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Comment by fauigerzigerk | Hacker News Reader

So you are not skeptical if someone who doesn't share your goals gives you advice on how to achieve those goals? I think that's healthy skepticism.

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Exactly. In political circles that type of advice is referred to as concern trolling and is summarily dismissed.

> I think that's healthy skepticism.

Or a rationalized expression of confirmation bias.

In this case, the advice was from someone who does share the goals, and was offering advice on how to achieve those goals.

Someone who uses unfree software because it gives him an edge does not appear to share RMS' goals.

... and thus we see how the perfect is necessarily the enemy of the good then? Nonsense.

Two people can share a relative ranking of goodness for outcome states while differing on the methods to reach the better of such states.

I agree with that. It's not a black and white thing and it is sometimes very difficult to even tell goals and approaches apart because a particular approach to solve a larger problem can become an intermediate goal. Sometimes minor differences regarding the preferred approach become dogma. On the other hand, it's always possible to define goals broadly enough to find common ground with almost everybody but then it becomes meaningless. So I still think Stallman's skepticism is legitimate and doesn't necessarily mean he is ignoring other opinions. But I don't know him personally and I don't share his opinions on freedom.

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