Request to join the Church (in search for Canvas-like experience)

Emacs
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Hello to everyone.

I thought a long time about joining the Church. After long illness and suffering I finally can restart my bachelor in physical oceanography and applied science with focus on scientific computing. :slight_smile:

With so much time philosophize back and forth I finally decided that Obsidian just doesn’t cut it. I love to have my tools integrated, be keyboard centric, and love the rougier nano style so much. What hold me back was indeed Excalidraw. I am a little bit of a visual thinker and im really striving in doing proofs with a canvas connecting my notes. I have done my research in such tools in Emacs. Have someone got experience in either of org-excalidraw, org-xournalpp or similar packages and could share it with me how well they play with org-roam?

Happy to have found SystemCrafters. I am unfortunately deeply invested in the Apple Ecosystem… But I am so evil and have a spare Yoga Thinkpad with Guix on it, if I can convert my wife to leave Apple then I am all in FOSS :smiley: but for the time being I am using my Mac and an iPad.

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Welcome.

If it takes you so much to come, please consider to be an FSF associate member instead of spending in Apple.

You can use my link to become an FSF associate member: https://my.fsf.org/join?referrer=342732

I changed “investing” to ‘spending”.

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What hold me back was indeed Excalidraw. I am a little bit of a visual thinker and im really striving in doing proofs with a canvas connecting my notes

While I don’t personally have experience with that, I think you might be interested in Sacha Chua’s work, configuration, and perspective. I’m always impressed at how she integrated drawn things into an Emacs workflow.

Personally, while I have occasionally had times where I have wanted to write or diagram things and thus resorted to paper (normally when figuring out some complex thing that I don’t even know how to turn into words yet) and then transferring into Emacs once I understand it better, I have found that that occurs less and less as I improve my Emacs configuration.

My point is that I have found that, at least for me, the thing I was looking for is not “more visual”, but rather more intuitive for expressing the thought I am working with. Because what I’m looking for is not inherently visual or otherwise something outside the realm of text, I’ve found that exploring new ways to manipulate text often does exactly what I want.

For instance, you saind something about proofs (and I don’t know if you mean mathematical ones or not yet), but math is a prime example of something I used to always do best on paper. I would always solve things on paper. As I began to improve my LaTeX entry stuff using TempEl templates and Org-CDLaTeX I started to find some of the writing became more natural and quick in Emacs, but still actual solving often felt better on a physical paper. Finally, the thing that revolutionized that last bit was setting up (and ironing kinks out of) Calc’s embedded mode. I still don’t have it perfect, but this is when Emacs became a proper math-problem work-book for me. Now I can type math manipulate it symbolically, solve and simplify things, and show all of my work in Emacs and it is fast and powerful enough that I can use it. My notes are now integrated with a calculator, stored digitally, I never need to copy things to show incremental steps, and I can easily store values, go back, and do things that I never could have done with a typical written workflow.

There was a similar thing for non-linear notes (the kind that thinking things out and taking notes from a poorly designed course make). They used to be the times when I would have trouble with Emacs and the way I was taking notes. Now I made a custom refiling thing that lets me take notes and instantly send them to where they belong anywhere on the page and I used org-glossary and some other things that help me manage things that aren’t well organized enough to have a properly thought out structure (I’m very particular with it and can’t bear to just put it out like other people present things because their ordering is so bad lol).

Overall, I think that you can probably get lots of the visual stuff you want from Emacs (though I don’t personally know how), but I would also say that often thinking about what you are actually trying to achieve and finding a custom solution to that specific problem can often be very rewarding. In my case I have found that when I get or build the right tools for text manipulation, I can get both the spontaneity of physical writing and diagramming along with the power that comes with doing things in text–the ability to use easily interact with it programmatically.

convert my wife to leave Apple then I am all in FOSS :smiley: but for the time being I am using my Mac and an iPad.

Might not work, but having Deepin installed (at least for anything she uses lol) might help. It at least looks pretty Appley (don’t use either it or any Apple stuff so I wouldn’t know how deep that goes).

