Freedom

Discussion

Modelling Freedom in a formal way

Poor Richard:

""Is freedom simply "participation in power” (Marcus Tullius Cicero)? It might depend on the terms... of participation, which might be too constraining. In society as in nature, one's degrees of freedom depend on the balance between external constraints and innate or acquired capabilities such as weaponry, stealth, cunning, camouflage, strength, speed, agility, availability of resources, allies, extent of various dependencies, etc. Promoting and maintaining human emancipation would seem to be a very complex issue that has to be considered in micro and macro, as well as local, regional, and global context. History is ideally a database of specific past examples of the consequences of various behaviors under various conditions. Unfortunately, the recorded history is seldom complete and accurate!"

I think it very germane to the p2p community to try to model "freedom" in a formal way. As I suggested above, I think this begins with some kind of matrix of vectors and "degrees of freedom". At the top level would be things like freedom of association, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, etc. Subordinate to each category would be some list of capabilities, resources and constraints that had a bearing on a given type of freedom.

As long as we try to talk about freedom as one monolithic thing, the way politicians often do, people can easily talk past each other."