rename?

[nrdxp]

obviously the term "Code of Ethics" is a deliberate rewording on the, by now, overtly ideologized "Code of Conduct" which I believe does actually properly address the moral issue here.

Conduct is merely behavior as such, it doesn't specify any particular ethic. I believe ethics to be the truly appropriate remedy to address the human element appropriately, but I don't want this document to be seen as overly antagonistic or euphemistic as that is not its purpose.

In that sense, perhaps "Code of Ethics" is too strong a signal, and I was thinking of perhaps something a bit more creative with the same connotation, in keeping with the overall goal, and to avoid overtly overloaded and ideologized language throughout the text.

How about "Codex Ethica", for example? Or perhaps that is simply too esoteric and I am overthinking this?

[nrdxp]

Some additional options: Principia Ethica Normae Ethicae - ethical standards Virtutum Codex - code of virtues Ethica Canonica

Of course, it could just be in english as well, but I just can't think of any good ones at the moment :sweat_smile:

[nrdxp]

Maybe just:

Hackers' Ethica

To align with the Hackers' Ethos and Accord Bond

[nrdxp]

One last thought for now. Should we change the spelling to Hackeur throughout the text? This is popular in French speaking countries no @icodeforyou-dot-net?

We want to signify that, yes, we want to return somewhat to original hacker culture, but also, in recognition of its failures, we want to attempt to address and develop something new, and useful, with a mass appeal for anyone who is not already ideologically possessed (who I happen to believe is still the vast majority of folks).

[blaggacao]

Virtutum Codex - Code of Virtues

:100:

I like the idea to take possession of new adjacent words in the semantic cloud and thusly open the encrusted semantic space a bit and allow people to adopt a new perspective through it.

[nrdxp]

Just threw this out as an idea while it was fresh in my mind. I guess the risk, though, is pushing things in too much of an "esoteric" direction, which tends to promote elitism, which is one of the "ism"s I am explicitly trying to avoid.

@icodeforyou-dot-net suggested in private to just keep the language simple. Perhaps that is best after all? I did take possession of the domain ethics.codes, so we could perhaps even consider that? In any case, we have some time to decide before an initial release, just trying to balance the perspective from my previous posts here.

[srid]

Can't we piggyback on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic ? How is this CoE different to that?

[nrdxp]

according to that wikipedia page. The loosely defined tenets of that hacker ethic is:

• Sharing
• Openness
• Decentralization
• Free access to computers
• World Improvement (foremost, upholding democracy and the fundamental laws we all live by, as a society)

Which seem more like broad, societal ethics.We are basically in alignment with the first 4, but the last one is somewhat problematic, at least in the common understanding of today. It's also a bit delusional. It's okay to have aspirations for a better world, and of course I would encourage that, but to believe you have some exceptional power to actually enforce or ensure it? That's a step too far.

Some humility is required in understanding that, while we can hope our project and tools are useful and aid in a better world, there is very little we can actually do to ensure it, short of going full authoritarian (which is indeed where the culture has seemed to go with this). Unless you are totally insane, you can't really argue that authoritarianism crafts much of a better world at all. I certainly cannot support the notion, and moreover for our purposes, it seems to derail projects on a fairly consistent basis at this point.

Also, our goal here is to be as concise as possible in the direction of expressing explicit values which will aid in the development of a specific project. So we are more tightly scoped and hopefully, less ambiguous. We are also trying to drive explicit buy in via the Bond statement. It is akin to a professional oath taken by the likes of doctors and lawyers, and is soarly lacking in this professional arena it seems.

All that said, I already planned to review some of the literature around this ethic for supplementing my knowledge.

[icodeforyou-dot-net]

Since we are arriving at the fairly obvious similarity to so-called "hacker ethics" now. There are two big issues I noted down for myself and was planning on discussing:

• The notion of individual sovereignty is fairly clearly tied to a certain libertarian philosophy. But I would argue that we need an ethos that functions in an institutional setting. The ethos that you choose needs to be adapted to the institutional setting you choose it for. We haven't even begun to discuss that.
  
  We might have to do that at some point. I obviously have some thoughts on that.
  
  The bottom line of the problem is: the absence of all forms of authority is logically incompatible with a strong institutional makeup.
  
  Any institutional setup is based on some notion of the whole and purpose of the whole which it institutes, and sharing within it requires some alignment of the individual purpose to the purpose of the whole.
  
  And individual sovereignty then stands in a tension to the demand for "alignment with the project owner(s)' vision"

• The hacker ethics, if taken at face value, and also libertarian or anarchist ethics in general, are notoriously bad in formulating a coherent line of defense against the kind of political attacks we have been seeing in and around Nix for a while now.
  
  I mentioned somewhere else that this line of defense is also to be formulated at the institutional setting.

I should say, it is a bit of common problem to conceive of "ethics" as an individual choice. The "ethics" that people actually have is rarely chosen. The authoritarian left-wing guy commenting on RFC 175 needing moderation to be "preventing undesirable values from leaking out of people" had an intuitive understanding of that, just the kind of institution his ethics belongs to is a totalitarian nightmarish institution.

All that being said, many of the things in the CoE form a good basis I believe. This is just about a problem with the notion of individual sovereignty that came to my mind when thinking about it.

When you @nrdxp say that "our goal here is to be as concise as possible in the direction of expressing explicit values which will aid in the development of a specific project" I am 100% in agreement with that.

