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Thucydides and Linux: a Free or a Peaceful OS?

May 27, 2024

Society

computer, ignorance, society, technology

You’ve got to admit, seeing Thucydides and Linux together in the same sentence isn’t something ordinary. “Linux” and “free” is far more common, for obvious reasons. But whether Linux is free is one discussion; whether it’s a peaceful operating system yet another.

So where does Thucydides, the ancient Greek historian, enter the picture?

You might recall from some previous posts – for instance, the concluding section of writing academic theses – that Cornelius Castoriadis, drawing on Thucydides, puts forward an apt suggestion: We can be free or we can be peaceful, but being both is impossible.

In our time – when to some/many/most/[pick depending on your neighbors] people to be free means to own guns – understanding the repercussions of freedom becomes more pressing than ever.

And yes, this includes your operating system! However, I should make one thing clear here: The role of this post is not to glorify one OS and snub others. It’s not even about computers and technology – not primarily at least. The post is about society.

Linux free, not peaceful; AI render of Thucydides using a computer on Acropolis
As if combining Thucydides and Linux wasn’t wild enough, I thought to reach the utmost of absurdity and use AI to generate this image
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The Danger of Partial Knowledge: My ChatGPT Encounter

March 13, 2023

Philosophy, Society

ignorance, knowledge, programming, society, technology

The old piece of wisdom might be right: It’s better to know nothing about something, rather than know a little. Of course, referring to partial knowledge is a sort of misnomer. Philosophically speaking, virtually all knowledge is partial – cogito ergo sum and all that. But socially speaking, the gradations are more intriguing.

The reason? Because of our old friend, the Dunning-Kruger effect. When it comes to partial knowledge – knowing a little of something – there is a peculiar paradox at play: When we know a little, we think we know a lot; when we know more (the threshold is subjective), we know that we only know a little.

As I said above, though there are philosophical dimensions in this topic, the focus of this post will be on society. I have always been interested in ignorance and the illusion of knowledge (as long-term readers of the blog have realized), but recently I had an experience that intrigued me with its repercussions: I tried asking the famous ChatGPT AI model questions on a topic I know very well enough to know I don’t know anything: the Gothic. The responses I got were very intriguing for our context of partial knowledge.

Partial Knowledge - woman reading
The only way out of the darkness of ignorance is through personal, active effort, paired with humility: “I only know that I know nothing”
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The Smartphone Model Is Rotten: You Don’t Own Your Device

January 9, 2023

Society

capitalism, mediocrity, programming, society, technology

Let’s be clear, I’m not breaking any new ground here. The topic described by the heading has been talked about and analyzed a lot. And for good reason: The smartphone model – that is, the way smartphones are designed and sold – is rotten to the core. The subtitle might give you a hint why: You don’t really own the device you paid for and purchased.

What you own is the temporary, easily withdrawn right to operate the device for a short, undefined period of time.

Perhaps you’ve either realized this yourself or you’ve read about it elsewhere. As I said, I’m not breaking any new ground. Nonetheless, in this post I will share the… Kafkaesque experience I recently had with “my” smartphone – the model of which isn’t important; they’re all the same disaster.

At the same time, I will bring to your attention some menacing repercussions you might not have thought of, some news you might have not heard. Put simply, the… smartphone model of doing business is spilling over into other industries with potentially dystopian consequences.

How would you like not to own your car? Or, here’s a better one: How would you like the right to operate “your” car to be revoked if, say, you left a nasty review about the manufacturer?

smartphone model
There are many things to dislike about smartphones. One of them, they’ve facilitated a whole generation of people who take videos at concerts, missing the experience
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