Re: Sensing what is Right (was Re: BCP 83 PR actions and new media

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]


On 11/16/22 05:54, Abdussalam Baryun wrote:

> Hi Keith,
> 
> (sorry if this message was long but I think it covers my position on the subject)
> 
> Firstly, I thank you very much for your discussions related to BCP 83 and I really enjoy discussing with you and hope you have same feelings.
I appreciate  your discussions also.   I think it's important that people with diverse views, and even diverse senses of "rightness" contribute to these discussions.  It’s especially important that no particular person's or group's sense of "rightness" is held to be inherently more right than others'.

> So I am discussing from Africa Region and I think you are discussing from America Region, we may have different traditions but I believe we have the same common sense and both we want a progress in the subject under discussion. I believe it is a communication_principle that ietf_participants involved in one work_subject SHOULD have similar/common objectives to progress in work. 
Perhaps the trick is to understand, without assuming, what those common objectives are.  

For example, I'd like to think that we all believe that the Internet is good for humanity, that there's virtue in making it work reliably and efficiently and inexpensively, that it should be universally available, and that it shouldn't favor any particular country's or company's interests.

(But I'm not sure that we all believe that, or that we all should believe that, any more.  After almost 40 years of Internet existence [*] we are starting to see ways in which the Internet has not worked out as well as many of us hoped it would.  It's easy to see how the Internet has degraded our privacy; has made us all subject to surveillance by governments and businesses to a much greater degree than before; has made our fragile computer systems much more vulnerable to attack; has amplified the voices not only of those whose legitimate voices had not widely been heard before (good) but also of miscreants, conspiracy theorists, trolls, spammers, and others seeking to promote hatred, discord, or otherwise do harm; and has created some technology giants who exert far too much control over our lives.   So maybe the "good for humanity" needs some qualification.)

[*] If we accept the ARPAnet transition to TCP date of 1983.01.01 as the "turning on" of the Internet, though of course some implementation of Internet Protocol existed before that. 


> Secondly, there is no doubt that Organisation_Experts have strong sense of what is Right and strong sensing what is Wrong, also experience sensing what is Good, Bad and Ugly within IETF Communications and Computing/Analysing of Informations. Sensing is very important in making humans and things more intelligent in actions, reactions and interactions. Furthermore, having common abilities make communications more cooperative. Therefore, IMHO if all participants within any IETF WG have common_sense_ability_and_objective then they can be more working progress and more cooperative. As Jack Ma said once about AI and Quality of life: "I always tell myself that we are born here not to work, but to enjoy life. We are here to make things better for one another."

In fact, there is (and should be) sincere doubt about those things.  I personally question the wisdom of so-called "Experts" and believe it is necessary to do so.  (Who gets to decide who is an expert?  And experts are frequently wrong.)

Of course we all make judgments about what is desirable and what is bad, and some people are more knowledgeable than others.  But I don't know that there are any experts who are entitled to have their judgments accepted without question.
> Also our IETF RFC technologies, always depends on that both communication/computing ends need to be having the same protocol in common, so IMHO, it is very principle engineering to have common sensing protocol, and common communication protocol so we can have cooperative results. In one important work [1] it looks into IETF decision makings of IETF_business_work and I think concluded that we need cooperative discussions within IETF decision_makings. So I am one that believes that All IETF discussions needs cooperative parties in IETF_directors, IETF_participants, IETF_rfc_authors and among all. More comments below,

I want to say up front that I don’t want to rehash the recent BCP 83 discussion here.  I don’t think that’s likely to be productive.  I do think that that action and the resulting discussion demonstrated that we need to make several changes - to BCP 83, to the roles assigned to IESG and the Chair, and to our community expectations for speech and behavior.  But we need to wait a bit, leave some space, and let the dust settle first.

We absolutely do need cooperation among all parties to work together to build consensus.  Unfortunately I believe management actions in recent years have been extremely counterproductive to building consensus.