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I hope that it became clear that I am already foss but had already a mbpro and an iPad before converting to Emacs. My wife depends on apple for her job and we both use iCloud and stuff. I wouldn’t have a problem with building a server and converting everything to foss. I already have the plan for that but my wife’s happiness is more important like the saying goes „happy wife happy life“ :grin:

I already know this blog and I really admire the work put in. From what I hear you are also in the science department? Nice to hear your perspective of things. I am slowly building up my latex skills and will see if I really need the „visualization part“. Let me put it that way. I love to do the math proofs and every connecting on a blackboard so that I can change everything like I want. Paper is not so good for that :smiley:

Putting Definitions or knowledge pieces on the board and puzzling my way to the proof or understanding was my workflow like you said for things that I haven’t understand yet or are new. In the past I was in search for such a digital whiteboard to draw with a digital pen and the surface studio was quiet my dream but hat hardware specs that… it’s not worth discussing about. And that’s when I discovered the sad hero Giles Castell and his phenomenal quick way to write latex. And here I am with Emacs and keyboard driven Workflows thanks to him. I will challenge myself to try doing stuff with pen and paper more and see how it goes.

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Using apple doesn’t make you a bad person. So, why care? Use what you like as long as you are not doing bad things to others.

You can be an evil person who uses FOSS software only. You can also be a good person who uses apple but helps homeless people.

You can use FOSS software to inflict pain on others with loud speakers. You can also use apple computers to help homeless people in any way you can.

You can use FOSS software to goof off, or you can use apple machines to do productive work.

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What you said makes some sense. May I ask you

Wouldn’t it be better to use FLOSS software and be a good person at the same time?

I agree that you can also use Apple and support FSF by becoming an FSF associate member.

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I use FOSS as much as possible, but I value practicality and my personal life more than FOSS.

Also, my previous point was that the pilot is more important than whether airplane software is open-source or proprietary.

If you improve the pilots first, everything else will improve.

A good pilot knows how to improve one’s life and other people’s lives. The airplane software is only a small portion of the pilot’s life. Knowing how to fly an airplane well involves much more than whether software is FOSS or proprietary.

Airplane passengers don’t care whether your airplane uses FOSS or proprietary software.

Do you care whether modern nazis use guix or mac os? Do you care whether those who feed homeless people use FOSS or proprietary?

Also, you can’t eliminate proprietary software if you don’t know real freedom. Almost everyone including FSF people doesn’t know what freedom is, and things people create in the name of freedom are often monsters. FSF was created by someone who was frustrated with proprietary software and didn’t actually take time to learn what freedom means. He made up his theory of freedom on the fly. Richard stallman never said he learned about what real freedom means at any point in his life. If you don’t know freedom, can you ever get freedom? No. Most people can’t tell the difference between freedom and tyranny. What real freedom means is going to be a long lecture which is too long for a forum post.

With faulty understanding of FOSS or freedom, people aren’t going anywhere good in the aggregate. In the current state, it’s better for most people to not fixate on faulty understanding of freedom and to just be practical. Illusion of knowledge is more dangerous than admitting that you don’t know something.

So, I’d rather be practical with software and get things done than fixate on FOSS. People talk about freedom when they don’t even know what it actually means. People often think they know things they don’t know although they didn’t spend an hour on learning them. This cognitive bias is killing humanity. At the very least, I’m willing to use nvidia proprietary driver to get things done if I have to. I use FOSS when it’s practical.

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I am fine with your decision. Your logic is not convincing though.

If the plane is using FLOSS, the pilots would be more confident, wouldn’t they?

Why do you say “Richard Stallman never said he learned about what real freedom means at any point in his life.“ ?

He wrote articles about it - Free Software Is Even More Important Now - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation

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Richard Stallman’s definition of freedom is wrong and entirely made up by him. He can’t really tell the difference between freedom and tyranny. Because he can’t, people who subscribe to his ideas will unwittingly end up creating different forms of tyranny. I know the real definition of real freedom. If you want me to point you in the right direction regarding freedom, send me a private message on this forum.

