[wilhelmtux-discussion] A new political licence?

[Theo Schmidt]

Thank you all for the good discussion. I havn't been able to reach a 
conclusion. In a more general context the question is how to use (or 
not use) restrictions such as embargos or boycotts.

Absolute freedom does not recognise restrictions.

Absolute control does not recognise freedom.

Neither extremes work in practice, and politics is all about 
adjusting the desirable middle position with feedback mechanisms 
(Regelkreis mit Gegenkopplung).

Feedback mechanisms need an error-quantity, therefore the desired 
optimum can never be entirely "correct". (E.g. this discussion is an 
"error-quantity".)

"Digital" one-bit quantities (yes, no, true, false) are unsuitable as 
a feedback-quantity. This is why our over-simplified voting systems 
don't work well.

Therefore things like embargos must not be absolute, but themselves 
under constant review, i.e. the UN should have lifted the embargo 
against Irak the day it was seen to be counter-productive, and the UN 
should have launched an embargo against 
USA/GB/Australia/Denmark/Poland the day the war started or even 
before. Such restrictions should include a kind of time-constant, as 
"wrong" becomes "right" if you wait long enough (I think that not a 
single country occupies its territory "legally" in a time-independent 
sense).

What we really need to do is to introduce "fuzzy logic", which is 
after all simply "common sense", to decision-making, as well as a 
suitable time-management. These things will become important when 
"e-government" becomes widespread.

I'm not sure what this tells me about the GPL, which to me is already 
not in the "absolute freedom" extreme, but already a very good 
compromise, but I personally think that some sort of "ethics clause" 
could well be incorporated as an option at least.

Theo Schmidt


PS I started this discussion in English, but is anybody reading here 
who does not understand German?