Am Fr., 12. Juni 2020 um 16:53 Uhr schrieb John Cowan <xxxxxx@ccil.org>:

> Whenever I look at So-and-so's universal ethics, it always seems to contain markedly parochial parts, which is to say no more than that So-and-so is a person of their own time, as we all are.  Without a universal point of view, "semper et ubique et ab omnibus" ethics seems to be unachievable.  (There have been and are persons who claim to have a divine point of view, but I think they are most probably mistaken; certainly they contradict one another, which seems hard to reconcile with the monotheism that most of them profess.)  "I beseech you, in the bowels [compassion] of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken." —Oliver Cromwell
>
> The only universal ethics I have ever liked very much is Pinker's:  "Most people agree that life is better than death. Health is better than sickness. Sustenance is better than hunger. Abundance is better than poverty. Peace is better than war. Safety is better than danger. Freedom is better than tyranny. Equal rights are better than bigotry and discrimination. Literacy is better than illiteracy. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Intelligence is better than dull-wittedness. Happiness is better than misery. Opportunities to enjoy family, friends, culture, and nature are better than drudgery and monotony."  And of course some of these principles conflict, unsurprisingly.

I suspect that having a scientific discourse about whether universal
ethics exists and, when, what the correct universal ethics is is as
doomed to failure than discussing the existence of God or some other
higher entity. It's a matter of belief, I believe. Interestingly, it
makes what one calls a universal thing a very personal thing. But I
don't think this is a contradiction in the view of Descartes' "Je
pense, donc je suis." (NB: This sentence has, following Kant, a
logical flaw according to Rudolf Carnap because existence has to be
related to a predicate, not to a subject.)

> Arne is quite correct: to be unpolitical is to be political.  But most of us are unpolitical (which is to say: conservative) except about our particular interests.

As long as we are aware of this, it's fine, I think. Our resources are
limited. But we mustn't be narrow-minded.

>> If one solely chooses the MIT license solely because it is easier to
>> understand than the GPL, it's already too late.
>
>
> For "easier to understand", perhaps read "not as easy to use to game the system".  Although there is already a dispute about the implementation of the word "use" in the MIT license: does it imply (as I and many others believe) a non-exclusive patent license, since it is a patent term of art, or not (as MIT itself says).

Easier to use to game the system for the monopolists.