. A big chunk of what's left goes to meta-information about how to GET facts when we need them, and what's left is devoted to deciding if what someone is presenting as a "fact" is actually true, and to evaluating the value of each fact as it weighs in our opinions.

(It's a common mistake that if a person disagrees with you, it's because he doesn't know the FACTS! Odds are, he DOES know them, at least if he's anyone worth having a disagreement with. He just *weighs* them differently, because people apply facts as a means towards achieving their values and goals. Only in Jack Chick tracts and the like do people suddenly change their minds because a random stranger spews a series of "things you didn't know!" at them. Hell, even if you can prove beyond doubt that a particular justification for an opinion is objectively wrong, people will retain the opinion and look for new "facts" to support it. (Note how no matter how many times someone debunks a particular myth about Obama, or Creationism, or 9/11, or "free energy", or vaccines, the people who believe in conspiracies never change their beliefs -- they just find some new "proof". "OK, so the original study that linked vaccines to autism was proven to be a complete and utter fraud? So what, there's plenty more "proof", and besides, I don't believe it was a fraud, it was a frame up by the evil corporations!")

"....people should only give accurate details to trusted sites such as government ones."

I think my irony meter just exploded.

"Do not trust those fiendish corporations that want to sell you things, Loyal Citizen Unit! Trust only the government with your personal information! We just want to put you in GitMo, not show you ads! Remember! Failure to report mutants and commies is treason! Keep your laser handy!"

Magicians, being experts on how humans can be fooled, deceived, and manipulated, are the best people to call in as experts when doing studies on how people respond to manipulation. This is why "psychics" can easily fool many scientists, but not magicians. The utility of science in this is not determining THAT humans can be fooled, or even what tricks work best, but, rather, the underlying mechanisms that cause humans to behave as they do.

Given how much of human society is built around manipulation and deception, at all levels of interaction from the personal to the political, dismissing those who are experts in it is foolish.

President Bush authorizes torture, indefinite detention without trial, and invokes Executive Privilege to keep secrets.
Conservatives: A great President, fighting to keep America safe from terrorists!
Liberals: Bush is a fascist pig who stole the election!

President Obama authorizes torture, indefinite detention without trial, and invokes Executive Privilege to keep secrets.
Conservatives: Obama is a Stalinist Muslim who stole the election!
Liberals: A great President, fighting to keep America safe from terrorists!

Yes, because the radio, television, magazine, and newspaper industries were unable to survive without targeted advertising...

(Yes, many of those are dying now, but it's not because targeted advertising is infinitely better in every way. Programs that block/hide ads are more likely to be a threat to ad revenue than limiting targeting. Good old fashioned "People on a site about cats probably will respond to ads for cat food" logic ought to be good enough to sustain the sites. And, if there isn't a way to generate sufficient content on ad revenue, then, people will begin to pay for the content they like, or they will do without it, or the entire system will evolve in ways not easy to predict. As another person mentioned, there is no "right" to any business model, just as there is no "right" to have access to content for free. Solutions will evolve, and the first people to find them ones that work will get very rich.)

You beat me to posting it, darn it!