I'm more interested

[dougo]

A long while ago I decided on "programming languages", "board games", and "underground music" as the hobbies for my profile on some online dating service. Those somewhat broad categories pretty much cover most of what I do for fun, so I used them for the interests list on my LiveJournal profile. There are other things I'm interested in that aren't exactly hobbies, though, so in order to give a more rounded impression of what discussion topics might be found in my journal, I figured I ought to flesh out that list. Anyway, here's a little tour of the new additions:

• "Free software", "open culture", "copyright reform", "The Case Against IP": there's probably some redundancy here, but I view them as four separate facets.
  • "Free software" refers to the Free Software Foundation, and in particular I prefer that term (and that philosophy) to "open source software".
  • "Open culture" refers to OpenCulture.org, which unfortunately seems to be gone now; maybe I should point to Creative Commons instead, but OpenCulture was not just about licensing/copyright issues but also artist compensation: micropayments, patronage, etc.
  • "Copyright reform" is a term I saw on novalis's Orkut profile (but it doesn't seem to be in his LiveJournal interests list); even if you don't want to get rid of copyright law altogether, things like the Disney extensions and reduction of fair use are still worth fighting against.
  • "The Case Against Intellectual Property" refers to a paper (and a broader research project) by Boldrin and Levine, an academic study of intellectual property from an economics point of view.
• "Atheism", "agnosticism", "rationalism", "enlightened self-interest": also somewhat overlapping, but worth listing separately.
  • Depending on your definitions, atheism and agnosticism are either the same thing, mutually exclusive, or subcategories of each other. Literally speaking, I neither believe in God nor the absence of God, but practically speaking I act as if I believe there is no God. Depending on the definition of "believe" (and "act"), of course.
  • I've never actually studied the specific branch of philosophy known as rationalism, but I've heard Objectivism described as "warmed-over rationalism" so it seems like the right thing, given my deeply mixed feelings about Atlas Shrugged. I should follow up on this some day.
  • "Enlightened self-interest" is kind of a cliche, and often used derisively or ironically, but I'm using it for lack of a better term. To me it's just a practical justification for the Golden Rule as a basis for morality (in the absence of God or other superstitions), and so far that principle seems to make sense to me.
• "Electoral reform" is a catch-all term for several things I didn't feel like separating out: preference voting, full representation, and voting machines that run free software. There will probably be other things that will fall under this umbrella.
• "How The Mind Works" refers to the book by Steven Pinker and his theories about evolution and cognitive science. I'm also a fan of The Language Instinct but How The Mind Works is more provocative. Still haven't read The Blank Slate.
• "Strauss & Howe" refers to a pair of authors who have written several books about generations through American history and the predictions of their sociological model of a cycle of generational archetypes. I would have singled out their book Generations but it's sort of a generic term (and people would probably think I meant Star Trek).
• "Polyamory": more of a declaration than an interest; most of what I read about it seems to be written by people who have a very different conception of it than I do, so I tend to distance myself from that label. But I've been thinking about it recently, and have decided that it's a part of who I am and the way I'm wired up, even though it has only rarely come up in practice. I plan to write a longer essay about this at some point.
• "Science fiction": the number one common interest among my friends list. Way too broad a genre, but there isn't really a more specific category that I could come up with to describe the things I like to read/watch/dream. And I couldn't bring myself to include "fantasy", but I'm down with wizards and dragons and that stuff too. But only the good stuff.
• "Psychedelia": another broad genre that probably gives the wrong impressions to most people, but I do feel it's at the root of what draws me to any particular piece of music or art. But I stay far away from the Grateful Dead (except for that theme music for the Al Franken Show).
• "Tivo": well, it's taken up more than enough of my life. I resent the fact that I had to put the name of a corporation in my interests list, but I haven't gotten around to really looking into free software alternatives. Because I'm too busy watching "Two Guys and a Girl" reruns on the Women's Entertainment channel.
• "MIT Mystery Hunt": a convenient stand-in for "puzzles, but not jigsaws or crosswords, unless they're, you know, interesting". But I'm not about to join the National Puzzlers League; one marathon weekend a year is just about the right amount.

I'm sure I'll think of more, but inertia will probably prevent me from adding anything for a while. Meanwhile, comments and questions are welcome...

Comments

[jtemperance.livejournal.com]

I got 2352 on that grid game.

Also I have How the Mind Works and Blank Slate but haven't had a chance to open either yet. They're part of my backlog.

My experiences with polyamory were enough to know that it doesn't work for me.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I got very close to 3000 but still haven't crossed that line, though someone in the comments said he did.

[obra.livejournal.com]

Sadly Open Culture got our 501c3 status from the IRS on 9/7/01. Not much in the way of arts funding that year :/

[dougo.livejournal.com]

What do you think of Creative Commons? Are there other organizations closer to the spirit of Open Culture?

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I don't know as much about that (or "trademark reform"?), and I figure it's rolled in under "the case against IP".

[prusik.livejournal.com]

What little I know about patent, trademark and copyright law comes from being briefed by various lawyers at the various companies I've worked at as well as a certain amount of self-interest (on the off-chance that someday, I actually do write fiction worth reading or a piece of music worth listening to.)

I guess there are common elements, but at the end of the day, they are distinct issues. e.g., wrt copyright law, I don't know if there is much dispute over what can be copyrighted. However, there is apparently some dispute to the notion that works ought eventually to fall out of copyright and to what consistutes "fair use." The issues wrt to patent law seem to go the other way around. Patents are good for 20 years from the date of filing and you don't see Congress extending that length whenever a crucial patent is about to fall out of enforcement. However, there is quite a bit of debate over what is patentable. e.g., algorithms, genes. The picky would point out that technically speaking you are patenting implementations of algorithms for a specific use and the specific use of a compound represented by a gene. It's not all that clear to me that that is what happens in practice.

However, I'm going based on second hand info since I do not do patent searches.

I guess my point is that one's position on IP could reasonably depend on whether we're talking about the unique expression of an idea, or a process expressed as a mechanism which is novel to one of ordinary skill in the art.
(i.e., one could think that one is a great idea and other is not. Personally, I understand the need for copyrights, trademarks and patents. I'm not necessarily thrilled at how we have implemented them. But then again, I'm not a lawyer have no clue what the ramification of changes are.)

Anyways, looking at the list, the only thing that surprised me was polyamory. However, I guess that it surprised me wasn't surprising.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Richard Stallman makes the point that patent, trademark, and copyright are very different things and shouldn't be lumped together at all, let alone under the misleading name "intellectual property". But, well, it is a convenient shorthand, and less inflammatory than "government-granted monopolies".

I agree that software patents are an especially bad idea, at least when the patent office seems to be unable to decide when something is "obvious to a skilled practitioner". But I'm not sure it's more than just a symptom of the larger problem with IP, and any effective solution is likely to be rather drastic. (Whereas I think there are some substantial gains to be had from the low-hanging-fruit in the effort to reform copyright law.)

I was pretty sure many people would be surprised by polyamory, given that I've never really discussed any sort of -amory in my journal before (or even practiced it in the time I've had the journal, though even if I did I would probably not have talked about it much or at all). But I felt like "coming out" might be worthwhile. We'll see.

Re: Excellent

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I guess this doesn't count as crossing paths on-line?

Re: Excellent

[cower2spb.livejournal.com]

"Science fiction"
"Psychedelia"
"Tivo"
"MIT Mystery Hunt"

Man. That's like 'bout me %)) heh...