I know most people will not be open-minded to a new idea if I shove it to them. If they come looking for my help, maybe I will help.

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Yes, they should be, but the pilots have no choice. They simply have to use what the airplanes come with. And, most pilots don’t really care whether their software is open-source or proprietary.

They specialized in flying an airplane. Are they now supposed to learn obscure tricks to install open-source software onto airplanes? I don’t think that’s possible for now even if you really wanted to. That’s infinitely less likely than linus torvalds bothering to learn a different linux distro because linus torvalds specializes in linux kernel instead of linux distributions.

I want to root for open-source, but it is not as important as you think it is. It is only a small part in the big picture.

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Yep, absolutely true. People should always remember the ultimate point of advocating for good things like free software is because it helps people/makes life better. Idealism about a means should never take precedence over idealism about the ends.

Yeah come to think of it I would probably also prefer black/white board to paper, I think I just never got into it because I rarely had them around lol. Generally being able to edit and rearrange is one of my favorite things about using computers things in practice (along with programmability).

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Yes obviously free software is not the only factor in ones impact on the world (and there are many things that have a more direct/powerful impact on the the world), but it is of course still a consideration. The marginal impact of a single person using or not using free software (or repairable stuff or any other similar thing) is not much, but it does eventually have a significant impact on the world and peoples lives.

So of course don’t sacrifice important things just to be a free software purist, but don’t discount the value of using and advocating for free software and other good things.

Ideally, people should support free software for the potential it has to empower people and preserve their freedom, but also recognize that enforcing that viewpoint upon others undermines the very ideal and benefits that people should be supporting free software for.

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This discussion is getting kinda long and off topic from the original post. Do you wanna move somewhere else? I’d love to hear what your definition of freedom is.

As a quick response: while I don’t agree with the FSF’s approach on everything, I think generally their understanding of freedom is quite sound (even if I think there are often more effective, less divisive ways to promote free software and freedom).

I would say in general that freedom is about maximizing one’s ability to actively choose what to do and do it, rather than just an absence of legal restriction or monetary cost.

At the same time, I agree with you (and hopefully most advocates of free software) that this ideal needs to be balanced with other important things. To avoid all bad things in life is impossible. The focus should be on improving the world (or at least some part of it) not maintaining some kind of ritual purity by shunning everything imperfect (which is everything by the way lol).

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This doesn’t take morality into account. What if you want to do bad things like stealing money from others? Objective morality is the foundation of collective freedom. Don’t steal. Don’t murder. Don’t coerce. Don’t assault. Don’t lie. Don’t trespass. Don’t rape. Initiation of harm is called violence. Anything that is not violence, including self defense, is okay. Force is either violence or self-defense. Self-defensive force should be roughly proportionate to violent force, but they don’t have to match exactly in urgent situations like rape and assault where you could die very quickly after one punch knock-out. Violence can escalate very quickly in urgent situations, so self defense should be able to escalate very quickly to lethal levels in urgent situations. Collective freedom is everyone’s freedom from violence. Everyone has equal rights based on objective morality. That’s the precise definition of collective freedom. If you think morality is subjective or relative, you can justify anything including theft and murder. Most people think some groups of people have more or less rights than others in one way or another. While most people are against overt violence most of the time, they don’t mind or recognize covert violence justified through mind manipulation. That’s why earth is hell.

Without collective freedom, you have tyranny, so you can’t possibly get FOSS, but you can still get OSS. Because we are living in tyranny, what we have is OSS. We can’t possibly have FOSS in the current human condition. Free in FOSS requires collective freedom. Free as in collective freedom. FOSS = “Collectively free” and open source software. Collective freedom is a prerequisite for a lot of things.

I didn’t make up this definition of freedom. I learned it from teachers who learned scientific definition of freedom and morality from earlier teachers. I’m here to make a very precise “scientific” prediction.

Until at least 51% of people converge on universal equal rights based on good understanding of objective morality, we won’t have collective freedom, and thus we won’t have FOSS. FOSS requires a specific collective condition.