>> 
>> As far as I can tell, "common sense" is one of those phrases that people 
>> use to argue for some position that they do not know how to support.  
> 
> My meaning of *common sense*  is human_management_common_sense to make Right Decision_Makings to such continuous behavior (i.e. as human have same sensing of voices, image, etc.). This BCP or this RFC_use_case is related to management to use, and not society_individuals to use, so I think our discussion can be scoped more on the IETF managerial common sense of Managing Human_Organisation's inter_communications and not participants' common sense.
IMO, there was no common sense of any kind behind the recent BCP 83 action, either in starting that action or it’s result.  But maybe we should not use the words “common sense” when what we’re probably talking about is more accurately described as “common prejudice”.

>  
>> It reflects a presumption that everyone else thinks, or should think, 
>> like the speaker thinks.
>  
> This BCP was produced by the society and not produced by the management of IETF, so the policy_speaker is the human_society of this IETF organisation. Furthermore, the IETF_society is choosing their managers not the other way around as some organisations do, so our management's common sense will consider that as well. There is no doubt that the IETF_society is selecting their IETF_Best_Experts and Best_Available. Therefore, I think if I understood you the words *the Speaker_thinks* can be pointed at the IESG, so my reply is that they SHOULD be the best_ietf_experts otherwise we MUST blame the IETF_Society of no courage of talking/speaking.
BCP 83 was produced by the community.  But it was produced in a different time, and under different conditions than we have in IETF today, and it was intended for a different purpose than that for which it was recently used.  



> 
> My argument's important phrase_objectives are  *Social_Organisation* and *Managerial_Cooperation*, then within that organisation we already get to know/sense what is normal/good and what is not normal. All Human_Organisation_Managers build a common sense of what is right and what is wrong from experience within their organisations (they may also build common traditions). There are many business books analysed the organisation behavior and show important of Human_Management decisions for business and progress (I think our Research Groups have been doing some work in that direction). IETF is doing important internet_business as we know and maybe lagging in following up the world's technology evolution.
> 
>> Reality is that different people are exposed to widely different
>> conditions and experiences in life, and different people 
> 
> Yes, that is why we need management/group_directors/IESG to have time to look into that reality which is very complicated when we deal with humans and interactions among_humans. Also *Reality* is the IT market/business that needs new standards to follow the developments and there are work_management process issues and research done for IETF organisation which needs to be understood/considered by all IETF society participants [1].
>  
>> Reality is that different people are exposed to widely different 
>> conditions and experiences in life, and different people are born with 
>> different personalities and values, so each person develops their own 
>> sense of the bounds of propriety.   To some extent these things are 
>> reinforced by other people, but not entirely so.   And such 
>> reinforcement is often harmful, for example, in that it can serve to 
>> protect abusive practices or individuals.
>  
> IETF already produced this Best Current Practice, so are you against it, because my discussion/argument is not about amending or changing this BCP, but my discussion is about how to use it now, and I think you are doing the same. My discussion is not against having IESG deciding to use this BCP or not, but maybe I think you are doing that. So my reply is a question: Do you want this IETF organisation without rules/group_management that controls posting of special_attacks? Do you want society_individuals free to disrupt the IETF_process with no sense of control or with no management_interference?
>> 
>> No abusive practice that's tolerated by society, and no mistaken notion 
>> of how the world works, ever gets changed without some individuals 
>> having the courage to violate "common sense" ideas of propriety.
> 
> IMHO, to make our ietf_organisation simple, there are two courage_planes in the IETF_human_Organisation, one is Working_Plane and the other is Control_plane, so I am interested to first discuss Control_plane then Working_plane, and don't want to mix them. Some discussion mix and some separate, but this IETF_BCP is about separation so it is better to separate so we get into discussion_progress results. However, we have other level of controls within IETF_work_process but IMHO this BCP_action is not about those.
> 
> In addition, The IESG will always give chance to societies courage/new_ideas to discuss and find consensus within society so the societies common sense is heard before IESG decision, on the other hand the manager's common sense is important to make the possible_initiation of this BCP_action and asking for the societies_consensus, then the IESG's common sense decision making come into discussion among ietf_society_directors.
> 
> Finally, the ietf_society can be more clear for the working_plane, if they think they need more clear definitions of what is good/ugly human_communication/behavior on the IETF_environments, then it is better to have another RFC that is related to Working_Plane and not Control_Plane, within the IETF_Organisation, so we can be simple, sensitive and clear.
> 
> Best Wishes,
> AB
> 
> [1] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/7iccMwdInLz1WQTr8xQzqExZWdU/