[nrdxp]

• The notion of individual sovereignty is fairly clearly tied to a certain libertarian philosophy. But I would argue that we need an ethos that functions in an institutional setting.

While I don't see the value as fundamentally political, at least not at the core of it, I do see how it ends up being tied to that political bent. Still I don't entirely agree that it is incompatible with an institutional way of doing things. Only that such an institution would actually have to respect the individuals that make it up.

Take for example, an employee owned co-op. Still technically a capitalist institution, but made up of employee owners, instead of outside share-holders. A beautiful balance of some of what works of each of the typically opposed capitalist & communistic ideals, imo at least. It's a good example of the kinds of solutions I tend to admire, that is, solutions that actually blend ideas from disparate camps to solve a problem in a uniue fashion.

• And individual sovereignty then stands in a tension to the demand for "alignment with the project owner(s)' vision"

Yes, to some degree, however I feel that tension is resolved by willful acceptance of subordinating oneself and temporarily delegating a bit of that sovereignty, by free choice, to the wills and aims of the project and its leadership with full rights to reverse that decision at any time. In my view, we all implicitly do this anyway when we attempt to contribute to a given effort, I'm just trying to make it explicit in a way that respects that choice.

I should say, it is a bit of common problem to conceive of "ethics" as an individual choice. The "ethics" that people actually have is rarely chosen.

Sure, but I'd say that only ethics that are explicitly chosen are of any real value. "The unexamined life is not worth living" so to speak.

• The hacker ethics, if taken at face value, and also libertarian or anarchist ethics in general, are notoriously bad in formulating a coherent line of defense against the kind of political attacks we have been seeing in and around Nix for a while now.

Yeah, I can't deny that this is, at least historically, self evidently true. However, I think the value of my proposition is equally historically provable. America may be a dumpster fire empire right now, but it was fundamentally founded on a similar ethic, and it was the success of that ethic that caused basically the entire rest of the western world to admire & emulate its success to various degrees.

It was also only the abandonment of the commitment to that value that led to its degeneration, at least as far as I understand it. So it could be that you are right, and there is no way to defend the idea of "individual sovereignty", ultimately, and it will forever be doomed to be attacked and eventually destroyed. However, it could be that the idea is actually incredibly valuable and that is exactly why it is so ruthlessly attacked and it is worth finding a new strategy to defend it. That is at least my contention here.

Also, I was somewhat profoundly influenced by my stumbling upon the iron law recently. It is a bit of a shocking, if obvious, insight to me. Based on that, I could argue equally effectively in the opposite direction, that focusing too much on "institutionalization" will inevitably be doomed to failure, at least in the sense that the actual goals and aims of a project will become more and more subservient to the bureaucrats who run it, until they are subsumed completely.

So you could say then, that the only possible way to sustain things, long term, is to avoid the bureaucrats at all costs and only allow those who are working toward the actual goals to assume positions of authority and leadership. That is my aim here, even if I missed the mark.

So to digress a bit, what I am reaching for here is a bit of that same kind of essence I mentioned about an employee owned coop. A solution mixed of what are often considered contradictory parts, but in such a fashion that they actually compliment each other rather than oppose one another. That, to me, is the only real way to solve this, although I freely admit that we may not be there just yet, or that it will never be pallatable enough to catch on.

Still we gotta start somewhere, so I had to take a shot.

[icodeforyou-dot-net]

A few more comments

individual sovereignty

That notion as such is a bit of an odd one. I tried to trace it's origin, I am not sure of it. Jordan Peterson is talking about it right now in any case. John Locke, who typically is seen as the originator of this idea in spirit, would never have spoken of sovereignty in relation to the individual. Locke speaks of man being the proprietor of his own person.

that tension is resolved by willful acceptance of subordinating oneself and temporarily delegating a bit of that sovereignty, by free choice

That is entirely true. John Locke would be proud of your explanation. :smile:

But it is important to realize what you are going to do here: you are rescinding "individual sovereignty" with the acceptance of the Code of Ethics for the sake of the participation in a greater whole. Since participation is voluntary and temporary, you can always leave of course. But still, in the meantime you limit "individual sovereignty". And limited sovereignty is no sovereignty.

Yeah, I can't deny that this is, at least historically, self evidently true. However, I think the value of my proposition is equally historically provable. America may be a dumpster fire empire right now, but it was fundamentally founded on a similar ethic, and it was the success of that ethic that caused basically the entire rest of the western world to admire & emulate its success to various degrees.

If you speak about the mixture early Protestant ethics and Enlightenment stuff, I tend to agree.

[nrdxp]

But it is important to realize what you are going to do here: you are rescinding "individual sovereignty" with the acceptance of the Code of Ethics for the sake of the participation in a greater whole.

That's a good point, and one I guess I need to consider carefully. Still, perhaps I simply chose the wrong word which left it open to attack (and, to be fair, perhaps that is the problem with the idea), but you could easily say that you willingly align your sovereign aims with the project, in so far as those goals are in alignment with your own. Then you are not really "limiting" it, so much as purposely aiming in the same direction.

Still I guess that is the problem with these ideas, in general. Depending on how you shift your perspective, it can look differently to different individuals at different times. There may just not be a solution to that, in the ultimate sense. But we basically need something that is robust enough to last for the length of a project's lifetime, and hopefully, assists it from devolving into a collectivist nightmare.

Perhaps we could soften the language somewhat and actually use the proprietor language, or something similar. Not sure, but this is good insight that will hopefully help us refine this as much as possible.

[nrdxp]

It's done, we are the Hackers' Ethic