LessWrong virtual meetup this Saturday evening

It's a bit let for me with my own timezone, but it's Saturday evening, so I could make it for about 1 hour at most, yes. But don't bother too much for me, I wanted to state the problems I have with Skype for further meetings, you can go on with yours as planned, and we'll see next time ?

But if it happens to be using a more open and text protocol (reasons 1. and 2. are independent of Skype itself), I'll try to come for a little while.

Rationality trumps ideology.

Correct... but rationality also trumps pseudorationality. Ideology isn't about addressing where things are, but about influencing the direction society takes. The mere fact that many things are broken does not mean that, when given the choice between a broken and a mended thing, you should choose the broken one.

That being said, I myself am not averse to using non-free software when there is no practicable alternative. Wherever I can have a say in what software is used, I promote FlOSS (though I also recognize that others need not share my prioritizations.).

This reasoning puts you squarely in a gilded cage. Surely, a preference for freedom can rationally have more weight than as a mere tiebreaker after comparisons of raw, short-term pragmatism. There is certainly room for discussion and dissension around what particular weightings are appropriate, but the lexicographic ordering applied in that last sentence is something I strongly reject.

Almost nobody cares about existential risk. Almost nobody cares about not making the most basic probability-related mistakes.

Appeal to majority is not sometihg to trust.

As for "works" - XMPP clients work predictably. Skype works worse for non-Windows platforms (I don't know or care about Windows version).

« Rationality trumps ideology. » doesn't mean « short term pragmatism trumps all form of ethic ». Confusing rationality and short-term pragmatism is not a mistake I was excepting to see here.

And all your examples are meaningless, it's like saying "but your taxes will pay for wars, so why can't you murder ?". I'm not responsible of what other people, even if I can advise them to act otherwise. I've no real way to change the software use by the government of by EDF. But by pointing to issues about non-free software, I can have some hope to make people use Free Software alternative in places like here.

Non-free software poses a lot of ethical AND pragmatic issues. It does require to put some blind trust into the corporation to install backdoors (and that's not paranoia, it did occur). It does create a domination link since you are totally dependant of the editor to fix flaws, especially security holes. And it does create a lot of problems, forcing you to chose your hardware and software supported by the editor (the GNU/Linux version of Skype is very crappy, doesn't work with many sound cards or webcams, ...), while with Free Software you can always port it (or write a compatible clone). I could continue for long on why freedom is, on the long run, pragmatically better for everyone (yourself and society as a whole) then centralised control.