Stallman

My last post was about someone I considered a true modern philosopher, but I didn't say who the someone was.   The person I had in mind is Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation.

Maybe it seems strange to call him a philosopher.  As far as I know, he's never said anything about the meaning of life, or the best way to live, or stuck his neck into the esoterica of more modern philosophy.  But he has a very well-defined philosophy of software code ownership.  Like all things, the modern world is all about specialization.  He doesn't have to have an opinion about everything.  The important part is he had a strong opinion, one based in morality, about a new force in our lives, and he's been fighting for his vision ever since.  His core idea is that our computers should only run software that we have the source code for.  If you don't know, and can't modify, what your own computer is doing, you shouldn't be running it.

I've been lucky enough to meet Richard Stallman.  He seems to talk like how I would imagine a philosopher would talk.  He speaks precisely (using the terms libre and gratis instead of the more generic word free), never lets something go that he considers wrong, and plainly admits when he doesn't know something.  He can forcefully argue his point, and is utterly uncompromising in his core beliefs.  For instance, he will not carry ID.  For someone who travels a lot and often goes into large institutions to speak, this has got to be inconvenient.  But he doesn't ever make that tradeoff of beliefs for convenience that we all make in so many ways.  Similarly, even though he was a legendary coder, he's never attempted to parlay that into any sort of career.  He doesn't make much money, and lives simply.

To many software engineers, his stubbornness and unwillingness to compromise is a problem.  They can't live such morally perfect lives.  The GNU licenses are seen as too constraining for business.  He's seen as someone who has some good ideas that he takes way too far.  I don't agree with that, though.  Stallman has to pursue the pure path of his ideals.  Otherwise he wouldn't be a philosopher, he'd just be a guy with opinions, and his ideas would probably have not been as influential as they are.  Due to Stallman, we have GNU/Linux, we have the GPL license, and his ideas have influenced other licenses even in non-software contexts, such as the Creative Commons license.

For further reading on Richard Stallman, I recommend his open-sourced biography, Free as in Freedom.

A modern philosopher

The great era of the popular philosopher is far gone.  Who do we have that has the ideals, the ideas, and the impact of Socrates? Not many, perhaps none. We've left our philosophy to the academics.

But I'd like to nominate one among us, still living, who I think fulfills all that a philosopher should be.  He has created powerful new ideas about a subject that did not exist in ancient Greece, but is a major force in modern society.  He's pursued those ideas for a lifetime, constantly forgoing material reward for the sake of fighting for those ideals.  He is unwavering and uncompromising, and is subsequently widely disparaged by his colleagues.  And he's undoubtedly changed the world already.

Best of all, he even has a beard.

Have you guessed who it is yet?

I'll reveal the answer in my next post.

Personality, Part 2

In a previous post, I wondered whether personality can be overcome.  I doubted that it could.  Reading Seneca's Epistles (aka Letters from a Stoic), I came cross the following in Epistle XI:

That which is implanted, and inborn can be toned down by training, but not overcome.

 And later in the same Epistle:

Whatever is assigned to us by the terms of our birth and the blend of our constitutions, will stick with us, no matter how hard or how long the soul may have tried to master itself.

Seneca seems to have reached the same conclusions.

Switching to a modern scientist, I recommend reading Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate for much more on this topic.  In fact, I should re-read it.  It's one of those books that makes a powerful argument against some very nice-sounding but in fact harmful ideas on human nature.

Remember, we can't change our personality, nor our faults.  But we can mitigate them, and sometimes to a large degree.  My own personality has shown itself to result in many careless mistakes in my work.  I don't think I can overcome this, but I can be aware of it, and I can control my actions. I've gotten into the habit of forcing myself to double-check my work, which has helped a lot.  Even though I am careless, I have found a way around it as long as I can keep up an artificial carefulness.