We can measure this scientifically with surveys.

Sadly, we won’t have collective freedom anytime soon. It’s very possible that hell will rule on earth until we become extinct. Welcome to hell.

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When applied on an individual level it is true that the value of freedom does not imply morality (which should be obvious from the definition; freedom seems to clearly imply that there is a possibility for people to abuse it). But the rest of your response seems to be a strawman of my argument.

Objective morality is the foundation of collective freedom. Don’t steal. Don’t murder. Don’t coerce. Don’t assault. Don’t lie. Don’t trespass. Don’t rape. Initiation of harm is called violence.

Yes, we are obviously clear on all of these things. The rest of your response seems pretty triggered so I won’t go through and address the whole thing. Suffice it to say that I generally agree with you, but I do think you could reword your response to sound less arrogant.

If you would be a bit more charitable/pay more attention to what I was saying instead of just looking for an opportunity to say your next response, you would find that my definition of freedom in no way contradicts your views on morality.

  1. We were talking about the definition of freedom. (You criticized the definition used by free software activists such as RMS, I responded that their definition of freedom was fine while I agreed with you that their methods are sometimes undermining that value and other important values.) Your long (and frankly condescendingly written) response seems to primarily take issue with the fact that my definition of freedom was not a full definition of morality or the more specific concept of “collective freedom” (which you try to specify even more to “collective freedom from violence”). While I again think that is a great value, it is distinct from the basic concept of freedom. This feels like objecting to the definition of a ball as “a spherical object” only to claim that it is a “a spherical object used to play football/soccer”—I certainly don’t object to a football/soccorball a kind of ball, but that doesn’t make the general definition wrong. In fact, I’m glad that you are advocating for that broader perspective of freedom in a time when many people focus too much on individual freedom and don’t notice that maximizing individual/short term freedom can ultimately harm freedom of groups/in the long term.
  2. My definition does not preclude your definition, in fact the condition of “collective freedom” is a result of optimizing for freedom over a group (collective)—my definition includes yours. I.e. reducing restriction of individual action is not increasing freedom overall when the increased individual freedom of reduces (or in cases like murder, completely removes) the freedom of another. One thing that my definition also captures that yours does not (that I personally think is valuable) is a freedom integrated across time (rather than across groups as you definition restricts you to). For example, learning a useful skill (maybe how to program Emacs) can increase freedom over time as you gain the capability to build and do things you otherwise couldn’t. On the other hand, addictions (even when they somehow don’t manage to have negative effects on anyone but you (highly improbable irl lol) diminish freedom as your life is increasingly dictated by the addiction rather than your will. Tl;dr: the aspect you emphasized is valuable, but not the only valuable conceptualization of freedom.

Without collective freedom, you have tyranny, so you can’t possibly get FOSS, but you can still get OSS. Because we are living in tyranny, what we have is OSS. We can’t possibly have FOSS in the current human condition. Free in FOSS requires collective freedom. Free as in collective freedom. FOSS = “Collectively free” and open source software. Collective freedom is a prerequisite for a lot of things.

  1. I would argue that there is a continuum running from tyranny (collective oppression) to collective freedom. While our world in aggregate is far from the ideal of collective freedom, it is not uniformly pinned to the opposite extreme. To say that there is no free software (which can also be considered on a continuum) and that we collectively live “in tyranny” seems to be an exaggeration and ignores the fact that many live under far greater oppression than the wrong, but relatively likely mild things that users of this forum have experienced.

I didn’t make up this definition of freedom. I learned it from teachers who learned scientific definition of freedom and morality from earlier teachers. I’m here to make a very precise “scientific” prediction.

