Hi @shusha, just read your introduction and found it very interesting.

Let me present myself: I'm can be described in several ways, but for sure I'm father of three wonderful daughters I love most and I'm a hacker.

You can read something about me on my website http://www.tesio.it and on my operating system http://jehanne.io

Why I annoy you, you ask?

In your introduction you mention topics I care a lot: programming as expression (see http://www.tesio.it/2019/06/03/what-is-informatics.html ), epistemology, data (you find a lot in my site), politics ( see http://www.tesio.it/2020/09/03/not_all_hackers_are_americans.html ) and so on...

I would like to know your take about this: https://qoto.org/@Vectorfield/106028146945688229

Not much about the attacks against RMS and FSF (unless you want to talk about that too, obviously), but about the epistemic approach that @Vectorfield described and that, as far as I can say, describe quite well the activists I've talked with.

To be fair, they argue that "manifacturing" truths is what the hegemonic class ("the whites", "the males", "the straights"... curiously, never "the rich") do all the time with marketing and all other forms of propaganda, so they perceive themselves as fighting back on the same ground.

They argue that people won't try to understand long explanations or deep and complex models of reality anyway, so trying to argue with facts won't change things for the better.

Yet models that misdescribe reality on purpose, an epistemology not based on the search for truth but in the search for changes, is doomed to be abused by the oppressors who have better means and more resources to meld the public opinion (and even turn it to a weapon to enforce their own interests, as RMS story shows)

Anyway, sorry for this wall of text linking several other wall of texts.

If you'd like to talk about this, I'd like to access your perspective (dialogue is always a way to access and understand perspectives that are preclused to us by our limits).

Otherwise... just let me say nice to meet you! 😉