  1. Don’t worry I don’t think that your definition is fake at all. I would maybe call it a collective negative deontological definition of freedom. Freedom is collectively not harming others (with harm of course being defined however you define it). But I would caution that this is not the definition of freedom. It is one of many. And honestly, you can make most any reasonable framework agree with “common sense” morality fairly easily by tinkering with the values. I would still argue that definitions are models—yours is workable in practice, but many others are as well. Technical definitions of concepts like freedom are only really useful to the extent that they inform and enlighten us. It can be fun, but ultimately I think a definitive definition for these things is practically irrelevant.
  2. Random note (and I don’t mean this in a bad way) but this is a philosophical definition, not a scientific one. Note, I don’t mean this in a bad way—philosophical is not worse than science, rather it is just the name for rigorous thought/investigation about ideas while science is rigorous thought/ideas about the physical world.

Until at least 51% of people converge on universal equal rights based on good understanding of objective morality, we won’t have collective freedom, and thus we won’t have FOSS. FOSS requires a specific collective condition. … Sadly, we won’t have collective freedom anytime soon. It’s very possible that hell will rule on earth until we become extinct. Welcome to hell.

  1. To end, I would just say, while I do completely understand the sense of hopelessness about these things, I’ve personally found that even when the world is stupid and people seem to always make bad decisions collectively, it doesn’t preclude all good things. While we won’t have an ideal society, that doesn’t stop all the good from existing. Sure, the whole world won’t be on board so at some level even the best things will always be linked to some extent with the failings of the world, there are still generally good things that we can enjoy and nurture in hopes of sharing that goodness with those around us.

Anyway, I hope you have a good day, am glad you care about making the world better, and hope that you can help some of the people/world around you to be a bit better.

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No, we are not. Most people don’t even agree that morality is objective, or they will make exceptions by thinking some groups of people have less or more rights than others. Most people’s morality has as many holes as swiss cheese.

It’s not an exaggeration. I can prove it in detail, but doing so will require hours. It’s practically impossible for me to make you listen to me for hours unless I kidnap you and put you in a cell.

So, just remember that I said so.

It’s relevant because it’s not taught in school, and people can’t even define what a right is. How can you hold onto your rights if you can’t even define what your rights are?

We have been losing rights left and right because we collectively can’t even define what our rights are.

If you ask people on streets what their rights are, 100% of them can’t answer the question. Everyone was confused and couldn’t speak properly. This social experiment was conducted by the man who taught me morality.

Enforcing Richard Stallman’s GPL license requires violence. I already wrote above that most people don’t recognize or mind covert violence. You haven’t recognized covert violence hidden in GPL, yet. You are not going to get more personal freedom by losing collective freedom.

Accepting covert violence won’t increase your personal freedom. That’s why I don’t take FOSS seriously as it is defined now. FOSS, as it is defined now, is not real.

I can make you see it, but I don’t know how long it will take. I guess it will take at least a few hours if you are receptive. Roughly 15 years of constant 24/7 hammering into your ears if you are not receptive. As I wrote above, I can’t make you listen to me for hours. Talking to each individual for hours is also a very inefficient way to influence the world. I’d rather produce contents later when I’m ready.

So, as I wrote above, I said so, and I will point you in the right direction only if you send me a private message.

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Also, your personal freedom has been severely bounded by lack of collective freedom because we live in a shared reality. You don’t live in a universe where you live alone.

Talking about personal freedom without considering collective freedom doesn’t make sense when billions of people live on the same planet.

If there are at least two people in the same space, collective freedom becomes relevant in the discussion of personal freedom.

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Talking about personal freedom without considering collective freedom doesn’t make sense when billions of people live on the same planet.

So by giving a definition that is a superset of your definition, explicitly stating my support for the collective freedom part that you advocate for, and praising you for mentioning it instead of focusing strictly on individual freedom wasn’t enough for you because I didn’t hyperfocus like you?

Responding to the remainder of your points individually is a waste of time. You completely ignored the context of the quotes you responded to and still have yet to understand that I’ve been trying to tell you (since my initial reply) that I agree that the methods which the FSF uses to try to advocate for freedom are often counterproductive. I only argue that this problem is not caused by an incorrect definition of freedom, just a hyperfixation on the value of free software (while ignoring other values).

This mirrors your approach. You hyperfixate on using no “violence” (I only quote to emphasize to readers that this word as used here is a technical term which includes things the average reader would not consider violence) and the necessity of all humanity agreeing on a single absolute moral framework for any change to occur. This prevents your cooperation with many people who agree with what you are fighting for in practice but don’t want to have you be the heavy-handed dictator of their entire moral framework.

I was trying to defend your point of view about the harms of the FSF’s approach and importance of collective freedom, and your response was a frankly ranty and sanctimonious lecture on how your moral framework is the right one and that humanity is doomed unless they adopt your ideology in it’s entirety as passed down to you through your special lineage of uniquely “scientifically” based, superior morality. Just as the FSF, you are incidentally driving away those who might otherwise support you in your obsession with purity of an ideal.

Another irony is that your own responses are replete with violent/coercive language and claims of the supposedly experimentally verified moral inferiority of “100%” of “people on the streets”.

unless I kidnap you and put you in a cell.
Roughly 15 years of constant 24/7 hammering into your ears if you are not receptive.
Violence can escalate very quickly in urgent situations, so self defense should be able to escalate very quickly to lethal levels in urgent situations

Finally, you have said multiple times that you will “point [people] in the right direction only if [they] send you a private message”. Perhaps you should consider that if your message about the moral code that all people should follow cannot be said in public (in a relatively safe place), then maybe you should rethink it (or at least how you present it).

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To agree that morality is objective, there must be only one absolute moral framework estalibhsed by the creator of the universe. The creator didn’t just create the universe. It created the universe with objective moral code.

Any man-made moral code is going to be relative and subjective to whims.

What you are probably saying is that morality is subjective or relative. This leads to all sorts of violence down the line.

Earth is full of moral relativists who justify violence in various ways.

Truth is singular and binary. Objective morality is singular, and there is only one form of morality just as there are no different forms of gravity in the physical universe. Gravity doesn’t change according to human perception. Morality doesn’t change according to human perception. Morality is as rigid as gravity.

Saying there are different forms of morality is like saying there are different flavors of gravity because people can change gravity by changing perception of gravity.

There is no superior form of gravity. There is just gravity.

Explaining this objective morality usually also requires explanation of all the global conspiracies.

People are going to call me a conspiracy theorist. I don’t want to be embroiled in never-ending flame war.

Because I know I’m right about this issue at least, I’d rather publish contents than discuss with people who are wrong on the issue.

When you are right, you just broadcast contents in one direction. Dealing with all the people who still don’t get it is a waste of time.

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That doesn’t mean I”m actually going to kidnap you and put you in a cell.

I merely spoke the actual requirement to make it happen to you specifically rather than random people, which is obviously violent.

I already wrote above that I am against violence.

I was caustic with my language because I obviously don’t care whether or not you take up objective morality. I was merely trying to convey my points. I don’t care about being polite because I’m too tired to care about it. You are not my boss, and I’m not going to be fired from my job for not being polite. This is just who I am without the mask.

If I actually cared about adoption, I’d carefully prepare contents instead of talking shit here.

I hate God for stranding me on a planet full of mud-flinging monkeys called humans. I hate humans for being mud-flinging monkeys who make excuses for violence everyday. I hate earth. I don’t care whether you believe earth is flat or a globe. I don’t care whether you understand objective morality. Believe what you like.

God hates humans for making excuses for violence all day everyday. That’s why God abandoned humans. God will not come to save you. I will not come to save you. No one is coming to save you. Help yourself. God’s verdict is to just let humans eat each other in hell until they become extinct.

As I wrote above, welcome to hell.

People are naive enough to think that they can have freedom or FOSS or anything that has the “F” word in hell.

Why do I say this? Because 99% ~ 99.9% of humans on earth make excuses for violence. How can it not be hell on earth when the vast majority create hell everyday?

Humans are not going to stop making excuses for other people’s violence or their own violence in their lifetimes. So, it’s a guarantee that we are not going to have anything with the F word in our lifetimes. The F word is an illusion in hell.